Some people have a name engraved on a locket, some have a little black book, some have a rolodex of lovers, and Hamlet has a veritable catalogue of ships. He’s got so much love inside him and doesn’t know how to be normal about any of it, which is why he can do things like transferring all of his affection from one sibling to another without finding anything odd about it until he sees his mother do the same.

Osric is his first and intermittent thereafter, in a series of accidents when they just keep running into each other and neither says how they truly feel; Horatio is his last and the steadiest of all, and Hamlet will fuss over him and place him in his heart of hearts but then flinch and push him to an appropriate remove when he thinks there might be cameras on them; but the love is always there whether he expresses it or not.