Luca hadn't planned on becoming Ghostface that night.
It started two weeks earlier at Spirit Halloween — he'd gone in for fog machine fluid and spotted the mask hanging crookedly on a rack. Glossy white. Black hood. Mouth frozen in that iconic, perpetual scream.
He'd picked it up without thinking.
The plastic was cheap. He didn't even particularly enjoy horror films. But the moment he held it, one thought arrived, clear and unhurried:
She'd lose her mind.
Not in fear. Not in horror.
In something far more entertaining.
Because she'd told him — laughing, flustered, clearly not thinking through the consequences — that Ghostface was "kind of attractive, actually." Something had stirred in his chest at that. Territorial. Quietly amused. Attractive? For a fictional killer in a bargain-bin costume?
He could work with that.
He bought the mask. Black gloves. A voice modulator. A plastic knife that the teenage cashier had regarded with the flat exhaustion of someone deeply over the Halloween season.
Luca had simply smiled.
Now he stood before the bathroom mirror, the orange glow of string lights casting everything amber and cinematic. Hoodie loose. Jaw shadowed. The kind of stillness that came naturally to a man who'd learned early that presence was more unsettling than noise.
He lowered the mask.
The world narrowed pleasantly. His own breathing filled his ears. His posture adjusted — shoulders back, chin down — not from effort, but from instinct.
He rolled his neck once and moved toward the bedroom.
The door creaked open. He'd planned that.
There she was.
Curled against the headboard in a pale lace nightgown, hair loose, eyes going wide the moment she registered the silhouette in the doorway. That mask. That stillness.
His pulse settled into something slow and deliberate.
"Lock the door."
She reached back without breaking eye contact and clicked it shut.
Good.
He crossed the room unhurried, the mattress dipping under his weight as he settled over her — one hand curving around her jaw, the plastic blade trailing lightly up her arm. His voice came through the modulator low and distorted.
"Frightened, sweetheart?"
She nodded.
He leaned closer, savoring the flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb —
Thwack.
Something connected with his ribs.
He blinked.
She had — she'd hit him. Open palm, full commitment, the impact roughly equivalent to being lightly tapped by a very determined house cat.
He did not move.
He did not wince.
He simply... waited.
And then she lunged.
It was, objectively, adorable. She launched herself at him with the full conviction of someone who had genuinely convinced herself this would work, and he let her topple him — purely out of gentlemanly instinct, because the alternative was watching her bounce off him like a throw pillow — and suddenly she was straddling him, nightgown riding up, fake knife pointed at his throat, expression wild with triumph.
Her voice dropped into something she clearly intended as menacing.
"Boo."
Luca stared up at her.
Something in his chest cracked open warmly.
She rolled her hips — slow, deliberate, clearly her winning move — and a low sound escaped him, entirely involuntary and not at all from the plan she thought she was executing.
He reached for her waist.
She smacked his hand.
He allowed this. He could have caught her wrist before she moved. He could have had her on her back before she'd finished the thought. Instead, he lay completely still, six-foot-three of barely restrained amusement, and let her believe — truly believe — that she had him.
She leaned close, nose nearly touching the mask.
"You wanted horror, didn't you?"
"I wasn't expecting the assault," he said mildly, voice still running through the modulator, which somehow made it worse — that calm, distorted patience.