Vomiting Dan like sick as all hell and Lucifer is awesome
(sick!dan, douchifer, caretaker!lucifer, emeto H/C)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“Lucifer, could you…could you go check on Dan? He’s really not doing so hot, and I am not going into the men’s room.” Chloe shuddered visibly. “Not after last time.”
Lucifer put down the cup of pudding he was currently servicing (Dan’s pudding, as a matter of fact) and looked up at her with amused scrutiny, spoon hovering. “Detective,” he crooned. “I never thought you’d be one to back down from a challenge.”
Chloe sighed, lowering her face into her palms and dragging her eyeballs down with aggravation. Classic mom move, easily doubling for her boyfriend too. “Dan has been puking his guts out all morning, even though he says he’s fine, and I know Dan, he’s just gonna power through—” she lifted her fingers into air quotes, “—until he passes out at his desk, or worse, at a crime scene.”
“I fail to see how this is my problem.” Lucifer resumed his attentions toward the pudding cup, licking his lips in a most lascivious manner, plastic spoon scraping plastic container. “Mmhm. Extra protein.”
“Lucifer,” Chloe hissed, reiterating her desperation with another face-scrub and eye-bag-drag. “Please? C’mon, I did that thing for you last week, remember?”
He paused, last spoonful of white goop halfway to his mouth, and his brows raised in recognition. “Ah…yes, quite right.” With a resigned sigh, Lucifer dropped the contents into the wastebasket by Chloe’s desk and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. “Suppose I’ll go see what’s gotten into dear old Daniel, then.”
It was Chloe’s turn to sigh again, this time with relief. “Thank you. And Lucifer?”
“Yes, Detective?” He turned halfway to look back at her, already on his journey to the bathroom.
“Be nice, yeah? Dan’s kind of a baby when he’s sick. Don’t be too brutal with the insults?”
Lucifer grinned, white and toothy. “Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. I’ll be the Florence Devil-gale of dear Douche’s fantasies.”
Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this sick. Trixie’s birthday party two years ago, when he ate raw cake batter and got salmonella? Nope. Paolucci’s 2008 Super Bowl party, when he did like 47 shots of Jose Cuervo and fell off the kitchen table? Close. This? Was a new kind of awful hell.
With a thin, reedy gasp, he lifted his head from the ruined toilet bowl, chest heaving, crystalline strings of saliva and mucus dangling from his nose and mouth like spidersilk threads as he got his breath back in shuddering pants. Tears clumped together his lashes, blurring his vision and staining twin clean trails down his flushed cheeks. His face shone with sweat, dampening his collar and curling the fine hair at the base of his neck and temples. “Oh God,” he grunted, grimacing through another squeezing stomach cramp, fingers curling around the seat in dreadful anticipation.
The door banged open, and he jerked reflexively, panting and blinking through moisture. “Wha-”
“Dan?” Shit, that was Lucifer, the hell was he – aw, c’mon, Chlo, really? Sent the guy to check in? “Daniel, are you quite all right? The Detective’s sending for a priest, something about last rites?”
Dan was way too far gone to be insulted, settling instead for a grade-A moan of exhausted defeat, settling his head back down into his folded arms. “Tell her to send an executioner too,” he rasped, and abruptly doubled over with a straining heave, face disappearing into the bowl. Distantly, over the horrible sounds of his own sickness, he heard Lucifer utter a small oh, my, and inexplicably felt the warmth of a large hand on his back, rubbing circles between his shoulderblades.
“There, there, Daniel,” murmured Lucifer, quite taken aback indeed. Just what had gotten into this cretin, anyway?
Gasping for air after that last round, Dan emerged once more from within the confines of the bowl, face shining and eyes streaming, parted lips slick with bile, shaping oh, God, with a voice very small and stripped of any machismo or authority. He was sick as fuck, and kinda hoped Lucifer would actually just kill him, please and thanks. Guy had the money and skills to do it, he knew.
“No need to bring Dad into it,” Lucifer muttered, although he kept up the soothing rhythm on Dan’s back, knowing full well indeed how miserable he was feeling. Contrary to popular belief, Lucifer himself was still susceptible to certain human ailments, stomach upset unfortunately included. “Care for some water, Detective? Gargle and a rinse?”
