The Gunmen Were A Relief
Daniel Sousa x Reader
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Written for Fictober 2024!
Fandom: Marvel
Day Ten Prompt: "Is this normal?"
Summary: Daniel's planned out the perfect night to tell his SO about his real job as Chief of the LA SSR. Unfortunately for him, things don't quite go according to plan.
Word Count: 2,090
Category: Fluff, Humor, little bit of Angst but not really
Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.
"Wow. You look amazing."
I smiled, feeling the heat rise to my face at the compliment from my amazing, wonderful boyfriend. Daniel Sousa stood before me in a suit, a boquet of roses in his hand.
"Thanks. So do you."
He huffed a laugh. "Thanks."
He handed me the roses as soon as I got close enough, and I leaned in to give him a soft kiss. When I pulled back, Daniel had a smile on his face, but he looked a little more fidgety than normal.
"Here. Let me get your chair."
Daniel moved to pull my chair out, pushing it back in for me as I sat. We'd been dating for a while now, and Daniel had decided to plan an extra-special date night tonight. The table was laid out gorgeously, with candles creating an amazingly romantic mood, and he'd managed to get our table set up on a gorgeous rooftop overlooking LA. When I'd told my friends about the plan, they'd immediately started freaking out because they were sure Daniel was planning to propose.
I'd told them they were crazy. Daniel and I were certainly getting serious, but we weren't at that point yet. Now, looking at Daniel fidgeting across the table from me, I wasn't so sure.
"Daniel... are you okay?" I asked. He froze halfway through shifting in his chair, eyebrows raised as he met my eyes. "You just seem a little... off."
He sighed, looking down at the table and shaking his head. He seemed to be wrestling with a decision, but after a few moments, he looked up and met my eyes again. His expression was still grimly serious, but he'd at least settled into his seat a little more.
"Alright, I wanted to wait until we were a little further through dinner for this, but... I guess now's just as good a time."
My heart dropped to my shoes. Was he seriously proposing? We hadn't talked about marriage at all. I definitely saw a future with him, but I also definitely wasn't ready for that future to start right now.
"So-"
"DANIEL!"
I whirled around at the sound of a loud voice behind me to find a woman I didn't recognize crashing our date. I frowned, but her attention stayed mostly fixed on Daniel.
"Have you told her yet?" she asked in a British accent. I whipped around to find Daniel looking incredulous and glaring at her.
"No! Get out!"
"I'm sorry, but I can't. We've got a situation developing and you're needed, now."
Daniel looked ready to keep arguing, but the woman came over and dragged him to his feet before he could. He yanked his arm out of her grasp, but grabbed his crutch and started following her.
"Fine!" He shot a glance back at me. "I'm so sorry about this. I promise I'll answer any questions you have later, and this really isn't how I wanted to tell you, but... I'm with the SSR."
"...WHAT?"
"Daniel! Now!" called the British lady, already halfway back to the door on the roof.
"I'm sorry, but I really have to go. Peggy—Agent Peggy Carter—wouldn't be doing this to us if it weren't an emergency."
With that, he turned and started hustling after the agent. I couldn't do more than blink after him for a few moments, completley speechless and in shock, but finally, I came back to my senses. I shot to my feet and ran after him.
"Daniel! Hold on!"
"GET DOWN!"
The shout came from Agent Carter, her voice ringing out across the roof a second before a sound like a gunshot echoed, too. A moment later, something barreled into me, taking me to the ground. I landed hard, and when I tried to get up, I couldn't. I felt myself starting to panic, but Daniel's voice in my ear managed to soothe me.
"It's okay, I've got you."
I took a few deep breaths, and finally calmed down enough to realize that Daniel was the weight keeping me on the floor. Much worse, a moment later I realized I could still hear what sounded like gunshots. What maybe were gunshots.
"Daniel... what is happening?" I cried, a little bit of hysteria creeping into my voice. Daniel met my eyes. He looked much calmer here than he had sitting at the table, which seemed incredibly backwards to me.
"Apparently Peggy brought the case to us," Daniel huffed. He only seemed midly annoyed, which was a crazy reaction. I shook my head, feeling myself getting more and more worked up, until Daniel's hand found my waist and he rested his forehead gently against mine. "Hey. We're gonna be fine. I promise."
I took a deep breath. I nodded. I trusted Daniel, and he seemed weirdly calm and confident. If he wasn't panicking, I wouldn't either.
"Okay, I need you to get down and stay down behind the fan unit over there. Alright?"
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"Good. Just keep your head down. I'm going to go help Peggy."
I nodded again, moving behind the fan as Daniel shuffled to cover of his own closer to the action. I took a few deep breaths, but I didn't make it more than thirty seconds before my curiosity won out. I peeked around the edge of the fan unit to find Daniel and Peggy in a firefight, each behind their own cover, firing back at a few armed men who'd burst through the door to the roof. I shook my head. It felt like I'd ended up in one of the movies Daniel and I went to see for date nights.
My friends had been wrong. Daniel hadn't been proposing to me. Apparently, he'd been working up to tell me he led a double life. Instead of working with a talent agency, he was a badass government agent that didn't flinch at the prospect of a firefight.
Despite the initial chaos and panic, I had to admit, watching Daniel in his element like this made my heart race in a good way. He shouted something to Peggy, and at the same moment, I noticed movement off to his left.
