#daisybones

Rumlow cursed as a bullet zipped past so close it just about grazed his ear. The trap had been well set, he and his team had no chance of escaping until they were already pinned in the killing zone. Agent Piper, his number two, had the presence of mind to lob a grenade into the only doorway they could see and they’d all bolted through about half a second after it went off… which was the only reason they were still alive. Two of his team, including Piper, were down with wounds that wouldn’t be fatal - if he could somehow get them out of there.

The only thing that comforted him was that Daisy hadn’t come into this trap along with them, that the plan had called for her to sneak into the rear of the facility while the STRIKE unit noisily attacked the front as a diversion. He was pretty sure he’d managed to get a message out before the comms cut out.

At least she’s safe, Rumlow thought, surprising himself with the intensity of the relief that accompanied the thought. He and Daisy had been occasional bedmates for a few months now; it couldn’t be really called any such thing as a relationship, even if SHIELD regulations would have allowed it. Fuck-buddies, he supposed he’d thought of it in the privacy of his own thoughts.

The mere idea of Daisy being caught in this trap with them, maybe having to tie a tourniquet around the spurting bullet wound on her calf just as he’d had to do for Agent Piper, made him feel absolutely sick.

Another bullet whizzed past his other ear, struck less than an inch from Piper’s boot. She hissed with panic, but she couldn’t move any further back under the meagre cover they’d found. Looking at her, at the fear in her eyes, he drew a deep breath, tightened his grip on his assault rifle. Prepared to plunge out of cover and try to cut them a way out, even at the cost of his own life if need be - which it probably would be.

“Goodbye, Daisy,” he whispered under his breath, earning him a curious look from Agent Piper. She saw the way he tensed, saw his finger slip into the trigger guard.

“Rumlow, no…”

He was already moving, thigh muscles bunching to push him upright, bullets spitting with lethal accuracy… when the wall to his left vanished with an earsplitting roar.

Instinctively, he threw himself down on Agent Piper to try and shield her from the falling debris, twisting around to try and see what the hell had just happened - was it a grenade?

Daisy stepped through the dust cloud she’d just created, gauntlets upraised, looking like a warrior goddess to Rumlow’s dazzled eyes. Bullets spanged off the wave of vibration she wielded before her like a battering ram as she strode forward to stand above his and Agent Piper’s fallen bodies.

It wasn’t until they were walking out of there, Rumlow and Daisy half-carrying Agent Piper between them, that Rumlow realized he’d been shot. There was blood pouring in a steady stream down his right arm. He ignored it until they were aboard Zephyr One, and then slipped away quietly to tend to it himself while the medical personnel tended to Piper and his other wounded Agent.

Daisy found him sitting in the ready room, wrapping a bandage around his own forearm.

“Shouldn’t a doctor be doing that?” She came over and took the bandage from him, checking that the wound underneath didn’t require stitches. It really was just a flesh wound, though, and he’d already cleaned it, so she sighed and began to wrap the bandage tightly. “Promise me that you’ll let Jemma take a look at it when we get back to base?”

“I promise,” he said.

It was so unlike him; she was used to him being stroppy and argumentative. She gave him a quizzical look as she secured the bandage. “You okay, Brock?”

He was silent for a moment before it all burst out. “No. No, I’m not okay. I told you it was a trap, told you to abort, and you came right on in anyway.”

“Because you were in the trap!” she snapped at him. “A thank you would be nice, because you were about to get your ass killed.”

“If anything like that happens again, you back off, you understand? You abort. I could have gotten us out of it!”

“No.”

“No?”

“No! I said no! You almost died! Don’t you understand that? I almost lost you!” She was shouting, standing nose to nose with him, and in her deep brown eyes Brock suddenly recognised his own terror.

“I love you,” he blurted out.

Daisy blinked, her mouth still open mid-yell.

“I love you,” Brock said it again.

“What?”

“The only good thing about that clusterfuck today was knowing that you were safe, that you weren’t in that trap with me. That even if I died, you’d be out there somewhere being perfectly you.” He lifted his uninjured arm, touched her cheek lightly. “I don’t know when I fell in love with you, but I did. Hopelessly and irrevocably.”

She gaped at him for a moment in utter astonishment before her hand crept up to cover his, fingers twining together. “If you’d died in there today, a part of me would have died too,” she confessed. “I love you too, Brock.”