Eliot's tragedy revolves around the fact that he specifically does not think he can have QUENTIN. Because Eliot is the funny, charming, reliable queer sidekick doomed to love his best friend from afar. Queer sidekicks don't get The Guy.

So Eliot can't imagine that his best friend might be in love with him too, even after they've loved each other for fifty years. The audience, seeing the tragedy of the queer sidekick play out over and over again on our screens (and before that in literature)

is also primed for the Mosaic to be an anomaly. That's why 4x05 was such a revelation, for both Eliot and the audience. That's why finding out that Quentin was also in love with Eliot was such a shock.

And that's why pairing Eliot with another love interest was never going to work. (It also shows how little the showrunners and writers understand queer history and queer stories.) Eliot's great salvation was that Quentin loved him too.

So to have him settle for the next best thing, for whoever will have him, the person who is literally physically closest to him, is a tragedy. It's telling Eliot not to hope for anything. It's telling him that he should take what he can get.

Which is EXACTLY where he was when we first met him. It's QUENTIN'S love specifically that means something to Eliot's journey. The fact that Quentin loves Eliot the exact same way that Eliot loves him.