Notes: Thank you to my beta reader: Katadactyl

Whumptober 2019 #21 Laced Drink

Hot Pink Unicorns

Lucifer obnoxiously slurped at the dregs of the neon pink unicorn smoothie. The detective glared at him over her sensible, healthy, avocado, spinach, and other non-fun ingredients smoothie. He smirked and thumped the empty glass onto the table next to three he'd already emptied.

"How can you drink so much sweet stuff and still be so thin?" Ms. Lopez asked. She sipped at her Bahama Mama smoothie.

With a wicked grin, he said, "Plenty of physical exertion."

The detective rolled her eyes at him, but Ms. Lopez giggled. She was a lovely example of humanity, wasn't she?

"Perhaps one more for the road," Lucifer announced. As he stood, the edges of his vision blurred and a slight pain flickered behind his eyes. He frowned. That was new. He often discovered new experiences whilst in the detective's company. Brain freeze?

He took his trash to the bin and waited in line while the ladies finished their meals. At the window, the young man serving the drinks blushed and gave him a shy smile. He sniffed. Far too young for him to involve himself with, but a nice boy.

"Another unicorn smoothie, Mr. Lucifer?"

"Why of course, Kaden!"

Kaden giggled as he handed the drink over. "I've never seen ianyone/i drink so many of these things. No one ever orders them at all."

"A travesty, Kaden, truly. They are magnificent!"

"Are you ready yet, Lucifer?"

"Detective!" Lucifer spun to face her and wobbled. Odd. However, the detective had the expression that meant she'd run out of patience for fun things for the day. He took a steadying breath. "Yes, of course, Detective. After you." He waved toward the car park.

She smiled that small little grin he sometimes managed to coax from her, but she said, "You better not spill that in my car."

He drew himself up in mock outrage. "I would never!"

Ella grabbed his elbow and dragged him forward. "Come on, dude. I am past due back from my lunch break already."

Lucifer laughed and let her haul him forward. He felt loose in a way that way he rarely achieved with his pesky celestial metabolism. This was nice. He traded quips with Ms. Lopez during the car ride, and didn't concern himself overly much with the whys. A 'sugar rush', Ms. Lopez called his behavior. He must remember to try this again. A sugar rush was quite pleasant.

Back at the station, Lucifer leaned on Daniel's desk and slurped loudly. It had the twofold benefit of allowing him to watch Daniel become increasingly annoyed and bracing himself on something solid against the way the room spun around him. Growling with frustration, Daniel snatched the cup and chucked it into the trash before stalking off. Lucifer chuckled. Ooh, there was that thing he'd been meaning to do with the sticky pads of paper. He concentrated on the details, but they kept slipping away from him.

The detective walked by staring at a folder and Lucifer lurched after her. "Detectif!" She kept walking. "Detectif!" He stopped, holding his arms wide for balance. That didn't sound quite right. "Dictive. Detectective. De-" He shrugged. One of those was bound to be right. The flicker of pain behind his eyes flared and the room spun faster, setting him stumbling.

He fetched up against Officer Jones. She smiled at him, and he recognized that expression. She had a desire. "You, you're a lot of fun, aren't shoe?"

She tittered and nodded. She made the best paper airplanes. They'd spent an afternoon lofting them around the station once until one landed in the detective's hair.

She leaned in and whispered, "I have always wanted to run office chair races in the hall."

"Really? Well, why not!" He projected his voice, "Office chair race in the hall, everyone!"

A ripple of excitement went through the room, and almost before he knew what'd happened, he was flying down a hallway, perched on a chair propelled by Jones to the tune of cheering. She stopped so suddenly that he flew off the chair and landed sprawling at the detective's feet.

"Chair races? This is a police station not a Kindergarten!"

Lucifer crawled to his feet with exaggerated care. His head hurt and his stomach roiled. This wasn't… There was something…

"Lucifer!" The detective's tone was quite cross. He stood a bit straighter, but the room tilted and then the wall was under his shoulder. He patted it. Nice wall, keeping him from falling. She came closer, eyeing him carefully. "Oh my god. You're drunk at the station. How much did you spike those smoothies?"

"I do not get drunk, Detevtif. Detectif… Detective." He grinned in triumph at getting the word right.

She leaned in and hissed, "Lucifer, you are embarrassing me in front of the whole station. When you come back from lunch drunk, what does that say about me and Ella? I'm trying to be taken seriously as a professional."

He tried and failed to stand up straighter. "Jokesh on you, my flashks were empty way before lunch."

She threw her hands up. "Give me your phone. I'm ordering an Uber for you."

He reached for his phone...and reached for it, and again. His jacket danced out of his reach with each attempt and he circled trying to catch it. Acid shot up his throat and he gagged. Nothing made sense. He looked to the detective. She'd explain it.

She grabbed his arm, shoved him through a door, into a chair, and thrust a trashcan at him, just as the gagging evolved into epic spewing. Lucifer staggered out of the chair. He wanted away from that disgusting mess. His feet tangled and he crashed to the floor. He stared at them. Why had they betrayed him?