He didn't notice. He was communitacting with Peggy. Meanwhile, some guy was sneaking up on him from the side.
"Daniel! On your left!"
Daniel whipped around, and to my relief, he managed to move out of the way before the guy on the side could get a clear shot at him. Unfortunately, the guy then turned to look at me. I took a half-step back, my heart dropping to my shoes. Daniel shifted in my direction, but before he could get very far, the door to the roof flew open again.
"Alright, everybody drop your weapons! The cavalry's here."
I turned to the door to find a blond man standing with his gun levelled at the guy closest to him, half a dozen other men coming through the door behind him. The guys on the roof that had been shooting at us froze, then slowly dropped their weapons. Daniel and Peggy both stood up, and to my surprise, they both looked mildly annoyed.
"What?" asked the blond, strutting towards the two of them with a grin on his face. Suddenly, the annoyance made more sense. "No thank you?"
Daniel didn't even bother to respond. He rolled his eyes and turned back to me, closing the distance between us quickly. He took my hand as soon as he reached me, looking me over, I guess for any injuries. When he didn't find any, the corner of his mouth started to pull up in a smile.
"You okay?" he asked. I took a deep breath, then nodded. I realized I was starting to smile a little, too.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think I am."
"You did good," he said. "Thanks for catching that guy trying to sneak around on me."
"Yeah! I'm glad you managed to get out of the way. And... I'm glad your guy showed up before he could get payback."
"I am not Sousa's guy. I'm the Chief of the SSR."
I nearly jumped a foot as my world widened out beyond Daniel again and I found the blond and Peggy standing next to us.
"Chief of the New York SSR, Thompson. New York only," Daniel corrected with an eyeroll. Thompson rolled his eyes right back, he, Peggy, and Daniel all forming a little semicircle with their hands on their hips. I couldn't hold back a laugh.
All three people turned their attention back to me. I gave Peggy and Thompson a little wave.
"Nice to meet you guys," I said.
"Likewise," said Peggy with a little smile. "We've heard a lot about you."
"Yeah," agreed Thompson. "Sousa spends half of our Chief conference calls talking about you."
I raised an eyebrow, but before I could ask any followup questions, Daniel took his opening.
"Don't you two have better things to do? Like taking all the armed bad guys we just caught to jail?"
"I don't know, Sousa, I think-"
Peggy elbowed Thompson in the side, hard, cutting him off mid-sentence.
"Yes, we do. We'll get out of your hair for now." She turned to me with a smile. "It was lovely to meet you."
I smiled, most of the adrenaline having finally drained away. "It was great to meet you, too. Despite the circumstances."
We shared a smile, and then she all but dragged Thompson off the roof with her. Daniel watched them go, looking more exhausted than I'd ever seen before, then turned back to me with a sigh.
"I'm sorry about them. And about putting you at risk like this. I really didn't want you to find out this way. But... what do you think? Are you okay with this? Putting up with this?"
I paused, pretending to think. Finally, I met Daniel's eyes. He looked seriously worried again, so I reached out and took his hand.
"I have two questions. First... that Thompson guy said you had Chief calls. What exactly do you do for the SSR?"
"...I'm the Chief of the LA SSR."
I couldn't keep the corner of my mouth from pulling up in a smile. "Okay, that's pretty cool."
Daniel huffed a laugh. "I'm incredibly relieved that you think so. What's your second question?"
"Is this normal? Do I need to be prepared to have our dinner dates interrupted by men with guns for the rest of our lives?"
"Not necessarily. Sometimes it's women with guns."
I laughed, shaking my head as I leaned into Daniel. He wrapped his arms around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder.
"Daniel. I love you. I'm in this for the long haul. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little relieved you weren't proposing, but it's going to take more than a few people with guns to chase me off."
Now it was Daniel's turn to laugh. He shook his head, then sighed.
"Well, ideally the rest of our night should still be ours. Our dinner doesn't look like it got hit by any stray bullets. You want to pick up where we left off?"
"Let's do it."
The two of us started heading back to the table hand-in-hand. The candles were still lit, which gave me hope the rest of our evening could be just as romantic and special as Daniel had been planning.
"Hey, uh... one question for you?" I hummed, nodding to Daniel as we retook our seats. "Did you say you thought I was proposing to you?"
"Yeah. I mean, the candles, the rooftop dinner, how nervous you were? I think the more common cause is proposal, not secretly a secret agent chief."
Daniel huffed a little laugh, then looked up at me again as he picked up the bottle of wine.
"So... you said you wouldn't want that?"
"I said I wouldn't want that right now. I love you, but I feel like I'm not completely done getting to know you. Especially now that I have about a thousand new questions about your job. But just because I'm not quite ready to get engaged doesn't mean I'm not planning to be in this for the long haul."
Daniel smiled and took my hand across the table, giving it a gentle squeeze. We let the moment stretch on, the two of us happy together and enjoying the newly returned peace, until Daniel leaned back with a sigh.
"It's probably for the best. I don't want our proposal story to include a gun fight or Jack Thompson."
I laughed. "He certainly seemed like a character. I'd love to get to know him and Peggy better, especially if they're regular fixtures in your life."
Daniel nodded. "You will. I thought we could all get breakfast tomorrow. But I wanted tonight to just be the two of us."
"That sounds perfect to me."
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