A/N: This first chapter features no smut. Chapter 2 onwards will.
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The day after I graduated with my PhD and could begin choosing 'Dr.' as my title on online forms, I met an angel.
Not an ethereally beautiful woman, or a person of great charity and altruism. I met a literal, bonafide, wings-on-her-back angel.
It was in my apartment, after I'd taken an Uber from the Kenzie Pub where myself, Professor Eleanore Marigold, and my five other doctorate compatriots had wrapped up a heavy night of celebratory drinking. I'd nearly vomited in Nigel's car, but focusing more on the certificate I had ready to be framed at home than the broiling liquid in my stomach did me a world of good. I'd stumbled into my apartment building's foyer—manned 24/7—greeted Mary at the front desk, then wobbled into the elevator, half-sure in my drunken state my legs were holding themselves ransom from the rest of my body.
Getting to my place had been a trip, but thankfully my digestive system decided tonight I'd had a little under the limit for throwing up all over the recently washed carpet of the sixth-floor hallway. I slammed my key into the lock first try and fell flat on my nose when it swung open at my behest. Drunk me was more than amazed I'd nailed the key that fast. Clutching my nose, I swayed through the front hallway, trying my best to avoid the painting of K2 Everett Chaswick had made for me after summiting the mountain. I was cognisant enough to take my shoes off, though, and my fuzzy socks were near-responsible for me careening to the hardwood floor for a second time in as many minutes. Don't judge me.
The first sign I wasn't alone was my living room light. I was single, lived alone, and I was more than diligent when it came to turning things off when I wasn't using them—get beat for keeping them on as a child, you're set for life, really. But, because of the aforementioned drunkenness I didn't pay all that much attention, mainly because the floor and I had some important words to have with each other.
Needless to say, when I rounded the corner into my kitchen and found a woman with wings eating my Coco Pops, I screamed like a young boy, lost my footing, and ended up lodging the edge of my quartz coffee table three inches into my brain.
See, I met an angel that night, but meeting her was the capital letter of the sentence, not the full stop.
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"What a way to go. Hilarious," a voice said, completely deadpan.
I groaned and clutched my head. Either I was waking up from the worst hangover-dream of all time, or I was somehow alive and cognisant with a heavy, carved mineral taking up valuable real estate in my brain.
"Come on, that's it," the voice said again. It was like honey drizzled over peanut butter.
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. It was filled with cotton, dry as a bone, and every time I swallowed tonsillitis came and went in a flash. I sat up, still with my head in my hands. It was too bright, too much of a J.J. Abrams' movie to open my eyes.
"I hated Lost."
I shook my head back and forth like a dog drying itself and finally looked up. There she was, standing above me with a hand on one hip, aviator shades on, and golden wings hanging from her back.
The first words I said to her, a divine agent of some greater power was, "Lost was a T.V. show."
She looked away for a moment. "Shit, you're right. I always get the two mixed up."
I coughed up phlegm into my hand. "Movies and television?"
She shrugged. "Maybe."
I tried to say something, but before I could she snapped her fingers, and we were on my black leather couch, the T.V. turned on with the Star Trek reboot playing.
My headache was gone. I could see again. I was hydrated.
I turned to her, my face wearing a sheepish frown. "Who the hell are you?"
She pushed her aviators down a single finger, revealing her golden-hued eyes. "Call me Darling."
"I'm not dreaming, am I?"
"How astute of you." She flipped her legs onto my coffee table and leaned back into the plush leather. Even if I wasn't completely wired with the knowledge that, apparently, God was real, I wouldn't have been able to do the same thanks to her wings splayed out across the back of the couch. Inconvenient, that. Chris Pine bemoaned something about authority. I picked up the remote and muted him.
"Are you an angel?" I asked. Yes, I know, obvious answer, but better to get it from the horse's mouth, right?
Darling tilted her head back and forth. "You can call me an agent of a higher power, sure."
I breathed out like a blue whale inhaled plankton. "Shit." I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and tried to think it all through, but funnily enough I came up short. A PhD doesn't prepare you for this.
"You'll get over it quicker than you think."
The dark red decoration on one edge of my coffee table informed me that was a lie. "I died."
"Yep," Darling said.
"I died, and now I'm alive."
"Uh huh."
"I died, and now I'm alive, and I'm stone cold sober."
A tumbler of Jack and Coke wobbled into existence in front of me. Call me low brow, but it's always been my favourite.
I stood and started to pace. "How?" I pointed at the drink like it was standing on trial, and for how it got here it may as well have been.
Darling twiddled her thumbs, and no, that's not a euphemism. "You can call it magic."
An array of slightly embarrassing to definitely embarrassing hand motions followed before I said, "I- I mean, is it real? Or, or is it just a trick you're doing to my head or something?"
"Give it a sip, see for yourself."
I sighed. "This is insane. I am dead, and this is just the fever dream my brain's giving me before the last of my electrical signals shut down and my blood flow stops."
Darling leaned forward. "We met before you died."
I froze and put my hands on my hips. "Shit."
She slid the glass of Jack and Coke towards me. "Try it."
With a final swallow and a wipe of the growing nervous sweat on my brow I picked up the glass of alcohol. Firm, slightly wet with condensation, cold on my fingers and palm. This was a glass filled with a mixed drink.
