See, the thing is, Branch is kind of an asshole.

All right, fine, so there's no kind of about it – he is an asshole, plain and simple, but he's the sort of asshole who blows up at people over little stuff that doesn't really matter, the sort of asshole that throws out insults over the rim of his coffee cup, the sort of asshole that basically hates the human race as a whole. But he's not the sort of the asshole who takes stuff that isn't his to take, he's not the sort of asshole who steals someone else's flowers just 'cause he doesn't have enough money to get a proper, legal bouquet from that fancy-ass florist's shop three blocks from his apartment, or at least he wasn't until very, very recently, when he moved back to his childhood home of Troll Town in the first place.

It's just that he doesn't like going to visit his grandma empty-handed, and those flowers in the shop cost way more than they're worth, and—and—okay, fine, so there's no excuse for what he's doing. What he has been doing the last two weeks.

And yes, he does feel bad – really bad – for whoever planted these cheery, pale pink and powder blue hard-won hydrangeas in the first place, but not bad enough to stop.

So he gathers them up by their stems in one fist, dusting off the other on the thighs of his torn jeans – leaving behind a dark streak of damp soil, but these things are so far gone that at this point, a stain can only serve to improve them – and taking a minute to run a finger over the smooth, velvety petals. His grandma had always loved hydrangeas. When he closes his eyes and takes in a breath, the sweet earthy scent lets him pretend, for a minute, that he's back in her yard, blossoms lining the narrow walk, while she waits on the front step with her red shawl around her shoulders and a warm smile on her face.

"Ha!"

Shit. Branch opens his eyes, a million excuses and exclamations ready on his tongue – dear Lord, please don't let them press charges, please don't let them press charges, please don't let them press charges, I don't want to be a flower thief – but then he sees the explosion of pink standing before him, and everything else flees his mind.

Loose locks of bright, bubblegum hair trail down slight, bare shoulders, the gallant escapees of the high ponytail done up on the back of her head; plump, rosy lips lift in a grimly satisfied smile, and what looks like a homemade headband covered in fuzzy felt flowers sits like a crown atop her head, but her fuchsia sneakers covered in copious amounts of what appear to be glitter, is hands-down the absolute worst part.

Despite the precarious position he himself is in, Branch can't help but stare. What is she, a cartoon princess? Who the hell dresses like this? She can't be too much younger than him, maybe a year or two at most, but she's dolled up like a five-year-old on Halloween.

She raises her chin proudly and jabs a finger in his face. "I caught you! I caught you so hard! Now, what do you have to say for yourself?"

"I..." Branch glances guiltily down at the flowers in his hand, and steels himself. Forget her weird taste in clothes. He deserves whatever's coming next, and that's all that matters. "I'm sorry."

"Do you have any idea," the girl takes a step toward him, jamming her hands on her hips, brows descending into a scowl – it's actually kind of cute, the way her nose is wrinkling up right now but Branch refuses to think any further on it, "how long it took me to get those things to bloom? Let me just say, I didn't inherit my mother's green thumb, buddy! And then you just come sauntering in, and yank them up by the roots like some kinda heathen! And then you just, oh, you just kick the dirt back down into the holes like nobody will notice! Do ya mind a little constructive criticism, because my man, you stink as a thief. Don't ever, ever try and pull off a big heist."

"Uh…" Branch swallows, takes a small, stumbling step backward. "I—I'm sorry. You're right, this was—this was a shitty thing to do, and I swear, I won't do it again, I just…" Please don't call the police over a fistful of hydrangeas, please don't call the police over a fistful of hydrangeas, dear God, please, don't call the police over a fistful of hydrangeas.

Her pathetic attempt at a scowl dissolves into a small frown, and she cocks her head to one side, flyaway strands of shocking pink tumbling into her eyes. "Is she pretty?"

Branch blinks. "What?"

