This is, once again, a product of interactions with my Trolls friends on Instagram. I saw a picture AU of the tunnel scene with Cloud Guy, shared it with the group, and we collectively geeked out over it. I made the mistake of saying I wanted to put it into writing, two in particular latched onto that, SO HERE WE GO.
I really tried to make the pacing decent.
"Okay, so…" Poppy trailed off, sounding entirely too cheerful for being on a mission to rescue Trolls, who by all right and reason, were long since dead. "Which one is it?" Branch gave her a long look, contemplating this boundless optimism and wondering where the hell it came from.
"I don't know…" he admitted, perhaps intentionally matching her speech and feeling no shame in his ignorance. It had been twenty years since The Great Escape, not even the sole survivalist was gonna recognize a tunnel he'd last seen when he was five. Poppy wasn't perturbed, ready to get on all fours and investigate each tunnel separately as though the correct answer would show itself.
A booming voice from absolutely nowhere stopped such drastic measures from being taken.
"CHOOSE WISELY" it said, and Branch felt his muscles tense up. "FOR ONE WILL LEAD TO BERGEN TOWN, AND THE OTHERS...TO CERTAIN DEATH!"
The male of the pair leapt to his feet, unconsciously placing himself between his royal traveling companion and a possible threat. "Who's there!" he demanded. "Who said that?!" The pink princess behind him peered around in fearless curiosity.
"Hello?" Had he been less on his guard, Branch surely would have slapped himself in the face.
"IT WAS…me." At the last word, the bodiless voice transitioned down from booming to almost nasally and was revealed to belong to a cleverly hidden...cloud. With a face not unlike their own, unfurling purple noodle arms, and matching legs that sported socks with no shoes. Who did that? Seeing no danger, or simply because she had no grasp of the concept "dangerous", Poppy came out from behind her living barrier.
"Hey" the cloud greeted, lazily waving a hand. "Just wanted to warn you guys that one of these tunnels leads to Bergen Town and the others to certain death...death...death." He moved his hand a length away with every increasingly quiet repeat of "death" in the fakest echo Branch was sure he'd ever hear.
"Do you think you could tell us which one?" Did this girl have no sense of caution? The gray male next to her turned his head with clear incredulity on his face.
"Really, Poppy?" She shrugged.
"Well it's not like we were having any luck." It made sense, but he sure wasn't going to admit it. The cloud only grinned, doing actual finger guns.
"You bet." Poppy beamed, but before she could get their much needed directions, Branch moved his arm like a barrier and gave what could almost pass off as an apologetic smile.
Almost.
"No thanks, we're good." Cloud Guy's grin morphed into a smirk. Appalled, Poppy grabbed her companion's arm and pulled him around, almost hissing into his pointed ear.
"What are you doing, he was about to tell us which way to go!" The older troll refused to back down.
"I don't trust him…" The princess gave him an unimpressed look.
"Is it the socks with no shoes?" How in the name of their Tree did she know that? No one, not a single troll, really knew the gray outcast at all. Much less his penchant for proper footwear.
"No" Branch quickly denied. Too quickly. He could see Poppy's disbelief flashing in her pretty pink eyes, accompanied by blatant amusement. Fortunately, she didn't call him out on it.
"Do you really want to risk taking the wrong tunnel?" She already knew the answer to that. The gray troll grumbled something unintelligible, turning to their unwelcome guest.
"Okay, so which way do we go?" There was something very mischievous about the cloud's expression, which looked to be of anything but good humor.
"Oh I'll tell you" he said pleasantly, "but first, I want a kiss."
Branch turned green almost instantly and even Poppy's happy smile faded at the thought.
"You want...a kiss?" she asked slowly. The man next to her looked like he was ready to release his breakfast back to the earth. Cloud Guy chuckled.
"Correction, I want to see it-" he made a circling motion with one skinny purple finger "-from you two." The princess blushed vibrantly at the request and her friend abandoned his upchucking attempts to sputter in a way that would have been humorous had they not both been so caught off guard.
"No!" he protested, and underneath her embarrassment and shock, Poppy felt a weird pain in her chest. Branch was that against even the thought of kissing her? Why did that hurt?
The other male shrugged.
