"Pawpaw! Pa! You're back!" You exclaim, running straight for them with your arms outstretched the second they walk into the kitchen.
Tomura instantly lifts you in the air the second you throw yourself at him, being the only person that could lift you up easily now.
He only does it for a moment though before putting you back down and scruffing your hair, knowing that you'll want to spend time with Dabi, too.
Dabi crouches to give you a quick hug, patting your head as he stands and thanking Zero when he picks up the suitcase for him and begins to take it upstairs wordlessly.
"Have a nice night darlin' girl?" Dabi asks, booping your nose playfully.
"Mhm! Look! We almost match." You say, holding out one hand to show him your painted nails.
He seems happy about it, pinching your side playfully as he grins. You squeal and swat him away, ignoring the feeling of HakuchÅ's eyes on you from across the room.
"Did you have a nice time? You forgot to send me pictures like you promised." You remind him, following his footsteps towards the kitchen sink.
"I did, didn't I? Oops." He shrugs as he fills a cup with water. "Wasn't anythin' fancy though hon, you didn't miss out on anything."
"It wasn't fancy?" You ask. "But it was Tomuras birthday! You're meant to take him somewhere with lots of candles and roses!"
"You get that from TV too?" Dabi asks, raising an eyebrow and smirking at you playfully from behind the glass in his hand.
You frown at him, which doesn't make the smug smirk tugging at one of the staples at the corner of his mouth lower any more.
Meanwhile Tomura talks to HakuchÅ quietly where she has been sitting with Cloud, blocking your view of her.
"'Mura!" You call, trying to get him to side with you.
"Wait a second, Star." He replies, holding his hand up dismissively.
Dabi doesn't look impressed that you had been brushed off for Tomura to talk to HakuchÅ instead, but you don't really think too much about it, Tomura was usually busy after all.
"Did you at least take him for a nice dinner?" You ask, trying to put your years of watching romance on TV to good use.
"Star, that's not..." Dabi begins, and then rolls his eyes, flicking your forehead. "Main thing was gettin' away from you, you little twerp."
"Am not!" You reply, following after him as he walks out of the kitchen, sipping his water. "Jerk!"
"Can you hear a fly, man?" Dabi asks Spinner as he passes, which makes you get all embarrassed, so you go quiet again, holding onto Dabi's shirt.
"Got you a little present princess." Dabi informs you as you continue following him up the stairs.
"You did?" You ask, surprised.
"'Course." He replies, his metallic hand going to the back of your head.
"What is it?" You ask, looking up at him with wide, excited eyes.
"C'mon, I'll show ya." Dabi says, opening his bedroom door so that you can duck under his arm as you enter. "Look, Zero left it out for you."
You rush over to the little book on the bed, looking at it and opening the pages to see what's inside.
But there's only blank pages inside with one word at the top of each page, none of them making any sense when you string them together.
"S' a book where you can draw side to side with someone else." Dabi explains from behind you, pointing at the word at the top of the page. "So these pages are for you and another person to draw a bear."
He smiles down at you, his white teeth shiny compared to the dark scars on his chin. "Thought you could use it ta draw with the others."
"I wanna draw with you!" You insist immediately.
He rolls his eyes and smirks. "Who saw that comin'? Alright, pick a page then."
You're already on it, knowing exactly what you wanted to draw with your dad, and hoping that it's written down in the book.
It is, luckily, only a handful of pages after the 'bear' page, and you slam the book on the bed with your eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
Dabi reads the word and gives you a chuckle.
"Of course. Go get your pencils then."
And you rush off to your room, grabbing your little bag of art supplies and bringing it back to your dads room, jumping to join him on the bed.
He teases you for your enthusiasm, but you haven't done this for a while, and although you had fun with Himiko and HakuchÅ, you'd really missed Dabi.
You both focus on drawing a cat on each of your pages for a little while, only speaking here and there, and it usually being you that initiates the conversation, asking about where Dabi and Tomura had gone and asking about what they'd gotten up to.
After a while, the door opens and long white hair falls between the door and the doorway as Tomura peeks in, his expression softening slightly when he sees you both sitting on the bed drawing together.
"Having fun?" He asks, sounding as amused as he can.
"Mhm! Can we do one later?" You ask, looking over at him.
"Of course, little Star." He replies warmly, and then puts all his attention on Dabi, who's focusing hard on his drawing. "Touya."
"Mm? Yeah, babe?" Dabi replies absentmindedly.
"I'm taking her to the hospital."
Dabi snorts derisively. "Whatever."
"HakuchÅ?" You ask, worried. "Is she hurt? Did she cut herself?"
There's a brief silence as Tomura collects himself and Dabi slowly looks up at you, a small frown tugging his thin eyebrows together.
"Where'd that come from, Star?" He asks.
"Himiko said HakuchÅ cut herself." You explain, not really understanding why Dabi looks so mad. "Because she's sad."
Dabi looks at Tomura, his eyes cold and unforgiving in a way you'd not seen before.
