Project X (Bungou Stray Dogs X Reader)

Chapter Sixty One

3rd POV

"You didn't need me anymore." Y/n said softly, looking away, "It killed me that day, leaving you. It hurt more than anything ever has, but I had to do it. You didn't need me anymore, you had Atsushi-kun. You proved that much to me when we were fighting that weird golem guy working for Fyodor. I... I still needed you though. I left so I could learn to live without you. I loved you so much, I would have let you drag me down to hell if it meant I could still be near you. Now you're just a stranger with all my secrets but still, seeing you..."

Y/n raised a hand to her chest, holding the fabric of her shirt just above her heart and her body curved instinctively over it, as if she was in great pain. Akutagawa slowly walked over to her, taking her head in his hands gently as he turned it to face him. There was no other warning to the kiss, no reason. It was desperate, and hungry and Y/n melted into it as if it had happened a thousand times before.

"Do you have any fucking idea how much I loved you, you idiot?" Akutagawa scoffed once they had broken apart, "How much I still love you?"

"Ryu-"

"I want to hate you for leaving," he swiftly cut her off, "I wish I could despise you, but I can't. Every step, every breath, every minute I am still alive on this wretched earth I am thankful because I know that you're in it."

Tears pooled in Y/n's eyes as she looked up at him, her face still held in his hands.

"Everything thats happened to me, no matter how terrible, it brought me to you, Ryu." she admitted, "I'm so grateful it happened because it brought me to you."

She threw herself into his arms and he held her tight as they sunk to their knees. When they broke apart, Y/n was smiling.

"I know we will never grow old together." Akutagawa began.

"Cause you'll never grow old to me." Y/n joked, brushing a strand of hair from his face.

"More like cause you wont die." he teased back, "You made me soft and I feared that. I was foolish."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. We were kids, and we'd been through so much. We were trying our best to figure out what living meant. Thats how we ended up in that little house, the three of us. We were just trying to live." She reached into Akutagawa's lap, pulling his hands into her own, "I'm not human anymore but I was once. I wanted someone to overlook all my faults, to never know them, and love me for that human part of me thats left but you, you take it all. You have always taken me, faults and all. Even when we were little and you hated my guts, you still tried to protect me, to save me."

"I didn't do anything. You saved yourself."

"Theres not a happy ending to this, is there?" Y/n asked suddenly.

"No, I don't think there is." 

Looking over her shoulder at her fiance, Y/n was silent in thought. Turning back to Akutagawa, she let out a sad laugh. 

Whatever that question had truly meant went right over the heads of everyone standing around them.

"Not yet corpses still, we rot." Akutagawa said.

"Still we rot." she agreed, letting go of his hands.

They both got to their feet, full of the same playful, angry power they had displayed before.

"Shall we?" Y/n asked as they began to circle one another.

"It was always going to end like this." Akutagawa answered, his hands in the pockets of his long black coat, "You're the only one I'd let."