Corresponding Levels of Contentment
Human beings are creatures of habit. Comfortable with the roles they play in their social lives, even their private personas assume proportions that fit well with their domestic life, notably with that of their mates. The latest incarnation of the odd couple - the boy and the professor - were on the couch, with heads propped at each end, each with book of choice in hand.
The boy occupied a full two-thirds of the sofa (as Ivo pointed out several times during the course of the hour), his long elegant limbs stretched in calculated laziness so that one rested of the back of the sofa and the other ran the length of it, bare toes nestled into the professor's underarm which they tickled periodically to remind him of the boy's deep and everlasting love for him. He was dressed in appropriate collegiate attire – worn baggy jeans and nothing else. Not even, Ivo suspected, under garments (he didn't ask). He was reading Agatha Christie's And then there were none.
Ivo had actually occupied the space first, having ensconced himself on his couch shortly after returning from his seminar. He was still fully dressed from university – trousers and jumper – sans jacket and shoes (his mother had reared him never to put one's shoes on the furniture). He was happily reading N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawnwhen Tim arrived and promptly appropriated the bulk of his reading platform.
"There is another couch," he pointed to the one adjacent, not bothering to remove his nose from his book.
"That one doesn't interest me," the boy's biggish toe gave him an affectionate nudge.
"I could move," Ivo said doubtfully, being so comfortably situated and all, and having been for the better part of the hour.
"Yes, but then I couldn't tickle you with my bare feet," Tim pointed out.
"We have a bed for that activity."
"It isn't bedtime and we are reading."
"One of us is reading," the professor concurred only with half of the statement. "I am not certain your novel constitutes reading material."
Tim snorted.
"You are distracting me." Purposefully stern, professorial.
"Am I more interesting than your book?" Feigned astonishment.
"You are certainly more demanding than my book!" Ivo sounded pained.
"Then clearly you are reading the wrong book," the boy quipped, peeking at him from behind his mystery.
Ivo gave him a baleful look and went back to his text, blissfully content.