ben poindexter x buck cashman
went and fell a little in love with a vision of them together sprung to life in my mind in the last moments of the season after the hints that they may be both reconsidering their stance and actions. then i fell down into the rabbit hole of thinking how they actually have various aspects in common, how they instead differ, and with hopeless romantic lenses on, how they could be complementary and fall eventually in love.
i have to say i was always saddened by poindexter's villain arc in the show because of its origin rooted in a mental illness that was exploited and that he was repeatedly desperately grappling with in order to overpower it, to the point that he almost blew his brains off in a last last-ditch attempt not to spiral completely. in the end, he never managed to become his own person—he was first the army's, then the fbi's, the fisks', the prison's, the meds'.
we know close to nothing about buck other than he had a previous life before fisk brought him over, much like he did with ben. reading his original comic book character bio, he was an an agent to the united states government; so like with ben, he also seems to always have been someone else's soldier. citing his actor arty froushan, "he's an enigma wrapped in a riddle. he's a political aide, but all is not as it seems. he is operating on levels that don't immediately meet the eye. he seems very charming, slick, and he is. but there is a deadly side to him."
ben too can be charming, but he never manages to keep the act for long before spiralling and breaking down and revealing his own deadly side. buck on the contrary seems to be absolutely in perfect control of himself and can switch back and fort seamlessly between 'political aide' and fixer.
when fisk asks buck whether he remembers why he hired him, buck says that it was for his ability to think asymmetrically. on the flip side, one of the major traits of bordeline personality disorder, which poindexter seems be diasogned with in childhood, is the incapability at integrating two opposing truths in one's worldview, which leads to black-and-white thinking.
and then, of course most notably in the understatement of the century, they are both excellent marksmen.
this all sounds extremely compelling to me since their both matching and clashing dispositions and skills, if they were to face-off. maybe because fisk sends cashman after bullseye to take him out once and for all.
and then, because i am a patent sucker for at least partial redemption and broken lonely people becoming a little less broken and lonely together, and possibly unhealthy obsessions, i want to seem them break free of their shackles, but in the process become completely codependent in their devotion for each other. buck would become ben's new north star, grounded in the ease of buck's self-assuredness and gray-tinted decency, but at the same time matching ben's deadly nature, so that ben would feel truly seen and accepted as he is for the first time without having to repress or hide any parts of himself like he had to do with his psychiatrist or julie. at the same time this freedom would allow him to be more clear-headed in the first place.
they would mostly self-servingly join matt's army to take down fisk and then run off together doing their own sometime-somewhat murderous thing.
