“That was fast.” Claire, sitting with folded legs on her bed, looked up from her book as the door closed behind her roommate.

“Maintenance,” came the disgruntled reply from the returning German Shepherd as she dropped herself to sit at the edge of her own bed. “They say it’ll be done in like an hour or two.”

“Ah.” Setting her book down, Claire reached out to grab the bottle of water on the closest nightstand and take a sip. “Why not just go to a different floor?”

“Can’t. Apparently whatever they’re doing needed them to shut off the water to the whole building, so… No bathrooms for a while.”

Claire tipped her head to the side. “Wait.” She paused to think for a moment, then continued, “So what you’re telling me, Jade, is that they shut down all the bathrooms in the fucking dorms without telling anyone about it first? Like, how are we only now finding out about this?”

Jade shrugged, then turned and fell over to lie down on her back. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Not like I needed it right now, anyways. Don’t mind waiting a bit.”

“Or you could just go to a different building. I don’t think the library is all that far, and they’ve got bathrooms there.”

“Nah, bitch, it’s fucking ten degrees out there. I mean, just look at that window, it’s all frosted. I’m not gonna get all dressed up in full-ass winter shit just to leave for five minutes to take a piss.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” After tugging on her oversized shirt to cover a little more of the cream-tone fur covering her legs, and retrieving her book, Claire added, “Hell, that’s probably why they’re working in the first place. Some shit froze or something, I’d bet.”

“Maybe, I dunno. I’ll just check back in a couple hours.” Jade reached into one of the pockets of her robe, pulling out a phone and immediately absorbing herself in it. “Got nothing better to do than wait anyways.” Glancing over at the laptop on a nearby desk, she added, “Suppose I could use the time to finally clean up my homework folder. Get it categorized and delete all the stuff I don’t watch anymore.”

Claire gave a light chuckle. “Suppose you could wait until I’m not here before you do that?”

“Well, if you do wanna go find something else to do for a while…” Jade sat up a little to look over at Claire with a serious expression, after a moment breaking down into a laugh. “Nah, seriously though,” she said once she calmed down again. “Just saying, one of us should go check on the bathrooms in like an hour. I can wait a while but it’d be nice to know when we’ll be able to go again.”

“Uh-huh,” Claire mumbled, turning her attention back to her book… mostly.

She was making a little bit of progress – as well as a bit of progress through her water – but now that she knew that Jade had come back from a trip to the bathroom without actually using the toilet, she couldn’t help but look up every now and then to check how her friend was coming along.

The results were certainly interesting, since Jade was distracting herself with some game on her phone, so wouldn’t put in the conscious effort to hide how she was feeling. It had taken a little while for the fidgeting to start, at first just some subtle toe-wiggling, then a bit of shifting around into a more comfortable position, and then casually resting one leg over the other while one foot moved back and forth over the covers.

Claire spent a good deal more time than usual on each page, all the while absentmindedly sipping at her drink and checking to see if anything interesting was happening yet. She wasn’t expecting to see too much before Jade left to check on the bathrooms again, but a little bit of squirming was always fun.

Sure enough, a little over an hour after getting back from her initial unsuccessful bathroom trip, Jade sighed, set her phone down on her own nightstand, and sat up with a stretch. “Alright,” she said as she turned to set her toes on the floor. “I’m gonna go see what’s going on.”

“Good luck,” Claire said without looking up from her book, but still noting Jade’s padding out the door at the edge of her vision.

She did some wiggling of her own once she was alone in the room, the progress she had made through her larger-than-necessary bottle of water already catching up to her exactly as intended. The thought did occur to her, though, that with the toilets out of commission for now it would be smart to go easy on the drinking, so she had only made her way through a quarter of the bottle by now.

Claire wasn’t particularly thirsty anyways, and certainly wasn’t going to force herself to drink too much all at once, so the bottle was still only a quarter empty when Jade returned a few minutes after she had left.

“Still nothing,” she said with an annoyed huff as she sat on the edge of her bed again, this time with one leg subtly bouncing. “They’re still telling me it’ll be another two hours or so, which, y’know… That’s fun.” After taking a deep breath, she continued, “Would be nice if they could hurry up though.”

There was a momentary pause as Claire glanced over to see Jade briefly running a hand along her pajama-clad thigh. “I thought you said you were fine to wait.”

Jade made an effort to hold her leg still as she replied, “I mean, yeah, but I still gotta pee. Not fuckin’ emergency level or anything, but still, I’d rather go sooner than later, y’know?”

“Nothing stopping you from going out and looking for somewhere else,” Claire pointed out while she marked her place in her book and set it aside; then she leaned back, legs still folded with her hands on the bed behind her to hold her up.

“Yeah but I don’t want to,” Jade whined. “And really,” she added in a normal tone, “It’s not that big a deal anyways.”

