"I know I'm not the musician here, but professing your love for someone then going on about how they'll drown you... not very romantic, is it?" Anji asked.
"Sometimes love isn't very romantic," Fitz said quietly.
or
A year's time in a blue house in a tiny English town. The ups and downs of the lives of a not-so-perpetual slacker, a daydream believer, and a terribly sensible trader.
come to me with remedies
is a Slice of Life slash fanfic by Lucy Zephyr set in the canonical Eighth Doctor Adventures AU the Obverse, about the lives of that universe's version of the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Anji Kapoor. Here, the Doctor is a human with two hearts and unspecified mental issues, and he and his 'tenants' live in a big blue house outside of London. The Doctor often suffers from delusions, hallucinations, and manic episodes in which he is convinced that he is an alien who protects the earth from other, more malevolent entities. Fitz has assigned himself the role of the Doctor's caretaker, reminding him to see his doctor, take his meds and otherwise function as best he can, but finds himself questioning the ethics of his self-imposed responsibilities and the nature of their relationship when the Doctor one day casually remarks that he'd like to kiss Fitz.
Anji is the other tenant and often the only one who can keep all three of them grounded and not shut away in their out-of-reality existence within the house. A transplant to the Obverse (as Compassion was the third resident of the house in The Blue Angel) Anji serves a similar purpose within the narrative as well, quietly pulling the story away from the ethreality and Magical Realism of the original novel, and expanding the POV outside of the house's liminal spaces.
Tropes present in come to me with remedies include:
- Dreaming the Truth: Defied. Unlike in The Blue Angel, this universe's Doctor really is just an ordinary man with a heart defect and a mental illness; he's not trapped in the world and his delusions are just that. Probably.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Rather in the vein of the novels themselves. Fitz comments that if he knew someone at the Beeb, they could make a killing fictionalizing the Doctor's imaginary alien adventures.
- The Magic Goes Away: The Doctor has a panic attack and goes into a severe depression when with the help of Fitz and his new medication, he realizes his mother is not a mermaid, but an ordinary human confined to wheelchair. It still doesn't explain the Mobious strip bracelet though.
- Through His Stomach: The Doctor's not-particularly-subtle method of bribing Fitz and Anji with their favorite foods.
