#both*

Buck’s loneliness is so tragic to me because he knows he’s loved. He has friends, a found family, people who would literally drop everything for him. But there’s this unshakable part of him that feels like he’s always on the outside looking in. Everyone around him has their person (Eddie has Chris, Maddie and Chimney, Bobby and Athena, Hen and Karen) and Buck is there, a part of it, but never it. I think that’s why he loved Tommy so deeply, because for the first time, he felt like he was someone’s person. That he wasn’t just orbiting around everyone else’s world.. he was the world for someone. And then he lost that, and it must’ve felt like being thrown right back into that childhood ache of never being quite enough. and it reinforced every fear Buck ever had—that maybe he isn’t enough, that no matter how much someone loves him, they won’t stay.

And then we have Tommy. Who being lonely was probably the norm for him his whole life. He’s the kind of lonely that comes from a life of survival. He craves the sense of family and people. He wants people, he wants love, but he’s spent so long alone, it’s like he doesn’t know how to exist any other way. He'll literally gives endlessly for his people, he'll risk his literal life for an old friend, but the second anyone tries to give back, he pulls away because it’s safer that way. I don’t think Tommy has ever truly believed he deserves to be someone’s first choice, their one. And even if he wanted to be that for Buck, some part of him convinced himself that Buck needed something else/someone else.. because Tommy always expects to end up alone again.

They are mirror opposites in the worst way.

Buck aches to be seen. Tommy is terrified of being seen.

Buck leaps, Tommy hesitates.

Buck wants to hold on, while Tommy braces for the moment he’ll have to let go.

And i think they could be each other’s answer. They could break that loneliness in each other. But fear got in the way. And that is what makes them so heartbreaking.

The party thrown to wrestle their favor comes most decadently. There are fires everywhere, conjured motes of embers and crystal chandeliers. Romantics waltz about, their soiree daydream impossibly drusy, and from beyond those windows from beyond thick drapes, the Sword Coast, shimmery, bobs with stars. It's a scene from a novel, a young woman's fancy as she curled up in bed. It's the hour for suitors, for those weighed with prospects to swoon and mingle, and had there ever existed a world most fabled, this, this here, would be it.

To no one's surprise, Gale would favor a book.