Summer Lights and City Nights

-viii. pink

—viii. pink

When Prez finally shows up on her doorstep the day of her cousin Marshall’s wedding, Marceline is shocked; at his punctuality, his pretty impressive outfit, his hair, and the single pink lily in his hand. But mostly his hair. Almost instantly she goes from shocked to angry.

“What did you—”

“Before you get really, really mad at me this wasn’t my fault okay,” he tries to explain. He looks nervous and fearful. Which is good, because he totally should be, because Marceline is going to murder him (slowly and painfully).

“Remember how I said I had three older brothers? And that they were pretty much assholes?” he asks and Marceline just narrows her eyes at him as she tells herself to breathe, “Well, we sort of have this pranking war going on and since I pranked them last time this is their way of getting me back and—you know, how was I supposed to know that this was what they’d planned? I was just trying to wash my hair I didn’t know they’d put hair dye in the shampoo bottle okay, please don’t kill me.”

He offers her a nervous smile and the lily. She takes neither, settling for glaring at him. He withers under her stare and it makes her kind of feel better.

“Your hair is pink,” Marceline says and tries to suppress her anger, except well his hair is pink and now everyone at the wedding is going to be staring at them and laughing at them.

“Well, technically it’s more of a salmon—”

“Please shut up.”

“‘Kay, shutting up.” He mimes zipping his lips together. Marceline sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose in mild frustration. She doesn’t even have the energy to be that angry anymore.

“Okay, come in, my parents are still getting ready but we should be out in a couple of minutes,” she tells him and leads him into the house, shutting the door behind her.

“So I know you’re still kind of mad at me,” Prez starts as he makes himself comfortable on the couch, “but it’s really not that bad! Maybe no one will notice!”

Marceline sits next to him and gives him a level stare. “Your hair is pink.”

“Salmon,” he corrects, “But see, I got you this flower because then we’d match!” He holds the lily out to her again. This time she takes it but not without rolling her eyes (and she wonders how he does that, how he can do something very stupid and then counteract it by doing something very sweet, it just isn’t fair). 

She still smiles though, and so Prez counts that as a win.