Bat #3
Charlie very easily wrenched the pillow away from my face. His expression had softened. Glasses back on, those baby-blue eyes gazed down at me with something that looked distressingly like affection.
“It’s okay, Bat.”
“It’s really not.” I turned my head away, staring at those cobwebs in the corner of the room again instead.
Once I had energy back, I’d float up to wipe them away so they didn’t creep Charlie out.
“You don’t understand how fucking desperate I am to touch you.
Make you feel good. And I can’t do anything except lie here like a useless—”
“Bat.”
“—pathetic excuse for a dead person who can’t even manage basic sexual—”
“Bat.”
I shut up. Reluctantly met his eyes again.
Charlie smiled. “I have another idea anyway. One that’s almost as good.”
“What?” Suspicion crept into my voice. “Please don’t say séance. Or Ouija board. Because I draw the line at spelling out dirty talk one letter at a time.”
He laughed, then reached for his bag in the corner. Slid out a long, thin, shiny metal rectangle. A laptop computer. I’d seen plenty of them over the years—the people who moved in always had them, and the renovations team often hunched over them too.
“TV,” Charlie announced, holding it up like a prize.
“TV?” I blinked at the device. “That’s a laptop. I’m not a complete idiot.”
“If I go put my phone in the exact right spot upstairs, I can hotspot it to my laptop and then we might be able to stream something. Assuming the bandwidth holds and I haven’t hit my data cap.”
The words washed over me like static. “Um… that was a lot of technological words for someone who died before the digital revolution.”
“TV, Bat. That’s all you need to know.”
I perked up despite myself. Pushed up onto my elbows. “You can really get TV on that thing?”
“Maybe.” Charlie was already moving, heading for the door. “Give me two minutes.”
He disappeared into the corridor, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
TV.
It had been years since we’d had television at Grimthorne Manor. The last residents—an elderly couple—had owned a massive one in the drawing room. We’d all gathered round it like moths to a flame. Even Lady Grimthorne, though she’d pretended to find it vulgar.
Molly had loved Coronation Street. Watched every episode religiously until the couple died and their children sold the house. We never found out if Deirdre got back together with Ken.
Thomas had been obsessed with gardening programmes. Gardener’s World. Anything with Monty Don.
The twins adored cartoons. Tom and Jerry. The Smurfs. They’d squealed with delight at the bright colours and slapstick violence, acting out scenes for weeks afterward.
And Lady Grimthorne…
I grinned despite my exhaustion.
Lady Grimthorne had been secretly, passionately obsessed with The Vampire Diaries.
She’d never admit it, of course. Would float into the drawing room with an air of aristocratic disdain, announcing she was merely keeping Molly company.
That she found the whole affair terribly crass and awfully American.
But her eyes never left that screen. And when the television had been removed, she’d mourned the loss louder than anyone. Though she’d claimed she was simply concerned for Molly’s entertainment, naturally.
The memories ached. Sweet and bitter at once. Funny how clear my memories of the manor were, compared to the snippets from my real life before all this.
Charlie returned, laptop in hand, looking pleased with himself. “Right, then. What do you fancy? The Shining? Ghostbusters?” He climbed onto the bed beside me, the mattress dipping under his weight. “Or maybe Ghost? Bit on the nose, that one.”
For a moment I considered suggesting we skip the film entirely. See if he’d just let me stare at his face for two hours instead. Watch the way his expressions shifted, the way he pushed his glasses up his nose, the way his mouth curved when he smiled, the flutter of his eyelashes.
But that felt a tad creepy.
“Um…” I swallowed. “Got any rom-coms on there?”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “Rom-coms?”
If I were alive, I’d definitely be blushing bright red. Small mercies. “Yeah? Like, the sweet, funny, predictable ones.”
A snort escaped him. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a rom-com sort of guy.”
“Well.” I picked at a loose thread on the duvet. Couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “They always have a happy ending.”
The words hung in the air between us. Heavy with all the endings I’d never get.
Silence.
Then Charlie’s hand moved toward mine. His fingers passed straight through my palm, but the gesture landed anyway. It said “I’m here” in a way that twisted something inside me.
