Almond Blossom-Hope, Lover's Charm

I think one of my favorite parts about writing this story is looking through my PDF of flower meanings to find what the chapter will be represented by 😄. Because of it, I have a thing about flowers now so if anyone gets me flowers(literally only my dad, either to console me or congratulate me for things)they have to pay attention to the meaning. My mother has learned that in flower language, yellow often has a negative meaning, but not always. I wouldn't let her get yellow tulips for our yard lol. Alright, enough of me blabbing, enjoy the story!

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Rin and Izumo had double teamed Ryuji into training with them on some mornings. It was a nice dynamic. Rin used to hate fighting, but now, he had fun beating up and getting beat up by his boyfriend and his girlfriend.

Rin and Izumo could team up to take Bon down because they had the upper had with smaller, faster bodies and more flexibility. Ryuji and Rin could take Izumo down by pissing her off and then pinning her. Ryuji and Izumo had yet to beat Rin because he was a weasel and could find a way out of their strategies.

They knew that whenever they were able to pin him, he let them. But that was the fun of it: the teasing and flirting.

So, fighting with his two lovers got Rin hot and bothered, sue him. He was still young. Only nineteen this coming December. He'd turned eighteen on the Wisconsin. Sometimes he forgot that he wasn't already an adult and still had plenty of life left to live and have fun with.

Being a Leader, a boyfriend to two people, and a Dad was difficult to juggle, but it seemed that Shiemi had meant it when she said the group should be giving Rin his own downtime. She must have talked to them at some point and explained. He was grateful for that. It took some weight off his shoulders. His group had literally a bunch of adults and a forty-something year old. The only helpless ones should be the kids, the others needed to think for themselves more.

Bon and Izumo helped him with leadering and making decisions more often. They helped him with the kids more and they did their best to take over and let Rin spend more time with his daughter. It was nice that they were stepping up.

Living on the farm was something Rin slowly settled into. He chopped firewood, trained with his weapons and hand-to-hand, learned how to milk the feisty cow that usually angrily mooed at anyone that came near her udders, hunted for meat in the woods, played dolls or pretend with the kids, and spent downtime with everyone over meals. Chelsea and Marshal seemed incredibly happy to share their home with the group. They'd been alone too long. Rin wondered why the women had trusted his group so easily. Maybe Marshal had the same way of telling who she could trust that Rin did. Rin had always had a good intuition about people and their loyalties. Marshal seemed to understand him on a different level then his group did. He wondered if it was because their personalities had a lot of similarities.

Now, as he milked the angry cow, Rin could hear Marshal's clear voice singing some Fall Out Boy song. Chelsea's voice joined hers and they harmonized. Rin smiled. Sachi loved music. He used to sing to her on the Wisconsin. Rin's clear tenor voice and Sachi's pitchy, slightly off-key voice echoed in the halls of the ship when they'd been sailing. Rin had a wide arsenal of Disney songs to sing and teach his daughter, thankfully.

The monastery took donations and that was where a majority of Rin and Yukio's belongings came from. Someone donated a bunch of old Disney VHS tapes in English and Rin had watched the hell out of them. He could quote several parts of Lady and the Tramp, the Aristocats, and The Little Mermaid.

He'd also seen The Princess Bride several times because Shiro had loved it. Yukio had always thought the movie was stupid, but Rin's most cherished memories involved watching The Princess Bride with Shiro and saying the words with the characters when they said a famous line.

"You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." And then they'd both laugh and keep watching while Yukio rolled his eyes and went back to reading his book.

Marshall had by now run out of Fall Out Boy songs to belt to the whole farm and switched to Lady and the Tramp. Rin snickered. It appeared she too had grown up with Disney.

He's a tramp, but I love him

Breaks a new heart every day

Rin smiled and automatically began to hum along with her as he milked the cow.

He's a tramp, they adore him

And I only hope he'll stay that way

Rin sung the words quietly to himself and in the doorway to the stable behind him, Ryuji stood silently with Sachi in his arms. They listened to Rin's quiet but clear voice blending with the girls.

