Chapter Text
Branch was pretty used to the sound of banging on his fake boulder door. He also knew exactly what was behind the door. It was predictable and he liked predictable. Predictable was safe.
It was also very frustrating.
“We are not doing this again, Poppy. I am not going to any one of your parties, I don’t care if it’s someone’s birthday. I am not hugging or singing or dancing with anyone and I will not be opening this door.”
It wouldn’t work. It never worked. The violently pink bane of his existence would still be standing there holding some kind of cutesy cut-out card. She would be beaming and bouncing on her toes and swinging her tail in that impossibly cheery way that she always did when she was about to ask something unreasonable — and everything she asked was unreasonable. It would take him way too much time to get her to go away and it didn’t even matter because she would still end up right outside his door again the next day. Poppy was sticky like that. He had to wonder if she didn’t have something better do.
“Branch!”
Branch laid his forehead flat against the wall and tried not to scream. He was really not in the mood for this. He didn’t have time for this. It was later than usual for her to be bothering him. Dusk would be creeping in right about now and it was hard enough going out into the woods without a literal dinner bell standing on his front door.
Poppy was noisy. It was a fact of life. She was noisy, annoying, completely thoughtless and really needed to figure out when to call it quits. Worst of all though, she was in his territory. She was standing in the middle of his personally carved out safe zone and was very much making it unsafe. It was his territory, marked up and his and hard-won and safe. She didn’t belong there. She was too loud, too distracting and she needed to get out.
He grit his teeth forcefully, scowled at the front door and willed her to fucking leave.
“Poppy,” he grouched. “I am not in this mood for this.”
As usual, Poppy really didn’t get the message.
“Okay, so I— I get that you think that I’m really annoying and you hate me and whatever but I’m— I think I really some need help.” For a second, her voice seemed to wobble. It was high-pitched and whiny, almost childish. Distinctly non-musical. For a second, his ears picked up with concern before he managed to shake himself back out of it.
“No, you really don’t.”
“B— Branch, I’m being so totally serious right now when I say that I need help! Like, now!”
He grit out a very frustrated growl. “Whatever it is, just get one of your friends to do it. You have more than enough of them. Now, will you please stop with the banging? You are going draw every critter around straight to us!”
“So let me in then!”
Branch wanted to ram his head against the cold earthen wall of the bunker elevator. She could phrase it whichever way she wanted but it was still going to be something stupid. Like pod-painting or decorating or, like the last time, cutting Cooper out of one of his snapper traps. He was not going to be putting up streamers or icing cakes or anything else that involved copious amounts of cheer. He’d been tricked and guilt-tripped into it too many times to let her try again.
“I swear, swear, swear that this is actually important this time,” she seemed to say, just about sounding on the verge of hysterical.
“Oh, for the love of—” He snarled and swung open the trap-door. “What?! What could you possibly want?”
He stopped mid-swing when he finally got a good look at the princess standing on his doorstep.
The first thing he noted was just how dishevelled she looked. That wasn’t necessarily out of character. A particularly noisy dance number in the morning would muss up her hair and set her headband askew — not that he’d ever noticed. Sometimes she’d turn up at his door with twigs caught in her scrunchie or craft glue sticking to her fingers. Somehow, this felt very different.
Her dress was rumpled and her knees were covered in grass stains like she’d been crawling through the dirt for miles. Her legs were shaking like they were a stones-throw away from giving out. There were clouds of faint gold dust sticking to her hair. She was panting like she’d just run a mile and looked more panicked than he’d ever seen her. Branch had seen Poppy wearing all sorts of expressions but desperate was a new one.
Unease sank up slowly into his stomach as her distant, pupil-blown eyes latched on his. There was hardly a trace of pink left in them.
“I— I didn’t know where else to go. I— I need help,” she heaved and cold fear flashed down his spine.
“Bergens?” His mind was already racing as he backed up towards the bunker. “Is the village being attacked? Did they take anyone? Do they know you’re here?”
“No, not bergens. I—“
“Did a tarantacupuff get in? I knew I should have set those traps closer to the boundary!”
“Branch!”
Something broke in her expression as she hissed at him, tail flicking in out-of-character agitation. He stopped to stare at her.
“No bergens, no tarantacupuffs. I just— ” Her voice snapped off somewhere between her teeth and that alone had him straightening and looking at her with growing alarm. Poppy was never quiet. Not like that. Not all restrained and careful like she was trying to hold the sounds inside of her. Poppy didn’t hold anything in. Ever. “It just won’t stop. It won’t, ah—”
And then Poppy’s breath hitched and an honest-to-muses whine dragged out of her throat.
Branch gaped. It was single sound but it was so disarming that his entire body of fur stood on end and started to tingle. It wasn’t the kind of sound that he would have ever imagined coming out of her mouth. He could see her blunt little fangs catching on her lower lip as she tried to stifle another one. It didn’t sound like she was in pain. It sounded like… Well, it sounded like—
His throat suddenly felt very dry. He swallowed thickly around nothing.
She started to stagger forward, blunted claws buried in the blue-green felt of her dress, and he felt himself wheeling backwards and out of reach. Something in her eyes scared him.
“I—” Poppy shuddered and blinked at him. “Okay, so please don’t be mad but something happened and I really don’t know what’s happening right now but—”
He could tell even from several feet away that she was feverish. There was an unnaturally thick flush on her cheeks, bright pink scattered like a rash all the way across her cheeks and up her ears. Sweat shimmered like ground-up stardust across her face and shoulders. Her chest was heaving manically like there wasn’t enough air in the world for her to suck in and there was this odd look on her face. It wasn’t the kind of look he would have ever imagined her wearing. Her pupils were so wide that he could barely see the pretty pink irises that surrounded them and there was something manic and obsessive in the way that she was staring at him.