Charlie lay back on the bed, pulling the laptop onto his stomach. “I’m sure I can find something.”
The screen glowed blue. Something was happening—slowly, painfully slowly, the little red circle spinning and spinning. Charlie muttered curses under his breath, jabbing at the trackpad.
Eventually a menu appeared. Rows and rows of film posters. Smiling couples. Romantic embraces. Kisses in the rain.
“How about Notting Hill?” Charlie suggested, scrolling through. “Classic. Julia Roberts. Hugh Grant being awkward.”
“Never seen it.”
Charlie’s head whipped around. “What? Seriously?”
I shrugged. “Look, it says there it came out in ’99. I was… otherwise occupied.”
“Ah… right.” Charlie studied me with far too much pity in his expression. “Well then. High time you saw it, isn’t it?” He pressed play. “Hugh Grant’s at peak hotness in this one.”
“Hugh Grant is always hot.”
Charlie snorted. “Listen, I won’t spoil your mental image of him by showing you what he looks like now. Though, to be fair, I’d probably still let him fuck me.”
“Is that…” I paused. “Is that what you like? In bed?”
Charlie’s ears went pink. “Oh. Right. Yes.” Glancing away from me, he smirked, a shy little thing. “Though it doesn’t have to be in a bed.”
“Good to hear.” I winked at him. “On both accounts.”
His flush deepened, spreading down his neck. He fumbled with the laptop trackpad before hitting play.
The opening credits rolled. Music swelled. I lay beside him, not quite touching, watching the light from the screen dance across his face.
Halfway through the film—somewhere between a bookshop scene and a press conference—I felt energy creep back into my limbs. Not much. Barely enough to hold form. But enough.
I concentrated. Pulled myself together. Felt substance return to my body like water filling an empty vessel.
My shoulder solidified against Charlie’s side.
He felt the change immediately. Turned his head, that beautiful smile spreading across his face.
Then his arm moved, wrapping around me, drawing me closer into the crook of his neck.
His hand found mine, fingers threading through, thumb brushing over my knuckles, then over black nail polish that would never chip, never fade, frozen in time like everything else about me.
I let myself sink into him. Into his warmth. Into the steady rhythm of his breathing. Into the illusion that I was just a normal bloke, snuggling with his boyfriend, watching a film on a laptop in bed.
Not a dead thing that had been murdered and left to haunt a crumbling manor for eternity.
Not a ghost who’d thrown himself at this lovely man, come embarrassingly fast all over his face, and then fallen through the floor.
Just… Bat. Lying next to Charlie. Breathing in his summer-fruit scent. Feeling his fingers trace absent patterns on my shoulder.
“Through all seasons,” Hugh Grant’s voiceover said near the end, “for as long as we live together.”
Charlie’s fingers stilled on my shoulder.
I didn’t move. Barely breathed—well, barely pretended to breathe.
Because this—this—felt like a happy ending. At least for now. At least for tonight. A brief pocket of warmth and belonging carved out of an eternity of cold loneliness.
Even if it couldn’t last.
Even if Charlie would leave when this job finished.
Even if I was borrowing something I could never truly keep.
The credits rolled. Charlie didn’t move to close the laptop. His arm stayed wrapped around me, solid and sure.
“That was nice,” he murmured.
“Yeah.”
“We can watch another one tomorrow,” he murmured. “If you want.”
Tomorrow.
Charlie’s heartbeat thrummed beneath my ear. Steady and alive and impossibly precious.
For a moment, I let myself imagine it. The impossible fantasy where somehow, somehow, this worked. Where Charlie stayed. Where we figured out how to navigate the impossible logistics of a human dating a ghost. Where we got our own happy ending instead of just watching other people’s on a screen.
Nothing lasts forever, that’s what they all say.
Fantasies were dangerous things.
Downstairs, the basement door rattled. A reminder of all the reasons this couldn’t work. All the darkness still lurking beneath the floorboards.
Charlie’s arm tightened around me, like he could sense my thoughts drifting.
“Stay,” he whispered. “Stay with me tonight. Just like this.”
And despite everything—despite the impossibility, despite the danger, despite knowing how badly this would hurt when it inevitably ended—
I stayed.