Page 118 of Love at First Fright

“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.”