He's a tramp, he's a scoundrel

He's a rounder, he's a cad

Of course Kinzou, who was known for his American pop culture references, had to join in. He wasn't a bad singer, at least not tone-deaf. He blended well with the three already singing. What shocked them all was Izumo's voice filtering from a second floor bedroom window where she leaned out. It blended and balanced with everyone else's, but it also stood out. It was a pretty soprano sound. She could've played Snow White in a play, Rin mused to himself.

He's a tramp, but I love him

Yes, even I have got it pretty bad

"I'm trusting you with this next part, Rin!" Marshall called to him. She knew he liked Disney, curse it all. Rin sighed, but sang the next part as clearly as he could.

You can never tell when he'll show up

He gives you plenty of trouble

I guess he's just a no 'count pup

But I wish that he were double

Izumo sang the next few lines with him, contrasting their voices just right.

He's a tramp, he's a rover

And there's nothing more to say

If he's a tramp, he's a good one

Everyone else joined in for the last three lines.

And I wish that I could travel his way

Wish that I could travel his way

Wish that I could travel his way~

"Good job, y'all! That sounded lovely!" Marshall cheered while Chelsea shook her head in amusement. "Choir nerd!" She snorted, prompting a playful punch on the shoulder from her sister.

Rin laughed quietly as he stood to take the milk pales to the house, delivering a kiss to his boyfriends lips and his daughter's forehead on the way out after a playful glare for spying on him.

§~•~§~•~§

"I wish life could be more like Minecraft." Marshal sighed, picking apart her portion of cooked squirrel. "Yeah. You could just feed the animals hay and they'd make a baby. As long as you had two babies of each animal, you could kill the adults for meat and other stuff like leather and wool." Chelsea agreed.

"That sounds ridiculously easy. Was it fun playing that game?" Rin wondered curiously. "I didn't like playing it by myself. I liked playing with other people. I'd make a world with someone and we'd either live together or go our separate ways and then visit to trade things. We'd go mining in the giant crevices that had lava, water, and a bunch of ore in them, but we'd have to find some way to get out if we didn't have enough resources for ladder. We'd plant crops in patches beside the house and fence in animals to raise, breed, and eat. We could add stuff to our house. It was fun creating things. It was like creating a life that we liked better for ourselves." Marshal explained, smiling. It was a wistful smile, but it was a happy one.

"It was never my favorite game, but I had fun playing Minecraft with Marshal and her friends. And Call of Duty Zombies. My personal favorite was the Sonic Games though." Chelsea sighed.

"Mph, yes! And I miss books! There's no authors to write anymore, so I'm stuck reading old stuff. Even Artemis Fowl and Heroes of Olympus gets old eventually. I do still have the rest of the Vampire Academy series to read though...." Marshal mused. "Please tell me you have books that aren't textbooks." Ryuji pleaded. "We have plenty. Marshal was a huge nerd before all this. She read all day long. Books and music was her thing. I liked reading, but not as much. I practiced on my flute while she read or did homework back then." Chelsea grinned.

"Thank God! We're teaching the girls to read, but all we have is a couple textbooks. Sachi is pretty smart for a toddler, but I'd like her to have something she might enjoy more to read." Rin groused. "Oh good, I thought you were gonna ask to actually read them." Yukio sighed in relief. Rin shot him a half-hearted glare across the table and the younger twin just shrugged with a knowing smirk.

"That was mean, Yuki!" Shiemi chimed in. "Nah, that's just sibling love. You're not siblings if you don't give each other crap about things that don't matter." Marshal amended.

"It's the truth, actually. I dropped out of school after middle school. Didn't even start highschool. I was working at a family restaurant when this all went down. I was never very good at academics. Other kids didn't like me for some unknown reason and always wanted to jump me. So I started getting into fights around five and never stopped until this all came along. I loved people, people did not love me. Except the staff and patrons from the restaurant I worked at." Rin shrugged.

Ryuji frowned. "You've never really talked about what your life was like before all this." He noticed interestedly. "That's because there's not much to tell. We grew up in a poor Monastery in Southern Cross, Tokyo. It was in the slums of the city, next to the red-light district. It was all poor, homeless, gangs, and orphans. The only rich people that hung around were the spoiled rich brats trying to be gangsters." Rin began.

