Spoilers: 1x13
Content notes: Emotional hurt/comfort, mentions of past relationships, mentions of canonical death, grief/mourning.
A/N: Title from the book by Carrie Harris.
It was supposed to be something funny, but went into angsty territory, so it's just a moody ficlet. :)
Bad Taste (in Boys)
Liv can list all parts of the tongue and even describe in a very detailed way how the nerve endings convey the different flavors to the brain. And yet when Liv can't feel anything that doesn't have at least five chilies in it, it's just another mystery like her craving for brains.
Every sense is important, and though no one would guess it, without tasting everything feels unbalanced. It's like something essential is missing from Liv's life - not just her normal complexion, a strong heartbeat and blood flow - but it's like a glass veil between her and the world, something closing her off completely.
It's like a sick joke, making her more conscious of the fact that she died, she's not normal, she's not even fully human. So it's no surprise that she starts imagining food as her new way of passing time, associating different flavors with everything and everyone. Mostly she just does it, so she won't forget how everything tasted, she doesn't want to forget what life was like…
It's an easy enough way to wrap herself in an illusion.
She and Major had a tradition - every other Sunday they'd cook something up. They'd search the web for some exotic recipe, and if they didn't find some ingredients for it at the local shops, they'd improvise, making it all the funnier.
These memories are so vivid and colorful, they feel like they could hurt her eyes: The unrestrained laughter, the food fights, where she, the uptight Olivia, who had to control everything, unraveled, and really felt alive.
So that's how Major becomes the taste of wild spices − everything which isn't chili, of course −, curry, saffron, and on other times cinnamon and clove. Even if the flavors she imagines every time Major is close to her are a mishmash mix, it's a heady concoction that makes her dizzy, and her heart aches and (almost) flutters and longs for the past.
In the end, when she sees the utter hatred in his eyes as Blaine mocks his ignorance and later when he spits words at her, accusing her of not knowing him, that's when it hits her: Major was everything to her, that much was true, but their relationship was only built out of daydreams and ideals, every little thing put into its right place by her. An image of a perfect boyfriend, fiancé, as it should be, as if she could concoct a perfect life, following instructions from a cookbook.
It's nearly killing her − though she's already dead − to let him go (again), but she does.
Lowell is the taste of cold breakfast − something that can be easily made and you are grateful for it being there because it's convenient. Ironically, they don't eat too much together, they don't cook, mostly just snack - and though it's not sure whether it's Lowell's or Liv's self-denial, they let the charade go on. Anything that can make them forget the z word.
They're both desperate for touch, for understanding, and they're pulled together by their common misery, and it's a recipe for disaster. Liv isn't delusional enough to think it's true love, even Lowell said at the beginning it's just that their dating pool narrowed down to unfortunately low numbers. It's convenient, nothing more.
But then Lowell has to go and build a sugary cake with icing and fancy marzipan figures and calls their relationship love. In the end that's what destroys him− the promise of something shiny, something that could redeem him because he doesn't see himself − themselves − anything other than monsters eating people.
Liv mourns him − which tastes of burning alcohol and the sludge of brains, the non-texture and coppery flavor, sticking to her mouth for days −, but in the end she lets (a part of) her guilt go.
Ravi is… well it's hard to pin it down. At first she associates the taste of death with him: the lingering smell of disinfectants back in her throat, the sharp tang of metal and something nauseatingly sweet and rotting.
Silently working together, even when they are nothing more than coworkers, relaxes Liv into some sort of normality. Even if Ravi jokes around the ever present bodies and death and eats around the corpses, it feels like a sanctuary, a piece of serenity in the midst of chaos that became her life.
And then when the cat's out of the bag, Ravi doesn't scream and runs toward the nearest exit. He thinks the whole 'zombie thing' is nothing more depressing than a common illness: Yeah, you have to make arrangements in your lifestyle, make adjustments to your diet, but that shouldn't stop you from living and enjoying life.