"Don't be coy, lover boy," she waves a dismissive hand, and he catches a glimpse of glittery pink fingernails before she drops her arm again. "You gotta be stealin' all these flowers for something."

Oh.

Oh.

"I—You've—you've got it all wrong," Branch tries to protest, cheeks suddenly flooding with heat, but this—this glitzy eyesore just speaks right over him.

"—what are you waiting for? Come on, let's go. Lead the way, my man." She raises her eyebrows and stares expectantly at him.

Branch stares right back. "The way to what?"

"What do you mean, 'to what'? Were you not listening to anything I just said?" Her hands find their way to her hips again. "To the lucky lady, pal! Gotta make sure she's worth those flowers! I worked real hard on them, ya know!"

"…I—look, I dunno where you even got this idea, but—

"Buddy! No need to be so shy about it, ya know!" She biffs him lightly on the shoulder. "I'll tell you what, you take me to meet this mysterious mademoiselle," here, she adopts the absolute worst French accent he's ever heard in his entire life, and he winces, "and I let you off the hook about the flowers. Sound fair?"

"Wait," there's no way he was hearing this right – there's just no way he's about to get off this easy, things just don't work this way, "you won't—you won't—I dunno, report me, or anything like that?"

"Nope!" She gives her head a cheerful, vigorous shake. "Totally forgotten! Every bit of it!"

Fuck it – so long as this encounter doesn't end with him having to put perennial thief on his résumé for the rest of his life, he's going to count it as a success. So – despite the constant, unrelenting inner loop of what am I doing what am I doing what am I doing – he says, "Okay, fine."

Then, hydrangeas still in hand, he takes off in the direction of the cemetery with a beaming girl dressed in varying shades of eye-watering pink skipping joyfully alongside him, and he doesn't know why he's doing this – what is he thinking, dragging some girl he barely knows to the damn cemetery? Should he try and explain himself? Will she even believe him if he does? She still seems pretty convinced he's got himself some sort of secret lover, despite his protests, but maybe if he just tells her there really is no girl—but what is he supposed to say after that? How the hell can he explain he's been stealing flowers for somebody who isn't here anymore to even see them? How the hell is he supposed to say that?

"Hey, by the way, there's no girl. I'm taking you to the graveyard."

Yeah, no.

Maybe he can just hand over the flowers and walk away – and spend the next few days hoping and praying she doesn't tell the police about the crazy guy she knows who steals hydrangeas.

But there's no way he's about to go telling a complete stranger the pathetic story of his messed-up life—

"I'm Poppy, by the way!" Her bright voice breaks suddenly through his thoughts. "Don't think I introduced myself already, I was kind of distracted by the…um…" She falters noticeably, pushing a flyaway strand of shocking pink hair back behind her ear.

Branch raises an eyebrow. "The guy stealing your flowers, you mean? Imagine that."

Poppy laughs a little. "Well, I never imagined there'd be anyone stealing my flowers, in the first place, so…"

Oh.

So she's one of those completely-oblivious-to-sarcasm people. Perfect. Thank God the graveyard's barely fifteen minutes from her place.

It takes Poppy two-point-five seconds to move onto something else – she's like a grade-school child on a sugar high. "Soooo," she drags out the word, "what do they call you, my man?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Buddy, you raided my garden," she points out. "I think that calls for a first-name basis, am I right?"

Ouch. Score one for the pink girl.

"Okay, fine," he drags in a breath. "Branch."

"Sorry, what?"

"Branch." But she still looks confused, so he clarifies. "My name. It's Branch."

"Like…" Poppy does that thing again where she wrinkles up her nose, and okay, yeah, fine, it's more than a little bit adorable. "Like a tree branch?"

"No, more like a…" Completely oblivious to sarcasm, he reminds himself at the sight of her wide-eyed stare. "Yeah, Poppy. Like a tree branch. And I know it's weird, so don't—

"No! No, I like it!" She exclaims, and the enthusiasm in her voice is—all right, it's endearing, and when she smiles at him, he has to admit it's a very nice smile. Radiant, really, enough so to make the sun itself jealous, and the sight of it has his heart doing a funny little leap in his chest, and before he can stop himself, he smiles back.