"Of course, that was a little hard when they all fell at my hands. Usually my fists, really. But it wasn't like I wanted to fight them. They came to me because they needed to prove their dominance and no matter how many times they came back, they just left with more bruises. I was undefeatable. Dad and Yukio always gave me shit for it, like I was instigating, but they never listened to me in the first place since I was little, so....." Rin's eyes slid over to Yukio smugly. If everyone wanted his backstory, they'd get Yukio's too since they'd grown up together. His twin scowled at him, not liking his jab backfiring on him, but knowing there was nothing he could do about it now.

"Yukio was Mr. Perfect, all A's, top of the class, in shape, good-looking, nice golden boy. I was the Screw-Up. Always fighting, bad at academics, ADHD, sarcastic, Authority Issues. He turned it around on me as we grew up-I spent my whole life being compared to him and being either ignored or bullied. So, I dropped outta school and got a job. I was saving up to move out so I could be a person that wasn't just there to be compared to someone better." He continued.

"And I never would've come back." He was looking directly into Yukio's eyes and Yukio wasn't a pussy, so he'd keep looking back until Rin looked away. "I would've made a life for myself that I didn't hate living. Everybody commented on how laid-back and nice I seemed. It's not that I wasn't those things, I just didn't like that people forced me to be the opposite of those whenever they tried to jump me on the streets for literally no valid reason."

He looked away from Yukio and met his boyfriend's eyes. "Then all this hit. I'm not a scumbag, so I grabbed my little brother and found somewhere safe. Dad was already turned and munching on the clergymen, otherwise I woulda brought them too. Yukio went down under a horde early on, I was pulled away, our remaining group got overwhelmed and split up, and then I was on my own. It sucked for a long time. I got used to being alone. It was nice for a while-no one was around to hurt me but the dead and it was quiet all around." He admitted.

"I learned how to handle this wicked sword and I could fend for myself without worrying about anyone else. I could be as stupid and reckless as I wanted and get away with it because no one was holding me back. After a while, though, it got lonely. I'd hold whole conversations with myself over the stupidest things, it was nutty." He chuckled at the memories. "The world was so empty. So easy. All I had to do was look for food, water, and make sure I didn't get eaten by walking corpses. In the silence, you could always hear them coming. I was safe."

Ryuji reached out and intertwined their fingers on the table and Rin smiled. "I grew up being nothing and now I have more than I ever thought I would. So, I don't really mind living in the Apocalypse." Ryuji grinned, pressing a kiss to his lover's knuckles. Izumo watched them with a smile, loving to see her boyfriends being cute and romantic. Sachi giggled cheerfully from Shiemi's lap across the table.

"Ugh, we get it, you're disgustingly in love and have a huge family. Stop rubbing it in." Shima groaned dramatically. Konekomeru smacked him on the shoulder lightly and he laughed. Marshal was also grinning.

"I had two friends and one of them wasn't even really my friend, he was the girl's boyfriend that I couldn't stand because he was a huge idiot with no common sense. Only reason I tolerated him was because she loved him." Marshal snorted. "Dad always told me that maybe if I was nicer and not so terrible, I could finally get a boyfriend. I told him girls didn't seem to mind my personality."

Kinzou almost spit his drink and Yukio patted him on the back while he coughed and laughed at the same time. "Yeah, we got along a lot better after he took his time to accept that. I think he found it easier to have a more boyish daughter along with the girly one. I was friends with all the guys and dated a couple of em. Dated a trans guy and the same girl twice. I stole a girl from the trans ex. Then she became a trans guy." Marshal explained her dating history. "I think I just didn't do well with dating guys because I was raised to always kick a kidnapper in the balls and stay away from creepy looking men anywhere I went. No one ever said punch the kidnapper in the tits or scream that the lady that grabbed me wasn't my mother. It was always men. Probably formed some kinda complex that kept me from being comfortable with dating guys." She shrugged it off, like it didn't bother her at all. Rin admired that. Marshal had a level of chill he could only ever dream of achieving. She knew how to truly just go with the flow.