“If you say so.”

Jade didn’t respond, simply picking up her phone again and devoting her attention to it; soon her legs started moving again, and with nothing better to do Claire was keeping an eye on her to track how her need was evolving.

Before very long, one of Jade’s legs had crossed over the other, and she would shift around in her seat every so often with a quiet grumble. Her tail was hidden under the back of her robe, but it was still clear that it was making stiff, annoyed movements, rustling the cloth as it did so.

Claire, too, moved as she watched, eventually ending up lying on her front and holding up her head with her hands while her feet idly shuffled about. Her tail was wagging gently, lifting up the back of her shirt to expose the red boyshorts she was wearing underneath, and her own subtle but growing need to use the restroom was making the sight of Jade’s escalating squirming all the more interesting.

When Jade switched which leg was on top, Claire adjusted her position so her head was resting on only a single hand, and she reached out with the other to grab her water for another sip; she didn’t replace the bottle afterwards, instead lazily hanging one arm over the edge of the bed and holding the two-thirds-full bottle by the neck, gently and absentmindedly swaying it side to side.

Doing her best to look bored and disinterested, Claire watched as Jade’s movements became constant and more pronounced; gradually, she progressed from occasional shifting in her seat to a steady rocking, and from having her legs merely crossed to a tighter knot and visible swinging of her feet. From the look on her face, she seemed to be trying to concentrate on whatever she was doing with her phone rather than thinking about what was going on inside her.

But she couldn’t keep herself distracted forever, and sure enough she stood up again before long, groaning and rubbing her thighs together for a moment. With another glance at her phone, she said, “You think three hours is enough time for them to have fixed whatever’s wrong?”

“I’d hope so. You gonna try again?”

“Mhm.” She bounced on her toes gently for a moment, then added, “God, they’d better be fucking done by now. Tired of waiting, I gotta fucking piss.” Without even waiting for a response, she hurried out of the room and down towards the nearest bathroom, leaving Claire alone for a little while to contemplate her own bladder’s needs.

She squirmed gently as the mild pressure came to the forefront of her mind, reminding her that it was already late in the afternoon and that the last time she had used the toilet had been just before going to bed the night before – some sixteen or so hours in total, very safely within her known limits. And she hadn’t even been trying to hold it in today; it simply hadn’t occurred to her while washing up in the morning that she could have used the toilet before heading back to her dorm to enjoy a lazy day of no classes.

And so it happened that she was comfortably full at the moment, keeping just enough inside for the slight pressure to feel good without being distracting. She certainly wouldn’t have minded waiting a few more hours for maintenance on the bathrooms to finish up, but even so she was hoping for her friend’s sake that Jade would find them usable now.

But Jade returned looking uneasy and aggravated.

“Fucking hell,” she said as she once again entered the room and dropped herself onto her bed. “What’s a bitch gotta do to take a leak around here?”

“So no luck then,” Claire said with a straightforward tone.

Jade threw her arms up in exasperation. “You would think,” she said, crossing her legs and leaning forward with her hands on her knee. “That if you’re gonna shut off the water to a whole fucking dorm building you’d hurry the fuck up with getting the toilets working again. Right? Like, that makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Claire just nodded quietly, observing Jade’s movements as she continued to rant.

“But, nah, they’re taking their sweet fucking time with it. And they just tell you some bullshit about how they’re working as fast as they can. It’s like, bitch, you said two hours ago that you’d be done by now. Working as fast as you can ain’t gonna help anyone who needs the toilet now.” Jade gave her rear end a furious wiggle. “Like, take away our only bathroom, and now what? How am I supposed to piss if I can’t use the bathroom?” With a groan, she added, “Oh, there’s plenty of other buildings around that still have working plumbing, they say. Really fucking expect anyone to go wandering around looking for somewhere with a bathroom when it’s that damn cold out?”

“I’m sure it won’t take too much longer now… You doing alright or…?”

Jade shook her head then put a hand to her face. “No, yeah, I’m… I’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m sick or anything, I just really need to go pee.”

Claire took another sip of her water. “Just hang in there.”

“Uh-huh…” Jade sighed, then glanced over at Claire. “Hey, you know, I don’t think I saw you leave the room since this morning. How do you not need to pee right now?”

“I do,” Claire said, picking her head up and gesturing with her newly-free hand. “I just don’t need to make a big show of it.”

“Riiiight… So how come you’ve still got that big-ass thing of water, then?”

“Because… needing to pee doesn’t make me not thirsty…?” Claire held her bottle out in Jade’s direction. “And there’s more than enough to go around if you need some.”

Jade just looked at her and blinked a few times. “Uh… No offense, but I don’t know where that mouth of yours has been.”

“Your brother does though,” Claire responded, deadpan and without missing a beat, though her tail was wagging playfully.

