#but like the foresight and planning is a bit incredible i will concede

[a-caterpillars-world]

oh. OHHHHHH

[sassycassie-s-writing]

Inflameo

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): Avengers + YouTube - Dan Howell/danisnotonfire & Phil Lester/AmazingPhil, feat. Steve Rogers/Captain America

Rating: PG

Original Idea: ... Just my head.

Notes: (Masterlist)(About Me) This is just a fun Avengers!AU.

^^^^^

Dan and I were lying on our stomachs on Dan’s bed in the Tower, not trusting the relative silence. How was something not happening? Something was always happening. I glanced over at him. His brown fringe had been slightly dyed red where it fell in a diagonal line towards his left ear over his high forehead. His eyes were once just plain dark brown—back when I first met him before either of us got our powers—but now they seemed to shift like an ember. The brown occasionally glowing with a dull, sunset orange or muted yellow or dark red. His skin was still as pale as it had been when I met him, but emitted a low shimmer in the relative darkness we were sitting in—and not just from his phone screen casting its light on his face.

I looked back to my own phone before he could catch me staring. I didn’t mean to stare, but sometimes it just hit me how much Dan had changed since he got his powers. Physically anyway. He was still the same intelligent but dorky guy, that I'd met that day so long ago on a blustery London day, on the inside.

There came a frantic knock on the door. “Come in!” Dan called.

Phil pushed the door open, blue-green eyes a bit wide and pale skin flushed pink. He looked a bit frazzled and panicked. “We’ve been called out!” he panted. His black hair had a slightly bluish tint to it in the fluorescent lighting of Dan’s room.

Dan and I glanced at each other before jumping off of his bed, leaving our phones behind.

Through the Tower, through the locker rooms, into our suits, into the hangar, and onto the Quinjet. Steve was already in the pilot’s seat, getting ready to take off.

“What’s happening?” I asked the captain curiously, readjusting my suit where it was rubbing uncomfortably between my arm and my side. Dan helped me by yanking the sturdy, nearly-bulletproof fabric into place. Phil was doing something similar around his waist where his suit had twisted. His mask was hanging with loose straps off one ear. I glanced over at Dan to thank him for helping me. His ever-changing eyes seemed to intensely look right through me. “Thanks,” I mumbled quietly. He nodded.

“We got a distress call from a friend of ours in Edinburgh, asking for help. That was a half hour ago. It’s a long flight but we might make it in time. She said nothing has happened yet but she thinks something’s gonna happen. And over the years I've learned to trust her instinct for danger without question because she’s almost always right,” Steve explained.

“Natasha?” Dan wondered.

“Yeah,” Steve answered.

“Mind if we ask what she’s doing in Scotland?” Phil asked, British accent getting noticeably more Northern—the way it did when he was distressed. Dan’s accent got thicker too in situations like this.

“She’s making some new covers since she still hasn’t built up as many as she had before she blew the whistle on HYDRA and SHIELD a couple years ago,” Steve informed us. I nodded understandingly and glanced at Dan again before looking at the knees of my suit. The reinforced green fabric was designed to keep me from getting hurt but not hinder me and my powers. Dan’s black-and-red suit looked better than mine, but mine was more functional than his. Phil’s was almost useless by way of protection but that didn’t matter—he was clumsy but his skin was nearly indestructible.

Dan set his hand on my knee. I could feel how incredibly warm his skin was through the layers of my suit and I looked over at him. I supposed the heat was a side effect of his fire powers, but it was still exceptionally strange to me.

Instead of focusing on the heat, I concentrated on how long his fingers were—particularly in comparison to my stubby ones.

Dan leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Did I ever tell you that I don’t like this job?”

I gave him a disbelieving expression. “No,” I whispered back. “Why don’t you like being a hero?”

“Because I never asked for this life. I wanted to browse Twitter on my phone and go for ice cream with my friends and date a nice girl. Sure I would dream about grand things but I don’t like the responsibility on my shoulders to save lives. I've never been good enough for something like that—never been responsible enough. I don’t even think I'm mature enough to be a hero!” he ranted, keeping his voice down so Steve wouldn’t hear—though the super soldier probably could anyway.

I crossed my legs. “You can still date a nice girl,” I remarked flirtatiously.

Phil snorted with amusement where he was sitting on my other side and Dan cracked a smile.

“What, you?” he retorted. I shrugged.

“Not necessarily. But yeah. I'm nice.” I was teasing and he could tell.

Dan rolled his eyes. “Okay then. Tell you what. We survive this mission and neither of us end up in the infirmary for more than… a week, and I’ll take you out to dinner. We’ll see from there if there’s a second date. Or a third. How’s that?” He was humoring me but I could sense he was serious.

I smirked. “That… sounds like the best plan you’ve ever come up with,” I commented, winking.

“It actually is,” Captain America called from the cockpit.

All three of us in the cargo hold started laughing.

“Look,” Dan started defensively, “I'm known for my power—not my foresight. She’s the strategist!” He pointed at me. I gave the back of Steve’s head a “True that” glance. The captain was laughing at us. We all knew it. We were all younger than him—Phil by less than Dan and I—and he felt like an older brother to all of us.

“Fair point,” Captain America conceded. “But, honestly, Inflameo, the fact that you took this long to pick up on Silver Star flirting with you is astounding. Tony, Wanda, Clint, and I have been waiting for you to ask her out for months.” I watched Dan as Dan watched Steve. His pale face turned darker and darker pink as the Avengers leader kept talking. He shot me a look and I gave him one of my cheekiest smiles. He scrunched his eyebrows.

“Have you really be flirting with me for that long?”

I shrugged. “It’s part of who I am—meaning it’s a literal side-effect of my powers.”

“Alright. We both survive this mission, we’re going on a date,” Dan told me decisively.

I winked. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”