And then the rusted metal gate comes into view, all overgrown with ivy on the sides, and weeds on the bottom, the grey stones sprawled beyond in various states of collapse, and shit, okay, he forgot he was supposed to be thinking up ways to warn Poppy that there really wasn't a girl and they were kind of heading to see the only piece of his family he's ever known, but he's just going to act like this is normal and keep going, and he's already nudged the gate open with the toe of his sneaker and stepped through when he realizes she isn't with him anymore.

Poppy's still on the other side of the gate when he glances back, with one hand over her mouth and complete dismay in her eyes, staring over his shoulder at the crumbling stones and yeah, he really, really should have said something before they got here—he really should have just put a stop to this entire thing before it even got itself started, should have just given her back her stupid hydrangeas and walked off before he could talk himself into going along with her stupid plan.

"I—uh—sorry." It isn't a word that usually finds itself a place on his tongue, and it comes out awkward and stilted and wrong. He winces, but forces himself to keep going. "I shouldn't have brought you here, I—

"I—I'm so sorry, Branch," Poppy interrupts, voice barely above a whisper, and shaking slightly. "I had no idea. I just assumed…"

"I know." Branch's voice comes out too quiet, but he can't make it any louder, and he should probably say something else, only he doesn't know what else there is to say, and he doesn't know why she's looking at him like this, why she feels so bad for him when she only just met him ten minutes ago, and does she get this emotionally invested in every stranger she stumbles across, and before he can stop himself, he's blurted out the first thing that comes to mind. "Do you still want to meet her?" The words tumble from his mouth almost before he can stop them.

A small and slightly hesitant, but nonetheless bright, smile spreads slowly across her face and, before he can rescind the offer, or even figure out if he really wants to, she's swung open the gate, and joined him on the other side. "I'd love to."

"I—it's back this way." He forces himself through the jumbled tangle of granite stones and over to the small, shaded corner where they laid her to rest almost eight years ago, and something in his chest gives a familiar little twist at the sight. Time hasn't healed the pain, time hasn't made it better, hasn't even begun to soften the jagged edges of the hole her absence left inside him, and he knows better than to think it ever will.

Branch lowers himself to his knees in the grass before her grave, fussing a bit more than he usually would with the hydrangeas to avoid looking up at Poppy.

"She, uh…" He swallows, and though his throat still sears painfully, thick with tears he hasn't shed in years, he doesn't break off, he doesn't stop talking; time hasn't healed him, just taught him how to live around the pain. "She was my grandma." He can't really explain, even to himself, why he says it – maybe he just wants to say it. Maybe he just wants to get the words out of him. Maybe he just wants somebody else to know what he's lost. "She took care of me after my parents…" He doesn't bother to finish the sentence – it hurts, more than he cares to admit, that he doesn't have anything to say about them except they're not here. They were gone before he was even a year old – everything he knows about them, he knows from the stories his grandma told him.

Poppy puts a hand on his shoulder.

The touch is unexpected, unbelievably so, and Branch doesn't know what to make of it. He tenses up instinctively, seconds away from pulling back and brushing her off like an irksome, stinging insect, because beyond the accidental and inevitable brush here and there on a crowded sidewalk, he hasn't been touched in something like six months, but the weight of her fingers, warm against his skin through the thin fabric of his worn jacket, is—it's kind of nice, in a what-the-hell-is-she-doing sort of way, so he stays still.

"I'm sorry," Poppy kneels down next to him, easing herself slowly onto the ground with her free hand, her bright eyes earnest and her hair spilling loosely over one shoulder. "She sounds wonderful."

"Yeah." A small, and slightly sad, but genuine, smile tugs at Branch's lips. "She was. Treated me like I was her own kid. I couldn't have asked for better."

