As a member of the deer community, Task was a fan of Christmas. If you had any of the following; antlers, hooves, or a raindrop tail, it was your civic duty to advocate for and enjoy the green, red, white, and Coca-Cola-dominated holiday season. And Task took his civic duties very, very seriously. Plus, there was nothing better than waking up on a snowy morning and gathering around the Christmas tree with your loved ones to open presents and sip on the fancy Belgian hot chocolate you’ve been saving for a special occasion. Or eggnog, if day drinking was more your style. Day drinking isn’t a sign of alcoholism if it’s done during the holidays, or on days ending in ‘y’ if you’re Irish.

Task was lying on the bed with his girlfriend Alex one snowy spring afternoon, they had been cuddling and napping together for what seemed like the first time in months. The tigress had a hectic work schedule that had her entangled in long hours of overtime, which then ate into the time that she usually allotted for other things like side jobs and passion projects. The deer worked odd hours, too, but that was mostly because he was a night owl. He found it a lot easier to focus at night when things quieted down, and the only noise that leaked in from the outside were crickets or the occasional police cruiser speeding after someone trying to drive off from a DUI charge. The latter didn’t happen a lot, but it happened often enough that if Task had a dollar for every time that it did, he’d be able to buy a burger meal from his favorite burger joint, Shake Shack. If only there was one that wasn’t a four-hour drive away.

The deer enjoyed hugging his girlfriend from behind and burying his nose in her hair. The smell of the tigress’s hair, shampooed or not, always comforted him. It made all the angry thoughts induced by playing difficult video games and unreasonable clients and commissioners melt away in an instant. He took in long and deep breaths through his nose to take in the smell of her strawberry shampoo mixed in with the sweat that had accumulated from them spending the past few hours napping with their bodies pressed together like utensils in a kitchen drawer. After a nap that teetered the line between a nap and a full-on sleep at five hours, the deer and his tiger girlfriend lay awake in silence as he kissed the nape of her neck and brushed his black rubbery nose against her orange fur.

Alex was purring and chuffing loudly as her responsibilities and deadlines melted away for a moment and she lay there enjoying her boyfriend’s affection. Her happy cat noises were loud enough to drown out the unruly neighbors arguing over a misplaced block of Velveeta cheese. Every couple of seconds, the predator-prey couple would overhear some dramatic speech about how a block of cheese was not physically able to grow legs and run away on its own or something in a similar vein, which had the both of them giggling like the Joker and Harley Quinn after capturing the elusive Batman.

“I don’t know, Task. I for one am glad we don’t use Velveeta; I don’t know what I would do if my cheese got up and ran away.” Alex said with a giggle into the pillow that her head was half sunken into.

Task, who was a fan of Velveeta, chuckled but came to its defense. “Hey, we do use Velveeta. My mac’n cheese that you can’t get enough of? Boom. Velveeta.” The deer let out a hearty chuckle that vibrated his chest and stomach. He tightened his arms that he had wrapped around his girlfriend’s waist and pressed his nose firmer against the back of her neck. He took in another deep breath through his nose and let out a content sigh as the scent of tiger filled his lungs. “I find it surprising that you, a tiger, would prefer not to chase your food.” He continued.

Alex continued to purr as her boyfriend nuzzled her. She let out her own meaty chuckle that had her butt wiggling ever so slightly against her boyfriend’s groin. Not enough to get his dick hard, but enough for it to become noticeable and for the deer to become cautious about where his dick would poke and prod if it did get hard. He quickly glanced down at the area in question before he resumed nuzzling and sniffing happily.

“I can’t believe you’ve not been using the finest of European cheese for your famous mac’n cheese. I feel defrauded.” Alex said in a mock tone of distraught and put a hand against her chest. She was only able to keep it up for a handful of seconds before she chuckled again and turned her head over her shoulder to brush her nose and cheek against the deer’s sniffer.

“My apologies, Miss Marx, I forget you’re a spoiled diva who has toured the planet… Excuse my Americanized pronunciation, I believe it’s actually pronounced Vel-leh-vee-tah.” Task put on his best Italian accent and even took one arm from his embrace around Alex to add a little oregano and parsley to his words using hand gestures.

