Page 50 of Santa Has Tentacles

“Oh, my Colby.” Holding me out from his body like a naughty toddler, he frowned and looked disappointed in me. “Libraries are forsharinginformation.”

Yeah?

Oh.

Whole society of isolationist Doms.

Got it.

“You don’t like sharing that, huh? Okay, we’ll see what we can find at the bookstore.” Would used bookstores be worse or better?

“Food is shared for survival and technology is shared for the good of the species.” When I nodded, he looked relieved I understood the problem and cuddled me back against his torso. “Books are to possess and to be the original designer of information.”

Looked like I had a level three book hoarder on my hands…but at least it sounded like being the one to sell a book was fine.

“I can understand that.” We’d just need to make sure he had lots of shelves and maybe a way to rotate through his stock once he realized there were limits on how big of an apartment we could get.

We’d also talk about the benefits of owning ebooks at some point…we’d just make it a slow introduction to the topic.

Dead trees were definitely more fun, though.

But physically decorating his place seemed like a safer topic, so I went back to my original thoughts as he slowly worked his way around my living room and over to my smaller bookshelf. “I’ve got some extra Christmas lights and a few things like that we can bring over to your place. How does that sound?”

His ability to multitask was amazing because he seemed to be cataloging every book I owned even as he responded. “I was informed by an authority figure called a salesperson that I should be careful not to offend.”

“You guys never offend. What happened?” It had to have been something weird.

“I added assorted holiday items to my carrying device, but I was told that some were religious specific. He did not know if I could have them.” Saint shrugged like he wasn’t offended, just confused. “Research was conflicting.”

I was going to have more questions about what went wrong, but we’d come back to that later. “Well, I’m a human who celebrates Christmas and I say you can do it too.”

I’d get him stuff from any other religion he wanted to explore too, but Christmas was a good start.

“Thank you, my Colby.” Snuggling me closer, Saint made a happy hum and his body wiggled. “Decorating shared living spaces is a human bonding activity as well.”

He was so cute but so stubborn.

I was just as good at it, though.

“We’re going to have fun.” Giving him a quick peck, I settled back against him since it didn’t look like he was going to put me down anytime soon. “And if we need more, we can just go shopping. There are all kinds of decorations.”

“I have visited the store called Home Depot. They have decorative trees that span colors and styles.” He was back to hishumans are fun but strangevoice, but since he was right, I wasn’t offended. “Part of relationship bonding is the merging of styles. We shall research our options so that next year we know how we are Christmas merged.”

Sounded reasonable to me.

“I grew up doing the brightly colored red and green kind of trees, but I like this one too.” It was only about four feet and had come prewired with white lights, so that’d been the direction I’d gone with the rest of the space. “I’m flexible, though. We’ll pick something out we both like. You’re right. It’s a good way to bond.”

Most of the decorations I had now were silver and red, but I wasn’t passionate about the combination. “I have a cousin who does three different trees because so many people in her immediate family are kind of insane and all have very strong tastes.”

Her social media posts around the holidays were so stressful they nearly gave me ulcers.

“Many humans find variety appealing.” Walking us a few feet past my bookshelf to study the pictures I’d actually managed to finally get hung up on my walls, Saint shrugged. “I will endeavor to form an opinion on the subject so that we may compromise.”

For bonding.

“That sounds like a great plan.” One only a Dom would come up with. “We can go tomorrow if you want to.”

Once Monday hit, it’d be harder to find the time to wander around looking for tree ideas to compromise on, but we still had a lot of the weekend left.

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