Ronin Beaufort x Talamasca Reader
Summary: You're currently on medical leave from you job as a Talamasca (paranormal investigator from the Interview with the Vampire world) after getting a smoke inhalation injury. Completely bored you spend more time on your side job of being a journalist and a freelance writer. Yet trouble finds you, you're invited to a serial killer group chat with a certain killer that seems a little too familiar. It has a long intro, sorry 😞
Background information
You always wanted to get out of Angelwood, it's a small, overly religious town in the Midwest. Adults brushed it off as teenage angst, you'll grow to love it one day. So, you allowed it to be pushed back despite how much it lingers. Falling into normal company that was approved of, with some rebellious acts of drinking or smoking in corn fields.
You weren't the most popular person but you weren't a complete outcast, just a quiet person who spent more time writing or doing any other hobby that keeps people away from you. The main person who never allowed you to fully isolate yourself was a person named Ther, you were from a family that the Estridge family got along with.
The main reason why you are currently stumbling home slightly tipsy, they invited you to a small party. Though the feeling of someone watching you has been getting stronger, you first started feeling it a week or so ago, maybe you should listen to your gut more often.
Getting kidnapped was never on the bucket list, the kidnapper being an old vampire that though you were pretty and entertaining just added insult to injury.
It was kinda like having a sugar mommy, well a much older one that could read your mind, control your body, and uses you for food. But, you had a bed, well you shared her coffin, and really good food. Some nights she took you driving in her car that was a very pretty blue and a vintage Ferrari.
Trust was growing, until you found yourself dazed from blood lose, tired of this back and forth pattern. You've tried to kill her before, stabbing her, garlic, a cross, all pointless but this time you have an axe. She was busy drinking and didn't hear you behind her, you took her head off her shoulder in one swing.
Suddenly you were in a meeting with a secret society that deals with paranormal creatures called Talamasca, they were watching you for the year you were with the vampire. You didn't want to work for them but it was that or go back to Angelwood, you had a way out and you took it, along with the blue Ferrari.
A few years have passed, you've changed your name and look like a different person... well you are a different person. Medical leave wasn't something you had planned but being in a burning building because a vampire wanted to kill you with them left you with smoke inhalation. With nothing else to do you focus on your writing.
Intro finished
Getting added to a group chat randomly wasn't the oddest thing you've ever had happen to you, though them being a serial killers was a shock but it was great inspiration. Plus human contact with people outside of the Talamasca would do you good.
When Ronin first found your writings through your journalism, you wrote a few articles on his murders. They were written as if you were detached from human suffering, never calling them gruesome or tragic. You reported on them like it was the weather, so of course when he saw you were looking for inspiration for your novel he invited you to the group chat.
Lying about being a serial killer was probably the easiest thing you have ever gotten yourself in to, using your own experience killing vampires as stories about the murder. Plus you had the perfect lie about why you aren't killing.
<you>: "I don't think I'll be committing any murders soon. Got a bad case of smoke inhalation :("
Some of your messages are so believable that it causes Ronin to start searching through even more personal records trying to find if there was any truth within any of your murders you mention. That also brought him taunting you in chat, only for your response to be to taunt him right back.
You're gutsy, daring him to try and kill you maybe with a goodbye kiss too, this all took place in the main chat for all to see. Never having any shame if someone saw how you flirted and taunt the Butcher himself multiple times.
When he adds religious imagery to his murders or references religion on chat, it is mainly you who point them out for theological criticism. He can take that, definitely well educated criticism that come from a place of artistic nature. You do end up being called a nun/priest when you point them out though.
On the topic of religion, both of you have had full heart to heart about religion on video call with each other. The walls come down slowly.
A lot of the stories you share with him are ones that seem similar to Ronin's own experiences, a small Midwest town but isn't every small Midwest town the same. Through it was somethings that stood out, stone angels lining the street, and creepy jocks you cannot remember what they look like.
But all small Midwest towns sound the same, haha. He does figure out you both grew up in Angelwood too, than he would find your deadname through a lot of digging. Even finding an odd job that leads to dead ends and redacted sites.
You find out who he was the first time he mentioned Angelwood and everything made sense why he felt so familiar.
The first time you re-meet him would be totally an accident, you allowed a co-worker to borrow it... that was a stupid idea because it was making a weird noise. You had to bring it in and brought it to a trusted mechanic a neighbor mentioned.
You drove there with your poor baby clearly suffering, when you finally park you pat the dashboard before leaving and entering the shop. It was empty until you tap a bell on the desk and Ronin pokes his head into the office only to smile as you stand there with a disgusted look.
"Ah, Darling you couldn't wait to meet me could ya?" "I'm here about my car... it's making a weird noise."
He paused when he saw the 400 Superamerica Series II in blue, having a moment when looking at it then back to you. You're pretty sure he's about to strangle you, he does eventually becomes professional so he could fix the car... your baby.
Later that evening he brought it up in chat when Misaki was having a moment about wanting a good paying job. This is the first major lore drop about your MO, as you framed it about it being your ex/groomer's(?) car that you murdered and took her car.
No one could complain, also slightly worried as you do drop little things about what happened when in that relationship.
Ronin enjoys your rot that you are slowly showing more and more. Both coming from a deeper anger that has yet to fully bare its fangs at him, but one day it would.
When he first finds out about your second job as a Talamasca it was after the events in Purgatory that made the relationship official. It would go one of two ways, either you willingly tell him or he gets in shit because someone targeted him to get to you.
The first on is boring so let's go with the second one. It would be a vampire who you were sent after to kill and wanting to make you suffer for trying to kill them. So, they lure Ronin out, you do manage to get in-between them but the image of a supposably the corpse standing back up was fucking sick. Until you beheaded them.
Ronin would have mix feelings on your killing because you willingly go after people who are millions times stronger and harder to kill. (them also being seen as something that mocks god would add to the conflict) Your rot would become even more beautiful to him, something so deeply disturbed happen that you refuse to let happen to anyone else.
He would tease you about it but I think after finding out why you chose it was more forced because it was that or going back to a home that would never be able to understand what happened to you. He would immediately want you to retire for your own safety, he sees them using your own anger and hatred to control you.
Your rot that comes from your anger is something he loves but he hates it when you do not get to control your own rot.