Alex burst out into a cackle and snorted in between her fits of laughter. Her boyfriend’s Italian accent wasn’t off, in fact, it was spot-on, but the juxtaposition from hearing him speak with a perfect midwestern American cadence to the Italian man who runs the dirtiest, cheapest, yet best-tasting pizza joint in town was too much for her to handle. The scruffy mustache that he had over his upper lip didn’t help, either. For about ten seconds, as the tigress laughed her ass further against the deer’s loose sports shorts, she wondered if he was really secretly an Italian sleeper agent who had just been activated. Once her cackling and snorting calmed down, she let out a sigh and turned her head over her shoulder again. This time, she pecked her boyfriend on the nose before she turned around to face him completely and looked him directly in his olive-green eyes.

“You’re such an idiot. A funny, handsome, Italian idiot,” Alex purred.

“Whhaaaaattta... You-a-no like ma accente?” Task continued to talk in his surprisingly good Italian accent and he planned to do so for a while since it got the tigress to laugh and smile so much. But his Italian Job came to a grinding halt when Alex looped her arms over his shoulders and pulled his face toward hers for a kiss.

‘Smch.’

Their lips locked, tongues touched, and Task’s scruffy facial fuzz combed through Alex’s fur like a fine bristle brush. He always worried that his fuzzy lip would tickle her or make her uncomfortable, but the tigress never complained. Even when he trimmed it a little bit and clumsily made his fur a tiny bit pricklier, the tiger was eager to kiss him and suck on his face. Task wasn’t going to complain – he liked kissing her, too.

Task closed his eyes as the simple kiss with his girl turned into a slightly heated make-out session. His hands which were on her stomach when they were spooning were now resting comfortably at the base of her long stripey tail, just above the little loop and button in her dolphin shorts for said tail. He slowly slid his feelers down south and stopped once the fingers on both of his hands morphed to the curvature of the tigress’s cheeks. He gave her ass a firm squeeze as his tongue explored her mouth. His dick slowly hardened in his boxers as he enjoyed every inch of his girlfriend’s body that he could. When the kiss broke a minute later, he stared into Alex’s big green eyes like they were stars in the sky and smiled soft and wide as his long ears lowered to stick out from his head like oars on a rowboat.

Alex licked her lips to lap up the leftover mix of their saliva after the kiss broke and stared into her boyfriend’s eyes, too. When she saw his ears lower like a drawbridge after a ship passed through, her smile widened so much that all of her super sharp and dangerous teeth showed. The two lovebirds stared at each other for what seemed like just a tiny amount of time, but in reality, it was close to two minutes of silence before the deer said something that seemed a smidge unrelated.

“What’s your favorite holiday?” Task asked his girlfriend. The smile on his face grew a little wider to the point that he was almost literally smiling ear-to-ear.

Alex, confused by the surprise quiz on a completely unrelated subject matter, raised her eyebrows at him and tilted her head slightly to one side. “Huh? What? We’re making out and that’s what you’re thinking about?” The tigress let out a soft chuckle before she went silent and pondered over the different holidays in a year.

After half a minute of thought, the tigress spoke. “I know yours is Christmas, which is very fitting for a deer… But… I don’t think I really have a favorite holiday, they’re days off where I can rest, and I love them all equally.”

Task listened to his girlfriend as she explained to him that she did not discriminate when it came to holidays. Immediately, he shook his head and let out a sound that the tigress usually only heard from her parents when she did something wrong as a child.

“Tsk. Nope, out of here with that cop-out answer, Alex. You have to have ONE holiday that you cherish above the rest, one that you decorate for, plan dinner parties around, or change your Discord profile picture for.”

“I change my Discord profile picture for Halloween,” Alex replied with a cute smile. Her answer would have fooled someone who didn’t know her too well. But Task, her boyfriend, knew her a lot better than most. He shook his head and chuckled.

“But you hate Halloween because it makes people forget that it is your birthday,” he replied, leaning his head forward a little to plant a smooch on her forehead right after.

“People do forget! Everyone is so worried about what to wear and how to be scary that nobody worries about Alex’s birthday party that they all forgot to attend.” Alex whined. There was a strong aura of hurt behind her words. Even though it happened years ago, when the tigress was young enough that her birthday party was THE thing that she looked forward to that year, she still wasn’t really over it.