"Then you get to play the guessing game and hope you don't lead your lady friend to certain death." Branch growled. Dammit, why was logic working against him today? The walking talking cloud was making more sense than he was. Great. Poppy leaned over to whisper in his ear again, pink nose touching the sensitive gray skin and unknowingly causing goosebumps to erupt all over. No matter his reservations, they had to get to Bergen Town somehow.
"Branch-" her breath tickled his ear "-it's just a kiss. The others lead to certain death. Get perspective!" He sighed because she was right, fixing the meddling cloud with a baleful look.
"Okay, fine. One kiss, and you'll tell us which way to go, right?" The damn smirk never left his fluffy white face.
"So easy…" His target swallowed a groan, knowing he couldn't even ask for a bit of privacy because the price of passage was that the cloud actually saw them do it. What a day this was turning out to be...forcing Poppy to kiss him of all trolls. He'd be lucky if she came near him again after this. Branch reluctantly turned to face the princess, finding her with a funny smile that looked almost...hurt.
"I know you don't want to kiss me" she said quietly, resting her hands on his chest. "It'll just be for a few seconds, promise." The older troll cocked an ear, frowning.
"Poppy, I never said that." She had completely the wrong idea after all. He slid his own hands up, ever so lightly cradling her sparkling cheeks. "I said no cause I figured you wouldn't want to kiss me." Who would? Poppy shook her head at him.
"Why wouldn't I?" she asked rhetorically, heart thumping progressively louder in her chest. A lovely dark grey began flooding Branch's face.
"...so you do?" The pink troll felt a nervous giggle escape.
"I guess so." She certainly wasn't repulsed by the thought of kissing the man she'd spent a lifetime trying to befriend. This seemed to be all the answer Branch needed, so with all the courage he could muster in the face of a longtime secret crush and a manipulative cloud who was getting way too much enjoyment out of this, the male leaned forward that last little bit and met Poppy's petal soft lips with his own. She reciprocated almost immediately, and a flood of warmth rushed through Branch like he'd submerged himself in a hot bath. Neither troll registered their eyes closing upon contact, and Poppy wasn't really in control of her own hands as they snaked up a homemade vest to rest on comfortingly broad shoulders. A distant part of her mind wondered where Branch had learned to kiss, the rest ways too busy enjoying the feel of it.
The need to breathe forced them apart, and the applause from the cloud who'd pushed them into this reminded them of their lack of privacy. The damnable being made a pair of finger guns again, that smirk back on his face.
"That's the stuff." Branch gave him a murderous glare, but Cloud Guy just waved it away.
"Don't give me that, lover boy. You should be thanking me! As promised, your way to the Troll Tree is right over there~" He pointed lazily to the biggest tunnel in the bunch, the sight of which jogged a faded memory from Branch's early years. Poppy, acting like she hadn't just been suckered into blatant PDA, beamed at him.
"Thank you!" He winked.
"Anytime, princess. Oh and hey, you two crazy kids-" his grin slipped right off that fluffy white face and the good natured aura surrounding him dissipated like early morning fog. "-You might want to hold on to the spark I just gave you, build a fire with it. Things are gonna get dark where you're going." Poppy tilted her head in confused concern, but Branch felt his skin prickle and every stunted hair on his head stand as straight as it would go.
Something was going to happen when they got to Bergen Town, and that cloud knew it. Just who was he, really?
"We'll be careful" he said instead, but his tone indicated he'd taken the bizarre warning seriously. Cloud Guy made a "tch" sound that would have accompanied the finger guns had he not been acting serious.
"That's it" he said. "We, not I. Catch you on the way back?" Then, quite suddenly, the cloud was gone, floating upwards and away like the airborne mass of water he was. Poppy stared after him.
"Weird." She looked at Branch. "Did you know what he was talking about?" The older troll tore his own eyes away from the sky to meet the curious pink ones watching him.
"I have an idea, yeah. C'mon, the sooner we reach Bergen Town, the sooner we can look for your friends." Poppy lit up. He wasn't saying they were alive, but this was also not an unshakable belief that the captured Trolls had already been made a meal. She was getting through to him!
"Our friends" the bubblegum troll tried to correct, grabbing a gray hand and lacing her fingers through it. Branch squeezed hers in return.
"Don't push it, Poppy."