With her tail lashing like a whip behind her and her normally-blunt fangs extended and open, she suddenly she looked very much like a fellow feral instead of a normal town-born and tamed variety. For a second, she looked almost more critter than troll. It was jarring, a complete insurrection of the natural order, and it made him more than a little uneasy.
“Branch,” she managed to say through heavy breaths and his name came out of her mouth so breathless and airy that his heart nearly dropped out of his ribcage.
This must be what a heart-attack feels like, he decided faintly as he stared at her open-mouthed.
“What happened?” he asked, almost numb as another whiny little breath had her doubling over. The princess didn’t answer. “Poppy, what happened?”
Something in his voice must have caught her attention. Another breathless whimper dragged from her throat, one that sent inexplicable, guilty heat clawing up his spine. “Ah! Nothing! I was— picking flowers. Special ones. For Biggie’s birthday party. Got sprayed or somethin’ by this— big flower thingy.”
“Yeah, of course you were,” he muttered.
On any other day, Branch might have snorted meanly and rolled his eyes at the thought of her getting attacked by some flower— because, of course. Picking flowers. It was incredibly her. It confirmed everything he’d ever believed in. Parties were not worth trekking out into the wilderness and getting attacked by some plant that you tried to pick.
This was not any other day.
Her paw reached up and grabbed at nothing. It had him backing up rapidly, something foreign and unwelcome fluttering madly under his skin.
She kept staring at his mouth. Why was she staring at his mouth?
“Don’t come any closer! Stay right where you are.”
Poppy whimpered — genuinely whimpered — and he swore that he could even see tears in her eyes. Her tail was so rigid it hurt to look at. Her eyes were practically mirrors, glazed and with pupils so wide that they were full of his own reflection as some kind of raw, rasping moan pulled out of her. His tail had never been as stiff in shock as it was now. She was pawing at the edges of her dress now, claws tangling in the material and tugging clumsily as if she wanted to rip it off into shreds.
“I don’t know what’s happening. It’s— It’s so hot. Why is it so hot?”
He could see her thighs rubbing together. Branch swore for a second that he could see something wet glittering between them and his tongue caught in his mouth.
“Poppy, I think— I think you’ve been poisoned.”
That caught her attention. Some of the clouds cleared from her eyes and she blinked at him.
“Oh. That kinda makes sense.”
Branch’s tail waved cautiously as he dared himself to draw a little closer. Up close, it was so much more obvious. Her ears were so violently pink with heat that they were practically neon. Her fur looked matted and she was still looking at him, delirious and strangely eager like she wanted to—
With all the grace of a tent collapsing, her legs finally gave out.
Branch yelped and lurched forward just in time to grab her before she hit the floor. Her entire body shook against his at the contact and suddenly she was clutching at his patchwork vest like a leafy lifeline.
She was so soft and warm against him even as her paws started clawing clumsily at him. It was like she was trying to catch her claws in his clothes.
“It feels so weird and I’m— I’m literally so hot right now,” she panted around a strained, distracted sort of moan and this time, he really did freeze. The strength seemed to fly straight out of her and suddenly she was sagging limply into his arms.
He didn’t really have much a choice now.
Going against every feral instinct he had, he steeled his grip and started to drag them both to the mouth of his bunker. It felt wrong. No-one had ever been in his bunker. He didn’t want anyone in his bunker. Ever. But he couldn’t leave her like this. He couldn’t leave her out in the open where anything or anyone could grab her. It wasn’t safe. It was noisy. She was noisy and it was going to get her eaten.
Still, it wasn’t easy to move a troll that seemed so determined to climb into his fur. He could feel his whole body heating up, head hurting with disbelief.
What the hell was happening? What was this? Was he mid-nightmare?
“You smell really nice,” Poppy murmured breathily as she turned her large, panicked eyes on him..
It was all the warning he got.
Later, he couldn’t have even described how it happened, but it went something like: Poppy threw her arms around his shoulders, swivelled herself clumsily in his arms, surged up to meet him and suddenly her lips were pressing on his. The sound of her whine stifled against his mouth. Her lips were soft and pliant and when his mouth parted in surprise, she was already there and touching her tongue to his.
He was utterly paralysed in his shock. She was kissing him. Oh muses, she was kissing him.
She swallowed his gasp with a hum. She was so wet and warm, his frozen brain told him immediately. She tasted of sweat and sugar and desperation and his heart was thrumming through his skin and his tail was inching longingly towards hers. Everything seemed to go white and with some instinct he barely knew he had, he started to lean forward, his mouth starting to melt against hers as—
Branch felt a cold, cold shock to his system and shoved her off of him. He was woozy and fighting for breath. His whole body was trembling with something that he felt frightened to name as he gawked at her, completely dumbfounded.
She’d kissed him. She had kissed him.
“What the hair was that?!” he wheezed incredulously but all she did was gape back at him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just couldn’t stop thinking about it!” she choked.
Poppy looked dazed but stunned at the same time, like she had even surprised herself. It was impossible not to notice her eyes fixing onto his lips again as if they had been pulled there. His tongue flecked out to clear her taste away on instinct and she mirrored him, teeth pulling briefly at the skin. Her mouth was warm with his kiss. Past his stunned horror, he could feel his lips were tingling. Suddenly, he knew with a sure, dreaded certainty that he was never going to get the feeling of her out of his mouth.
I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe that just happened. Muses, what the hair is is this?
Branch didn’t want to touch her again. He wasn’t sure what she would do — what he would do if he did. But then Poppy’s legs gave out again and he tightened his grip around her on instinct. For a second, he searched for his next step but the sound she made was so pained and confused and so not-her that the decision was automatically made for him.
With a sense of resignation and horror, he turned towards his bunker door.
Shit.