"I wasn't scared of guys at all and it pissed my sister off a lot because I dated douchebags. She literally told me to send the guys to KFC because all they wanted was my body and I'm a Lady, not a value menu." Chelsea recalled. Marshal had that satisfied grin on her face that said she regretted nothing. Chelsea shook her head and continued eating while Marshal snickered.

"Heh, Ryuji asked me when he was getting a younger sister from the time he could talk to six years old. He always said he'd protect her and keep boys away." Torako began. "God, please no, Mom." Bon hid his face in his hands, already knowing where this story was going. Rin leaned forward, now very interested in the story. Izumo looked invested as well at Bon's reaction.

"I said 'Well, what if she likes girls?' and he thought really hard about his answer. He was a small child, it was very entertaining to see him so concentrated on something for more than two minutes. His answer was to just beat up anyone that wanted to be with his sister." Torako was chuckling now and Bon's ears were red as strawberries.

"I told him that most people saw hitting a girl as unfair and he told me that Equality had yet to be achieved and we couldn't expect God to do all the work." She kept going. Rin burst into loud laughter. "Why's that part so funny?" Izumo wondered. "They were Buddhist, Izumo." He cackled and she let out a snort of laughter. The whole table was laughing at this point.

"I've punched a girl and defended it with equality before." Rin admitted once he could breathe again. "Rin!" Yukio looked at him incredulously. "Samantha was a bitch, okay! I don't know what she thought she was doing, but in Japan, we don't take the shit she was giving us." Rin told him defensively.

"So, when she tried to establish her dominance over this poor guy who's probably been bullied his entire life by girls, I stepped in. She slapped me across the face, called me a lowlife, and threatened to sue me with Daddy's money. And then I swung a right hook and broke her jaw so she'd shut up. Everyone around us thought I was some kinda demon for both hitting a girl and breaking a person's jaw in one punch, but that kid left me a thank you note on my desk and gave me chocolates on Valentine's Day. Worth it. Oh, and Samantha transferred to a different school without even getting me in trouble because the principal agreed that it was both self-defense and equality."

"That's the equality I want-being able to punch whoever's being an ass regardless of gender. If you're being shitty, you deserve it." Marshal agreed. "Yes!" Rin high-fived her abd Yukio only sighed.

They enjoyed the rest of dinner, then sat in the living room and just talked about the differences between growing up in Japan vs growing up in America. When it was time for bed, Rin and Ryuji tucked the girls in. Rin tucked the blankets around the little bodies and kissed them both on the head. Sachi smiled and reached out. Rin handed her the stuffed bunny Marshal gave her. She'd said it belonged to a man that had been like a big brother to her once and he'd loved it so much that it was nearly ratty. Marshal gave it to Sachi with a fond smile.

"He never named the old thing-just called it Bunny. I'm trusting you to keep it close, okay? I know you'll love Bunny just as much as he did." And Sachi did. She hugged it close every night and carried it around all day unless she went to play and knew she'd get dirty. There was a faraway look in Marshal's eyes when she saw the toddler carrying it around with her everywhere and Rin knew she was remembering the man Bunny had once belonged to. He didn't ask, and she seemed to appreciate it.

Rin was happy Sachi had something to love like Bunny. Tsukumo seemed to not care for it, but Sachi wanted things to hold onto. Every kid should have something like a toy or stuffed animal that was precious to them, even in the Apocalypse.

He blew out the candle illuminating the room and went to get in bed with Ryuji and Izumo. Rin always slept on his side, face tucked into Ryuji's chest, legs tangled with Ryuji's. Izumo actually slept behind Ryuji, spooning him, which was endlessly entertaining to Rin. Rin was glad they could get along with each other well enough, though he knew that they didn't love each other like they loved Rin. If Rin ever left them, they most likely wouldn't last together. Rin hoped that would never happen as he cuddled further into Ryuji's warm and secure embrace.

He fell asleep easily, lulled by the sounds of soft breathing and the occasional creak of the old farmhouse.