Chapter Text
Branch whistled the last few notes of ‘Better Place’ while he raked up the last few leaves that had been scattered on the front yard of his bunker. They joined a huge, yellow-red-and-orange pile that he had worked on for the past fifteen minutes or so on. Well, he and Poppy. But his girlfriend had gone oddly quiet in the past couple of minutes, and he couldn’t seem to spot her when he looked around.
“Poppy?” he called, leaning the rake against a nearby tree. “The leaves are all done. So, I guess we can go - “
“CANONBAAAALLLL!!!”
“Whoa!” Branch ducked as, in an unexpected flash of pink from above him, his girlfriend leapt down from whatever perch she was hiding on and into the pile of leaves with an enormous crrrrruuuuunch!
In a big POOF!, all of the leaves were flying around in the air and all over the front yard, looking exactly the way it had when they had started.
Poppy was a giggling mess on the ground, while Branch was appalled.
“Poppy!” he squeaked. “That took us almost all morning!”
“You call fifteen minutes ‘almost all morning’?” That made her laugh some more.
“Okay, you’re right. I might be exaggerating,” he said, but still frowned.
“C’mon, don’t be so pouty!” Poppy cooed as she got up. “I’ll help you clean it up!”
He gave her a suspicious look. “Are you going to jump in them again?”
She returned his look with a sly smile. “That I can’t say.”
“Oh, yeah?” He narrowed his eyes in an attempt to look intimidating.
“Well how about this: maybe we can do something else after we rake up the leaves.” She gave him her classic seductive smile, and he was hooked, smiling goofily back at her.
“Yep. Absolutely. I’m in.”
It was record time that he made sure they were done with the leaves. And when they were, as she’d promised, they sure did get on with doing that ‘something else.’