FIC RECS: two short fics on the theme of aDave and aRose being Doomed - Rec the First:
laurasauras‘ Til Death Do We Stand takes a discussion of loan interest rates as its starting point, and I absolutely love that. It’s Rose grappling with decisions predicated on the future, a future, when she has just learned that there is none, not for her or Dave (nor anyone, really). Dave tries to help, because he’s the money guy, and then she breaks the news of their doom to him.
The deliberately, almost absurdly mundane framing creates poignancy from one of the central contradictions of aDave and aRose: that they are, for all their extravagances, the most “normal” versions of Dave and Rose: they’re mortal, they have to deal with a lot of trivial shit; they’re not particularly super-powered (only maybe a little bit), they aren’t gods; they aren’t even players. Yet they live lives that, ultimately, require larger-than-life heroes.
This story zooms in on that “baseline humanity” of them to show them breaking down, or almost breaking down, by turns – each holding up the other as they falter. There are fics that give us these two as stoics, all heroic acceptance. And there is a little of that here (Dave’s offhand “Gotta do it anyway”) because that is part of the truth of them. But mostly, in the moment that this fic gives us, they’re vulnerable, and scared, and as human as they could be.
And also, so much stronger together.
