Baby executive

Chapter 21

Chuuya's brain activity increased, and it would have been a welcome sign if not for the current situation.

It felt as if Dazai had been waiting for weeks to see Chuuya move. To lift a finger or open his eyes. Even the slightest twitch of his nose would be enough for Dazai because it would be a sign that he was coming back to him.

What Dazai would give for Chuuya to smack him upside the head with a stinging amount of force and call him Mackerel. What he would give for Chuuya to casually slide a meal across the table and insist that he ate at least half of the food because Dazai had never been good at taking care of himself and Chuuya had been the best at it.

It was strange without his loud voice to occupy the room just as his presence always did. And even now, comatose and just laying there breathing, he still caught Dazai's attention just as he always had.

And now, at the moment, he held Dazai's absolute and undivided attention as his chest rose and fell in a more ragged and shallow manner. "Chuuya?" he asked cautiously, setting his book down to scrutinize the redhead more.

The breathing continued, the pattern uneven and something pierced Dazai's insides as if he was a pincushion. The feeling wasn't bad, in fact, it lit a fire under his bones as he scrambled from his chair to place his head over Chuuya's chest.

He wasn't imagining it.

It was real, Chuuya was breathing and his fingers that Dazai held in a loose grip were twitching and-

Let it be known that Dazai didn't express emotions unless they were controlled, but he couldn't bring himself to care as his face contorted to a smile that hurt.

"Chuuya," he sounded breathless, then called into the next room where the agency members were doing their reports and on lunch break, Dazai hadn't attended one of those in a while. "Yosano, I think he's waking up!"

He turned his head back because Yosano would make her grand entrance, slinging her stethoscope around her neck and pushing him out of the way as she checked on Chuuya. So Dazai waited, hands brushing through Chuuya's hair encouragingly, lulling him back to the land of the living.

He whispered to Chuuya to wake up because he hadn't vandalized his hat collection or wasted his wine. He would have plenty of hats and wine to go around when he opened those eyes-

A fatal beep filled the room, loud and uninterrupted.

Dazai's gaze was ripped from Chuuya to frantically study the heart monitor. A flatline filled the screen.

He darted to the corner of the bed to see if the plug had come unplugged in the wall but it was in place.

"No no no," it was obviously a technical malfunction because the chibi had been waking up. Dazai turned back around at a breakneck speed and took Chuuya's face in his hands, thumbing along his gaunt cheekbones. His skin blended with the color of his bandages.

Chuuya's chest was no longer rising and falling. It remained unnervingly still and Dazai reached for his pulse point in case it was just the trick of the eye, and Chuuya's skin was so cold that it burned.

An ugly noise was ripped from Dazai's throat, pure and desperate as Chuuya remained in the throes of death and the heart monitor remained unaltered.

"Dammit, Yosano!" He called again. There was no way she would not have heard the flatline noise because it was deafening. It filled the hollow room and seared through every one of Dazai's nerve endings.

There was no clicking of her heels and no swish of her coat. In fact, there were no noises coming from outside of the clinic as there usually was, everything hushed except for that damn heart monitor-