Ella trotted along the hallway, lab results for Chloe's latest case tucked under her arm. The mood in the station was off, making her Ella Senses tingle. She'd missed something big. Bernice Jones hunkered at her desk, head down, face flushed, but her down-turned head hid a broad smile. Faint sounds of retching reached her ears from an interview room.

Ella sat the file on Chloe's desk and moved toward the interview room. She might need to collect a sample, depending on the reason for the vomiting.

"I thought he was going to start taking this seriously. He said he meant it, Dan, and now this!"

Chloe huddled with Dan under the stairs. Dan kept glancing at the interview room with the urge to throttle Lucifer written plainly on his face. Chloe's face was flushed, she clenched her fists, but Ella thought she looked more hurt than angry.

Dan patted her on the shoulder. "You can't rely on guys like Lucifer, Chloe. You want me to get him out of here?"

Ella hesitated outside the interview room. Something didn't add up. She'd never seen Lucifer drunk enough to throw up before. He hadn't drank at lunch, either. No way he'd snuck enough alcohol into those smoothies to get this drunk…. A memory niggled at the back of her mind. The sounds of vomiting stopped, and a chair crashed. The thump of his body hitting the floor startled her into action. She flung the door open.

Lucifer stretched across the floor, his attempts at untangling his feet, feeble and ineffectual. Hot pink vomit coated his chin and the front of his shirt, and his muscles twitched. She knelt beside him, "Lucifer?"

"M'fee n'workin." His eyes twitched side to side, unfocused and pink tinged drool dribbled down his chin.

"Decker!"

"Oh geez, man, puking all over yourself?" Dan said from the doorway.

"We need alcohol. Whiskey, Vodka, something high octane."

"Are you kidding me? You think he's not drunk enough?" Dan goggled at Ella in disbelief.

"This isn't drunk. It's ethylene glycol toxicity. We need alcohol, an ambulance, and you need to close down that smoothie truck. If anyone else was poisoned, we need to track them down right away."

Dan trotted off without question, but Chloe stepped closer, "Are you sure?"

"I know he didn't drink at the smoothie stand. He emptied his flask into the coffee this morning. He even complained about it before we went to lunch. The first stage of ethylene glycol poisoning looks like alcohol poisoning, plus that." She pointed at Lucifer's eyes, the drool, and the twitching muscles. "I'm guessing he's been affected quickly because he drank five of those things, but even one could have enough in it to kill an adult and symptoms sometimes don't start for twelve hours."

Chloe's expression turned stricken, before it hardened into her get shit done face that Ella loved. "Okay. I'll go shut down the truck. Take care of him, okay?"

"Of course."

Chloe strode from the room, dialing her phone. Ella knew several agencies would have to be involved, more if they didn't find the culprit. Images of the poisoned Tylenol scare from the '80s flashed through her mind as Lucifer said something unintelligible.

Dan skidded back into the room carrying a phone and a sample-size bottle of bottom-shelf, 100 proof whiskey. "They want to talk to you," he said thrusting a phone into her hands.

"That'll counteract the toxin, get him to drink it, Dan."

She took the phone and relayed Lucifer's symptoms and vitals while Dan pulled him up and held the bottle to his lips.

"Yuck!" Lucifer turned his head away. "Tryin t' kill me?"

"Drink it."

He shook his head.

Ella hung up and held Lucifer's cheeks. "You need to drink it, Lucifer"

"But it'sh bad."

"Come on, buddy. Do it for me?"

He heaved a mighty sigh and nodded.

Lucifer woke feeling like some large and angry beast had trampled him. Exhaustion weighted his limbs. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He smelled. His head hurt and the world fuzzed at the edges, but a petite, warm hand gripped his and that felt nice.

He expected to see the detective. Ms. Lopez beamed at him from the chair next to the hospital bed.

"Do you want some ice chips? Your throat must be dry." She extricated her hand and spooned ice into his mouth.

"Ms. Lopez, what happened?"

"Well, do you remember drinking all those smoothies?"

"Of course."

"Turns out the pink syrup was actually antifreeze."

Lucifer frowned. What she was saying didn't make sense.

"Antifreeze is hella bad for you, dude. You drank so much of it, it's kind of a miracle how well your body has cleared it."

He winced. It was only by a miracle—more aptly, the presence of one—that the poison affected him in the first place. "Did the detective apprehend the miscreant responsible?"

"Oh yeah, dude. It was all an accident. Kaden—the kid making the smoothies—his dad had drained the antifreeze into an old syrup bottle and left it in the garage. Kaden thought it was syrup and took it on the truck. His dad ended up taking the actual syrup to the disposal weeks ago. Luckily no one else had ordered a drink using that syrup."

"Yes, how fortuitous."

"You should have seen Chloe in action! She had the case solved in record time. Here."

Ella handed him his flask. He opened it and sniffed. His favorite whisky. "The detective brought this?"

"She went to Lux and got you some clothes and stuff." With a glance at the clock, Ella said, "She was here until about an hour ago, but Maze called and said a pipe had burst and the apartment was flooding. Chloe said to be sure to give you the flask."

Good of Maze to keep the detective busy while he healed. He took a sip and relished the exquisitely balanced liquor. He ran his fingers over the flask and smiled at the import such an insignificant item could hold. "Thank you, Ms. Lopez."