Task wanted to chuckle, but he also didn’t. Alex’s frustration over her friendless birthday party was valid, but the way that she worded it was humorous. He leaned in and smooched her right between her thick eyebrows again and tightened the grip his hands had on her ass. “Well, you know what, I wouldn’t have forgotten your birthday party, if we were childhood friends. And I never will now, either. My little demon-spawn, you.” He joked.

“WOW. So, I am a DEMON SPAWN now.” Alex rolled her eyes at her boyfriend and playfully dug her claws into his back. Task let out a bleat when he felt the tigress’s razor-sharp claws press gently into his back and began to panic internally, thinking that he upset her, but when he saw the smug smile on her face, he turned the panic dial in his brain back down. He removed his right hand from her rear and scratched the back of his head with it.

“I think anyone who doesn’t say Christmas is their favorite holiday is hellspawn,” the deer cackled mischievously. “I mean, c’mon, how can you say no to presents, snow, eggnog, and peppermint hot chocolate? Plus, all the fun stuff that you can do with mistletoes.” Task stopped scratching the back of his head, put his hand back on Alex’s ass, and waggled his eyebrows at her teasingly.

“Alright, fine, fine, Christmas is my favorite holiday. You know how much I love snow, and that’s the only holiday with snow, so it wins.” Alex chuckled and put her head on her boyfriend’s bare chest. She continued to purr as she rubbed the side of her face into him like a needy cat that hadn’t seen its best friend in forever. As she rubbed her cheek all over the deer’s chest and pecs, a crucial question popped into her head that she needed to ask him right away.

“Do people really kiss under mistletoes? Or is that like, something that was popularized by a movie.” Alex’s brows furrowed and she stopped rubbing her cheek into her boyfriend’s chest as the question she had just asked echoed inside her own head.

Task enjoyed Alex’s feline methods of showing affection; he cherished every lick, rub, and knead that she gave him like it was worth more than gold. He found them strange when they first started dating, but eventually, he got used to them and became a connoisseur of the cat ways of showing love. No matter how he was feeling on any given day, something as simple as a little cat noise from the tiger dropping something and startling herself in the kitchen was enough to make him beam a smile brighter than a lighthouse guiding ships through dark and unruly seas. He lay there, his hands stuck to her rear like super glue and closed his eyes as the feeling of her cheek brushing against his chest soothed him.

When she asked her question, he chuckled, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Nah, it’s actually a tradition that comes from an old ritual a long time ago. From Celtic Druids in what is now Ireland and Scotland. The Ritual of Oak and Mistletoe, it was called. The mistletoe represented fertility.” After he answered, he let out a happy sigh as his history buff side came out and fulfilled its quota of loreytelling for the day. But after just a few short seconds, he opened his eyes, furrowed his brow, and pursed his lips. The deer then took in a deep breath and continued; “But also, it comes from Norse culture, where the mistletoe is considered a sign of love and peace. The goddess Figg, lost her son Baldur to an arrow made of mistletoe. After his death, she made a vow that the people are to be kissed when they passed under a mistletoe, so long as it was never used as a weapon again.”

Task had a big smile on his face by the time he was done, but when he looked at Alex, he was almost certain that she wasn’t able to pick up on any of what he had just said. He let out an embarrassed chuckle. “Aaaaaaah, I’m rambling about history and all this nerdy stuff again, aren’t I? Sorry. But to answer your question, no, it is not from a movie, it is very real, and my family took it very seriously when I was growing up.”

When the deer began apologizing for geeking out about the history of one of many Christmas traditions, Alex quickly shook her head. “Noooo, I love it when you explain stuff. It makes me smarter, and then I can use the knowledge I learn from you to take over the world.” The tigress grinned and giggled. “I like having a hot and nerdy boyfriend. It’s like I have the best of both worlds. It’s like you’re on the captain of the football team and the debate team at the same time.” The tiger bit her lip once she ended her sentence and pulled herself about an inch closer to the deer so that her body was practically squished against his. Task felt his girlfriend’s tits press against his chest and her thigh graze over his boxers. He tried his best to not get aroused, but he couldn’t help what his dick did; most of the time that thing had a mind of its own. It didn’t help that he could see straight down Alex’s loose tank top and see that she wasn’t wearing a bra either.