So eating around the bodies becomes normal – they even start ordering takeouts, and sometimes Ravi even fixes up Liv's portion with gray matter and extra chili. It's these kinds of unconscious little things on Ravi's part that make Liv feel that everything isn't lost and she has a place in this world, she belongs to somewhere.
It's not until Ravi uses his kind of morbid humor to cheer her up, joking about a corpse as it (she) would have been just an ordinary meal, that it hits her how much he helps her. For God's sake, she eats people and it's terrible, with every meal she swears she feels a little part of her humanity disintegrating. But Ravi sees the good in everything, even something like Liv's condition, so he nudges her into crime solving, showing her that her dream of helping people might be changed, but not lost and unreachable.
The most amazing thing, though, is how easily Ravi reads her, like she was an open book. When Liv's on psycho brains, goes full on sociopath and almost doesn't save Ravi because her feelings are that dulled, buried deep down, Ravi doesn't hold it against her. He reassures her that she's not what - who - she eats, as if Ravi could see that this is her worst nightmare: Losing herself in all that different emotions and thoughts and memories, washing her away bit by bit, replacing it with someone else's parts, and in the end, nothing would remain of Olivia Moore, just a mismatched mix of other people's lives, a Frankenstein monster.
After losing her brother, Liv wouldn't mind to be just gone, so she binge eats on every kind of people, drinks a lot, and tries to undo herself. She loses herself in the memories of others, takes up their hobbies, even tries to pretend to be them, stalking their friends. One time she eats some European tourist, so she's gone for two weeks, hopping around countries, watching life passing her by in colorful and loud images, and it doesn't mean anything to her. She almost cries when she tries a national dessert and doesn't taste anything.
Ravi is considerate and compassionate, and has little to no sense of self-preservation, so when enough time passes by, he hops on the first airplane and finds Liv in Central Europe. (It's his luck that Clive has contacts in Europe and Liv isn't really hiding.) He shows up in the motel bar where she's sulking in front of a Bloody Mary, and he sits there until she starts to cry. And then it's all companionable silence and reassuring, warm touches.
Ravi puts up with her dark moods, not relenting, and not giving up on her. They don't talk about her erratic behavior, there's nothing to say about it, but Ravi is wary around her. He makes her talk to her mother and friends. He makes sure she eats regularly, and even checks the backgrounds of the meals to avoid any violent or unpleasant memories - solving crimes could wait.
Things start to change between Ravi and Liv: his warmth thaws her frozen edges, and though the hollowness inside her still echoes with pain, it becomes bearable. But now Ravi feels like a necessary part of her life: He's not the only thing holding her together, but he helps with moving on and living.
So it shouldn't surprise Liv when one afternoon of their usual get together (her mother, Ravi and Clive really don't like to leave her alone for a long period of time, so they always arrange someone to visits her) it dawns on her what exactly the change in their relationship means. Ravi is there with a ridiculous brain-cake−
('You know how hard it was to make the gelatin and the brains into something resembling to a cake-like thing?' 'Ravi, you shouldn't have, you know I can eat it without anything extra.' 'Oh, but, come on, tomorrow is your birthday, everybody deserves a cake they can eat.')
− and, yeah, maybe it's the emotional brain she ate earlier (she already made a hand-painted 'Best Sidekick' mug for Clive, for God's sake!), but she's just so overcome with happiness-gratitude-joy. So when Ravi is still explaining the hardships of making the cake, she grabs him by a fistful of shirt, and kisses him.
At first Ravi is surprised, and doesn't move, but then returns the kiss. It's not passionate, Liv is too mindful of her infectious nature, but the soft brush of lips is enough to convey what they both feel. What they have between them is like a comfortable, warm blanket, and most importantly, real and solid, so Liv lets herself be wrapped in it.
And even if Ravi is the taste of something that has at least five chilies in it and has an aftertaste something suspiciously like copper, it doesn't bother her. She might be dead(ish), but Ravi can make her heart feel like it's beating faster, and even without a cure she's finally feeling alive.
Sometimes she teeters on the edge of her dark thoughts, but he doesn't let her go.