The push and pull between control and submission defines a lot of the Eli x Aesop stuff I've read. It's rarely a simple, fluffy romance. Aesop's need for order and his 'work' clash directly with Eli's acceptance of fate and the unknown, creating this intense friction that writers love to mine. The dynamic often explores whether Eli's gentle fatalism can reach someone so devoted to a manufactured, sterile end, or if Aesop's rigid worldview will corrupt Eli's peace. It's less about 'fixing' each other and more about two opposing philosophies forced into a shared, often grim, space.
You see a lot of fics use the embalming process as a metaphor for intimacy—Aesop's careful, precise touch applied to a living person instead of a corpse, with Eli being the one subject who wouldn't fear it. That inversion is darkly poetic. The themes circle obsession, quiet devotion, and finding a distorted kind of peace in another person's dysfunction. The romance is almost secondary to the psychological dissection.