Susie leaned on the wall of the library, fidgeting with her beat-up phone case and nervously scratching her hair. Though she had continued growing it out, the neat bun she had spent an hour making that morning was still a new experience for her, and it took more than one tutorial, acted out by a stammering deer, to master this hair style. She was always a bit touchy when it came to her hair, but she couldn't tell why that was, just another thing that made Susie, well, Susie. At least it felt nice if Noelle was the one touching it. She tried to ignore the noise of the crowd on her left, and instead turned the cracked display on, only to find no new notifications on the lockscreen.
Before her brain could conceptualize the problem, she heard two pairs of hooves steadily approaching her from across the street. Susie's heart began to flutter long before she saw the deer, instinctively flitering out her footsteps amongst the noise. Her phone quickly went into the pocket of her torn jeans as she ran to the her beloved, only noticing that Carol was accompanying her when she was halfway across. Both Susie and Noelle froze, waiting for any kind of reaction from the living heatsink next to them.
Carol quietly rolled her eyes and continued walking forward, dismissing the purple-scaled lizard with a flick of her wrist. "Don't stand in the road, Susie," she remarked, already accepting her defeat as the waved to several parents in the distance. "If you want to kiss my daughter, do it on the sidewalk."
While Noelle couldn't decide whether to strangle Carol or look for the nearest knife, already lifting her hands up in a claw-like motion, Susie took no time to pull her into the air, which quickly became the deer's top priority. The lizard girl nestled her snout between her antlers, giving her head a long kiss as Noelle squirmed from the depth of the Susie-shaped pillow, her high-pitched kicking and screaming resembling a rapidly deflating balloon.
Susie looked down, mocking Noelle with her voice: "Pffff— I thought you liked it when I picked you up!" She held onto the deer for a second longer, feeling her weak heartbeat next to her own, before gently putting her back on the pavement.
"I DO!! Just w-wuh—" Noelle flailed her hands as she was placed back onto the ground, pulling one foot back to not fall over, "J-Just warn me before you do it!" She pretended to punch Susie in the side, doing her best impression of an angry deer, while the purple menace just laughed, trying to keep the tail she kept hidden in her pants from swaying too hard.
"You look, uhm," Susie stammered, looking down at Noelle as a blush formed on both their faces, "...stunning. Why didn't you wear this yesterday? Would've made Kris jealous for sure, heh."
Noelle looked down, simultaneously checking her hair for any dinosaur bites, "It's a little tight— I wanted to have fun, not... show off. Besides," she continued, now checking her antlers for any more party residue, "I think Kris would've stained it like they did my antlers, fahaha!"
"Oh, that wasn't Kris," Susie stated as a matter of fact, trying to hide her guilt by looking to the side, "it was, uh, Berdly's idea. Kind of. Community effort."
Noelle blinked. Again. And again. Seems she found this explanation a little lacking. Susie awkwardly scratched her hair, periodically glancing at the tinge of blue in the crowd in front of the school. For some reason, explaining a prank always felt worse than actually doing it. "Well he— He made a joke about making your antlers and candy canes, and it, uhhh... snowballed from there. He got some white tape, Kris had the lipstick— It just sorta... happened. Though the tape wouldn't stick well so in the end it kinda sucked. Bad."
Anticipating the smell of roast chicken, Susie quickly blocked the view of the crowd from Noelle, who felt her mother's temperament slowly rising to the surface. "I'm surprised you don't remember. You kept asking me if I wanted to lick your antlers when—"
Noelle's face instantly turned red, and her voice cracked with shame. "That did NOT happen," she huffed, trying to hide her face by pretending to look around for something, "a-and if it did— I-I was drunk, okay???" Much like her mother in her youth, Noelle couldn't handle much intoxication before spiraling into party mode. Though, remembering how her father used to talk about their parties, she thought his genes must've skipped a generation. The thought of drug-resistant deer-lizard hybrids filled Noelle with... something. "God, did I— We— uhm. Do... a-anything else?"
Susie shrugged, still thinking about antler-shaped candy canes. "Not really. It was pretty late then, Kris spent like an HOUR in the bathroom and Berdly volunteered to help clean up the mess we made." She pouted, feeling a wave of embarrassment coming on, "Besides, you were clearly not feeling well, so I didn't want to— y'know. Heh."
Noelle tried her best to not scream, "OH MY GOD??? WHAT DID I DO???"
Maybe pushing this topic really wasn't Susie's best idea. "Nothing- NOTHING! God, you..." Susie leaned closer, getting quiet, despite nobody being within earshot of the two. "You cried for like- 20 minutes, and kept asking me if I was okay... Then Kris finally came back and we helped you get home. I didn't hear any police sirens in the morning so... I don't think your mom noticed us."
"R-Really?" The deer breathed out with her whole body, momentarily slumping to the ground, before her mind remembered about the pull of gravity. "Oh sweet cinnamon rolls, that's a relief. I swear I heard my mom shouting at them outside my door..."