"Yeah?" Her fingers tighten momentarily around his shoulder, a quick, sympathetic squeeze.

Branch drops his gaze to the flowers spread out on the grass in an untidy heap of tangled stems and half-crushed petals; their rich fragrance brings him back to her garden again. "Grandma loved hydrangeas. Just had whole rows of 'em lining her front walk, it was like—it was like…" He glances at Poppy, and his words grind to a halt. Why is he telling her all of this? "Sorry. You—uh, you can leave, you know."

Poppy holds his gaze for a second that feels much longer, head tilted to the side, her side-swept bangs threatening at any moment to tumble into her eyes. "My mom liked 'em, too, you know."

"Wh-what?"

"Hydrangeas," Poppy elaborates – and if this is going where Branch thinks it is, her voice is surprisingly steady. "She was really good with plants – it was kind of unbelievable. That's why I picked up gardening in the first place. Made me feel close to her again." She draws in a breath, and hitches the smile back on her face – this time, it's tinged with sorrow.

"I—I'm sorry." Branch stumbles a bit over the words – he always does when he really means them. He wishes he had something better to say. He knows how stale, how empty, the word sorry can begin to sound after endless weeks of little more than hollow sympathies and unwanted pity.

"Dad and I got three more years with her than the doctors said we would." Poppy turns her eyes to the ground, running a finger lightly over the hydrangeas' delicate petals. "When I think about it that way, I was pretty lucky, actually. I'm happy I got the time I got with her, even if it doesn't always feel like enough. You know?" She turns questioning eyes on him.

Branch offers her a small, humorless smile. "Yeah. I know."

For a minute, there's nothing to hear but the wind gusting suddenly through, leaving the withered grass crackling and rustling in its wake; and then, next thing he knows, Poppy has closed what little distance is left between them, and thrown her arms around his neck, pulling him into what's probably the tightest hug he's ever received.

Branch is too stunned to move or speak or even think; he sits silent and motionless in her arms for what's probably an eternity before he finally manages to rasp out something resembling a sentence. "Whoa—whoa, what—what are you doing?"

Poppy laughs, bittersweet and breathless, in his ear. "Giving you a hug."

"W-why?"

She presses her cheek into his, and drops her voice to a whisper. "I just thought you could use one." She shifts slightly, and her chin digs painfully into his shoulder, but he doesn't protest or pull away, and something inside him desperately hopes she doesn't, either, and it occurs to him that maybe he misses what's beyond the accidental and inevitable brush here and there on a crowded sidewalk.

"I—uh, I'm sorry about the flowers," Branch says at last. "I'll replace them, I swear, I'll—

"Forget it." Poppy pulls back to look at him, and smiles. "Forget it, Branch. I can grow more. In fact, I'll grow extra." Her smile widens all of a sudden, an excited glow entering her eyes. "I'll grow extra, just for your grandma. What do you think?"

"W-what?" Branch sputters a little. "I—I mean, I—you don't have to—I stole your flowers."

"Well," she says simply, "now you won't have to."

"But I—but you—but—

"It's not up for discussion," Poppy tells him. "So shut up and accept it."

"Thanks," he manages, a bit weakly – it's another word that doesn't leave his lips often, and sounds weird when it does. "I just—thank you."

"So, what are the odds you picked up any of your grandma's mad gardening skills? 'Cause, like I said earlier, I didn't inherit my mother's green thumb, and if you want to get those flowers alive, you're gonna have to teach me your ways, buddy."

Branch laughs – actually laughs, for the first time in what must be years, and the sound startles him a little, in how easy and effortless and bright it is. It's not a sound he ever imagined would belong to him, but he doesn't care, he just doesn't care.

"Yeah," he says, "I think I can do that."

A/N: meh, I was bored, and I was scrolling past the prompt on Tumblr for the fifteen-hundredth time when I decided to try my hand at it.