“Oh, God,” Dan gagged at the image, torso heaving, shoulders hunching but in vain, as his empty stomach convulsed uselessly, still trying to bring up something. This was the worst part, worse than blowing chunks out his nose, just the empty relentless helpless squeezing dry heaving. Ugh.
Lucifer huffed in dismay, sufficing for a quick eyeroll in place of a verbal lecture, and carefully reached up to support Dan’s clammy forehead with his free hand. “It’s all right. It’ll pass.”
Hearing Lucifer continue to murmur comforting things in that melodic British baritone wasn’t annoying Dan as much as it should have. In fact, in the midst of absolute physical misery, Dan was kinda grateful for the asshole’s presence, for Lucifer holding him steady through the gripping heaves and rubbing his back and murmuring kind things. Jesus Christ, this guy was a fucking enigma. But maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
Dan was crying, honest-to-God for shit’s sake fuckin crying, after that last bout, breath hitching on a quiet sob and everything. His whole face was wet and gross and his diaphragm felt squeezed in a vice, everything hurt and he just waned to collapse and sleep, to fall into a black void of unconsciousness and possibly never wake again. He wanted this to be over, he was done, he was empty, fuckin Christ-
“First Dad, and now my brother?’ Lucifer tsked, but it was light and not without sympathy, and he took the liberty of reaching for the toilet paper so Dan could wipe his own face.
“Lu…Lucifer…” Dan could barely see through the hazy film of tears and exhaustion, but he managed to accept the proffered wad of toilet paper with shaking fingers. Had he been saying all that out loud? Haphazardly, he blotted beneath his eyes and nose, then wiped his mouth. “’m so tired…I can’t…”
“Yes, I know.” And it was completely sincere, soft but not mocking, serious Lucifer. “You’re very ill, Daniel, and have been for some time now, if the consistency of your offerings were any indication.”
Dan could only blink through the fatigue and dizziness at that description. “…huh?”
“You’re sick, man. How long’ve you been heaving up your guts?”
The way Lucifer said man with that U.K. inflection made Dan feel like a soldier on the battlefield, being roused to attention and spirited into strength. Heroically, he sniffed, stifling his shuddering with some effort and turning to look at Lucifer (whose brown eyes were very wide and warm with concern). “Since…since this morning.” His eyelids fluttered, and he raised a palm to his stomach. “I dunno, ‘s the flu I think…” Eyes closing, he sighed miserably. “I can’t keep anything down.”
“So I see.” Without ceremony, Lucifer reached out to flush the toilet, keeping a stiff upper lip and avoiding any masochistic peeks into the bowl. “Has it occurred to you to seek medical attention, or had the thought not crossed your dangerously dehydrated brain?”
Okay, that sounded more like Lucifer. Still keeping his eyes closed, Dan leaned back against the tiled wall, legs slumping to the floor, head lolling against the cool tile. “ ‘be fine.”
“What was that? Am I hearing things, or did you just say—”
“I’ll be fine. Just…jus’ gotta sleep, is all.”
“Ah, yes, I’m not having a stroke, I did just hear you say you’re ‘fine’.” Lucifer put the last word into air quotes. “You’re delusional. That does it, up you get, I’m delivering you to Chloe so she can drop you at the nearest E.R. like an unwanted newborn.”
Before Dan could protest, he felt large hands gripping him about the arms and hauling him to his feet with supernatural strength (holy crap, this guy was strong, no way he wasn’t on ‘roids or something, didn’t Chloe say he picked up a guy and threw him through a window that one time?).
“Easy, Dan,” instructed Lucifer, keeping an arm firmly wrapped around Dan’s shoulders as he maneuvered him out of the stall. Upon standing, Dan was overcome with a wave of dizziness, and he heaved dryly over the toilet. Lucifer simply held him, keeping him from falling into the bowl.
“Dear me, Detective,” he murmured in the ringing aftermath, and held Dan a little closer. “Come, now. Let’s get you cleaned up.” And then, a little softer, c’mon, as together they left the handicapped stall and hobbled over to the sinks, Lucifer supporting Dan in ways neither of them had ever envisioned.
In another life, thought Dan – distantly, as he suffered through the agonizing bliss of Lucifer sponging off his face with a damp paper towel, fussing over him like a mother hen with Dan too tired and sick to give a single shit – Lucifer might have made a very different living as a candy-striper instead of a civilian consultant. He let that mental image carry him away on angel wings as the edges of his consciousness began to blur and fade into blackness.
