The alarm buzzed with a depressing cheer of a Tuesday morning after a three-day weekend. The discordant rise and fall of a simulated clock came out of his phone's speaker at just the right frequencies to give him an almost immediate headache.
With a groan, he reached over to grab it but missed. The narrow side table rattled before he could snatch it off the top and flip it over to snooze. The phone caught the end of the table and he heard the thud of it hitting the floor.
Muttering, he opened his eyes enough to reach down and grab it. His small bed, only a cheap twin mattress, squeaked in protest until he rolled back over and turned the phone on instead of going back to sleep.
In a half-sleep, he wandering through social networks while his eyes struggled to focus. He didn't post anywhere, there was nothing to say, but he read through a couple threads of indignation, requests for money, and the general dumpster fire spread out across five different networks.
He was about to toss the phone aside to enjoy the last five minutes of his snooze alarm when his dick woke up. Stiff with the morning, it was also sensitive and a little jerk would make the day a lot more pleasant. With a grin, he reached down with one hand to wrap his fingers around his cock while using his other to start up the LovingFans. He had a couple subscriptions and the daily drip of puffy nipples, shaved pussies, and up-close dildos was the right way to start the day.
John worked himself up as quickly as he could, getting to the point where the pleasure caused his pre-cum to reduce the friction and he could pump faster.
The alarm went off.
Still stroking, he tried to thumb it off.
A notification for a meeting in an hour popped up.
He almost considered snoozing that also but it was an important meeting with his doctorate advisor, Professor Hannah Simmons.
His shaft throbbed when he thought about her. Even with her brusque manner, she was a pleasure to watch: voluptuous and curvy with breasts that threatened to burst out of her bra every time she bent over. More than once, he had walked into her office and was blessed with a view of her amazing ass as she opened up a cabinet. If he was in a porn movie, it would have been the perfect change to shove his dick into something besides his hand.
Sadly, John didn't live in a porn movie.
With a groan, he switched from the video on the screen and into the music. Hitting play on a little John Coltrane, he threw back his covers and forced himself out of bed.
His apartment was a tiny place in downtown Hanover, a one-bedroom flat dangerously close to the student bars and places to hang out. It gave him plenty of views of beautiful women out his window, but it also ate up most of his salary.
While he brushed his teeth, he wandered between the stacks of boxes. He had only been in the States for a few months, but even the meager possessions he had brought with him from London felt overwhelming for the cramped quarters. He tapped on the box with his gaming systems and wondered if he would be in the moody to play but then quickly dismissed it when he saw his first copy of Vermont in the Making jammed between two boxes.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered again, “that's where the bastard went to.”
The book was cracked and sported countless post-it notes. They were of different colors, but since he lost the book three months ago, he had forgotten his system or the notes he wrote in the margins of the book. There were no digital versions of the book—why would anyone digitize an obscure history book about Vermont—and the replacement copy cost him plenty, but he needed the book to finish.
A new plan arrived. He would go down to the corner coffee place, get a decent cup of tea, and then go over the notes to see how much of his thinking had changed since he lost it. He grabbed one of his cloth masks without thinking—policy at the school still demanded it.
He made it through the front door before he remembered his phone and his appointment with the professor.
“Okay, new plan, tea, meeting, and then a long lunch.”