Work Text:
Liv thought she'd gotten used to being cold.
Compared to the other side-effects of her "condition," a little chill didn't seem like a big deal. She resolved to wear more hoodies. Whatever.
Every so often though, she'd brush against someone in a crowd. Peyton would squeeze her hand. Clive would throw his arm across her chest to keep her back when things got tense on an investigation. Major would pat her awkwardly on the back as he walked by to leave, still unsure of where they stood. Ravi would hold her wrist as he drew more blood for his tests. And she could never ignore how much warmer they were than her, and how cold she felt once they pulled away.
Times like those, Liv really felt dead.
This time though, Liv felt justified in complaining. "Even the zombie is shivering, Ravi. Please can we wait till they move the bodies?"
"Wait outside if you want. I'm still taking notes," he replied, waving the hand holding a pen at her without turning his head. Ravi was squatting over one of three bodies the police had found in a meat freezer that morning. "There are two more bodies after this one, you know." The other two—a heavyset man with graying hair and an equally heavy young woman, both naked—were still hanging on hooks and casting uncomfortable shadows. The third had been found on the floor instead, fully clothed and without an obvious wound, and Ravi had started there.
Liv shuffled her feet, wondering how concerned she should be that she couldn't feel her toes, and clenched her fists tighter in her lab coat's pockets. She didn’t want to just leave in the middle of the job, but she also felt kind of like she couldn't breathe.
They'd been in the freezer for a while now. When they first arrived on the scene, Clive had taken them through the usual rundown and they'd superficially glanced over all three bodies. Liv agreed with the first-responders that the hanging bodies looked to have been killed by blunt force trauma to the head, but they still had to check. And so they were.
Liv had refused the extra jacket one of the officers had offered her; she didn't think she'd need it. Why would she? Zombies don't get sick. She hadn't even noticed the cold at first; she was always cold. But slowly her hands began to numb and her nose was feeling so bitingly dry that she wondered if it had turned pink. Finally, some color in her face.
"Holy shit, Liv!" Ravi had finally turned to look at her, and his brows drew together in immediate concern. "You've gone sort of…blue?" She looked back at him through hooded eyes, and remembered hearing somewhere about the dangers of sleeping in a snowstorm. "Like, really blue." Ravi stood up from his crouch and quickly pulled his gloves off, slipping them into one pocket of his lab coat. "It should have occurred to me before, but I've never really thought about it. We recorded your average body temperature at what? 66 degrees? 64?"
He reached out to feel the only uncovered part of her, laying a hand on her forehead, and Liv's eyes finally slid shut as she leaned into it. His skin was a burst of heat, something she could actually feel after having seemingly frozen over. A wordless sound escaped her throat, something between a whimper and a moan, and Liv immediately wished she'd held it back. Could zombies blush? She'd worry about that when she could think about something other than how good his hand felt as it moved to cup the side of her head.
"I don’t think you can regulate your own body temperature anymore!" Ravi said, thankfully ignoring her embarrassing noise and also thankfully not pulling his hand away. He also sounded a bit too thrilled at this new zombie fact considering its current consequences. "Would you allow me to check it in various locations? I'd bet you match room temperature wherever you go. What will that be like in the summer, I wonder? No tanning for you, no matter how much you need it. You'll bake!"
Stop talking, Liv pleaded silently. It actually was getting hard to breathe. The air hurt on its way in and her lungs didn't seem to want to work.
"Fried zombie," Ravi suggested. She could hear the smile in his voice. It was only now that he seemed to realize that she wasn't actually responding to him. "Liv? Are you okay?"
"You're so warm," she managed to say back to him, but her voice was quiet. Without thought, she dragged her feet the two steps it took to press against him, chest to chest. Liv couldn't really reach to bury her face in his neck, but she tried her best, lifting onto her toes and pulling her hands from her pockets to clutch at his shirt. She felt like she'd stepped into a fireplace. It was heaven. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that he smelled surprisingly good for a man who'd been poking and prodding a cadaver.
True to character, Ravi dropped the clipboard and wrapped his arms around her instead of pulling away. Every time she worried she'd finally done something too weird, too inhuman, Ravi always just adjusted and stayed with her.
"I'm sorry. I should have realized. This place is set to preserve raw meat for a long time; it's below zero in here. Probably below 20."
"I can't feel my feet," Liv replied, and felt like crying. "It shouldn't matter. I'm already dead."
"Hey, we've talked about that. You're undead and your heart's still beating. You're still a person." His arms tightened. "There's no reason cold wouldn't affect you. Obviously worse than someone who can circulate blood at faster rate."
"At a human rate," she muttered, but found she didn't have the energy to argue with him properly.
"Come on," Ravi said into her hair, having tilted his head down as he bent to embrace her better. "Let's get you out of here." His voice had regained some of his usual humor. "I think your brain is starting to freeze over, or you'd see that I, like always, am right."
Liv allowed him to shuffle her towards the door and out into the restaurant where he sat her down at a table near a heating vent. As he moved to pull away, she whined again, and tried to latch on to his shirt. Instead he gently took her hands in his and held them as he sat down next to her. Her hands, at least, got to stay in his heat.
"I hate this," she whispered, staring at their hands instead of meeting his eyes. "I just want to be a normal person. I can't even stand in a fridge for a few minutes?"
"It was longer than a few minutes," he said, growing serious again. Ravi was a generally cheerful person, but he always sobered when the situation called for it. "And that's hardly a fridge. It's an industrial strength freezer." Mindful of the people around them and seeing a worried-looking Clive beginning to make his way towards them, Ravi lowered his voice. "This is just another symptom, Liv. Now we know and we'll deal with it. You're a person with a disease. It's going to be okay."
He made excuses to Clive for her about a particularly difficult vision while Liv leaned on his shoulder and closed her eyes to the world. Honestly, she was beginning to feel better, temperature wise. Her lungs were working normally again. Her fingers and toes were tingling back into sensation. All she felt now was sad and tired.
But Ravi didn't let her go. And as he eventually led her away from the scene to his car, one arm wrapped around her and prattling on about how possible it would be to make some hot brain tea, and what B-movies they hadn't watched yet, Liv smiled up at him and felt human.