"She's not hurt, Star." Tomura diffuses the situation calmly. "I'm taking her to see Hawks."
"Oh! Okay." You say, turning back to your drawing. "That will make her happy, I think."
Dabi mutters something under his breath, and you hear Tomura click his tongue in annoyance at whatever it was he said.
"See you both later." Tomura says.
"Bye pa, love you. Don't fight." You say as he wanders over to brush the back of his hand over your cheek.
Dabi doesn't wish him a goodbye, even when Tomura ducks his head close to his scarred ear and says something lowly to him, kissing the large scarred patch on his cheek before standing up again, looking at your drawings briefly before silently leaving the room.
You both continue to scratch your pencils against the page, and you whistle a song that you'd heard Himiko listening to before while Dabi works a little more slowly, like he's thinking about something.
"Star, baby?"
"I'm not a baby! I'm eleven!" You defend immediately, which gets one dry laugh out of him.
"Alright. Star, eleven year old?" He tries again, smiling despite himself.
"Yeah?" You reply, bouncing a little as you work.
"F' you ever get sad, don't go doing that, yeah?" Dabi says, his eyes burning into you. "You talk to me or the others."
"I will." You vow. "I don't like being hurt."
"That's not..." Dabi starts and then doesn't finish. "Y'know what? Alri'. Okay."
You both carry on drawing quietly, and you think about his request a little more.
"But you burn yourself." You point out.
"That's different."
"You burned your arm off." You continue, unable to stop yourself from scrunching your face up at the memory of how he'd lost his arm.
"Let's stop talkin' about it yeah? Just don't do it. You're too precious for all'a that." He says, shutting the conversation down bluntly.
You hum a little, finishing up your drawing, and leaning back to admire it, gesturing to the markings on the page.
"Tada! It's Cloud!"
*â¢*
When Tomura comes back he's in a good mood compared to when he'd left, although he doesn't bring HakuchÅ back. You're a little disheartened by that. You didn't even get a chance to say goodbye or forge a friendship with her like you wanted.
Even Zero seems a little lost without her to look after, but Dabi is really cheerful too, especially when he returns from a 'private' chat with your pa while he smoked outside.
Tomura speaks to everyone but you outside, even Kurogiri, and you wait patiently for him to be done with whatever work stuff they all need to do so that you can draw something with him. He hadn't drawn with you since he had the competition with Dabi back at the bar months ago, and you really wanted to do it again.
The impatience you're struggling to hide eventually gets to your loyal pet too, Cloud beginning to yowl loudly in protest for no reason at all.
"What is it, devil?" Tomura asks Cloud when he finishes talking to Spinner, scratching underneath Cloud's chin until he purrs.
"Can we draw now?" You blurt out, and he huffs.
"Go on then." He agrees, stopping giving Cloud pets to gesture at the door. "Lead the way, Starfire."
And so you do, eagerly, practically running up the stairs on all fours and throwing yourself onto the bed, picking up the book and flicking through to find a good theme for you and Tomura to draw together.
You remember him mentioning he preferred dogs, so you open the pages on that and wait for him to come and join you, Cloud hot on his heels.
"Dogs, hm?" He asks, tying his unruly hair back into a ponytail.
"Mhm! You said you like dogs." You explain, passing him a pencil.
"Well remembered." He praises loosely, staring at the page thoughtfully for a moment before shrugging a little to himself and beginning to sketch on the page beside you.
"Has HakuchÅ gone home?" You ask, leaning your face in your other hand.
"She's with Hawks, yes." Tomura replies, beginning to properly outline his drawing.
"She didn't say bye..." You muse sadly, but then remind yourself that she hadn't really spoken anyway. "Did she seem happy?"
"I left them to it." Tomura replies blandly. "Why don't you tell me what you all got up to last night?"
"We painted each other's nails, and talked about boys." You reply openly.
"That so?" Tomura smirks ever-so-slightly.
"Mhm! HakuchÅ talked about Shinsou a little bit, and Himiko talked about Izuku and Ochaco a lot."
"Who did you talk about, Star?" Tomura asks with a slightly teasing edge to his voice.
"No-one." You reply quickly.
Tomuras smirk grows even more, but he doesn't press it like Dabi would have.
And he seems to finish his drawing so much quicker than Dabi does, revealing a few small chibi drawings of a corgi running around and chasing a ball.
"Cute!" You admire. "His butt is fluffy."
"Yeah." Tomura agrees.
And you look at him, and his crimson eyes are worlds away, but not in a bad way like when his eyes glowed sometimes a little while ago, because he's smiling a little as he looks down at the page.
"Love you, pa." You remind him, and this attracts his attention back to you.
"Love you too, Star." He says, actually directly saying it this time.
You give him a half-hug, not wanting to push your luck too much with him. After all, he wasn't as cuddly as Dabi, and that was okay.
He kisses your head quickly before you pull away, your hair tugging on his cracked lips a little.
"I have a question for you, Star." He says, sounding like there's something funny about it.
"What?" You ask suspiciously.
"Do you like the name Shimura at all?"