With a loud groan, Jade fell backwards onto her bed. “Oh my God. That’s fucking disgusting.”

Claire broke out into cackling laughter, keeping it up for a minute – with Jade even joining in with some uncomfortable chuckling – before calming back down to take a deep breath and a drink. “Aah, seriously though… You sure you don’t want to share? ‘cause this is a lot of fucking water.”

“Eheh…” Jade sat up again, biting her lip and folding her hands in her lap. “Yeah, would rather not. I’ve got stuff lying around somewhere anyways, so I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.” Claire took another sip of her water, and then for a while there was silence as each of the girls focused on their own business. Of course, it didn’t take very long for Claire to get herself involved in Jade’s business instead of her own, but at least for a little while she had just laid there contemplating her bladder.

Then she became more interested in Jade’s, and continued her surveillance of her friend’s actions. Jade was grumbling quietly, legs crossed and gently swinging as she repeatedly curled then spread her toes. Her hands were folded in her lap, the fingers of one drumming against the back of the other.

After a little while, she groaned and brought her hands away from her thighs for long enough to remove her robe and toss it aside, revealing the sleeveless white top underneath. Then she huffed and brushed some of her green-tipped hair out of her face before taking a long, deep breath and rising to stand.

She winced and pressed her legs together when she straightened up with her toes on the ground, apparently disturbed by the effects of gravity on her bladder. While she gently bobbed up and down, she looked around the room, and of course Claire took notice.

“I don’t think they’re gonna have finished that quickly,” she remarked. “You just checked five minutes ago.”

“Nah,” Jade said with a hint of strain, shaking her head. “Just need to get up and move around.” Sure enough, she started walking back and forth next to her bed, bent slightly forward with her arms crossed. She kept looking around in any direction but straight ahead as she repeated the same few stiff steps, from the head of her bed to the foot and back again.

Claire watched with worried interest, enjoying the show but at the same time not wanting anything to happen to her best friend. She did her best to look at least a little bit like she wasn’t staring, taking little occasional sips from her bottle; though now she was drinking less frequently, and less each time, than she had been just a couple of hours prior.

Jade seemed to be getting more annoyed as time went on, and stopped walking entirely shortly after Claire had finished the first half of her water. With a loud groan, Jade tugged at the hem of her top, tipping her head back to look up at nothing in particular. “Uugh, fuuuuck this,” she said. “I gotta take a fucking piss.” Looking around the room, her gaze settled on one corner in particular for a moment, then she turned back to the door and started walking. “And I’m gonna whether the bathroom is open or not. Done fucking holding it,” she grumbled on her way out, forcefully shutting the door behind her with the last word.

“Wonder what that’s supposed to mean…?” Claire muttered to herself as she looked curiously at the door; after a moment she looked around the room instead, stopping when her eyes found the same corner Jade had just a minute before. With a little smirk, Claire nodded softly, then took another sip of her water. “Yeah, I suppose that would work, wouldn’t it?”

In that particular corner lay a decorative plant that the girls took turns watering every day. If the bathrooms were still out of order, then…

“Yeah, fuck this,” Jade announced as she threw the door open, stepping through and kicking it shut behind herself. She moved directly to the corner with the plant, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she stopped briefly to move some things away from it. “Why is there so much shit in front of the damn plant?”

Claire’s eyes widened and her heartbeat quickened as she watched Jade’s preparations – she was really serious about this, it seemed. “Don’t drown the poor thing,” she said quietly.

Jade looked over her shoulder and held up one finger on one hand for a moment. “Don’t even start. Wouldn’t have to do this if I had any other choice…”

“Hey, I get it. When you gotta go, right?”

The response was just a grunt as Jade finished clearing a path towards her emergency toilet, taking hold of her waistband with both hands as she approached. Once she was next to it, she spun around and bent over slightly, tugging her pajama pants and underwear only halfway down her thighs before pausing to check her positioning. Taking a few steps around the circumference of the pot so that she was facing more towards Claire, she commented with a half-serious, half-humorous tone, “Nothing to see here, bitch.”

“Uh-huh. Nothing going on here.”

“That’s right,” Jade said as she pulled her clothes down to her knees, looking back over her shoulder as she lowered herself to hover over the dirt in the planter. “This shit never fuckin’ happened.” She shuffled around a little bit to adjust her positioning and hopefully ensure her stream would go where she wanted it to.

“I mean, I don’t think anyone could bla-“

“Nothing. Happened.” Jade turned back to Claire to speak firmly, then a moment after she finished speaking she returned her attention to her own tail, biting her lip as she tried to relax.

It took a second for her to start dribbling into the dirt beneath her, and a few more for it to pick up to a steady stream. Jade let her head hang down with a sigh when the stream picked up further, her urine pouring out with a quiet hiss and soaking the dirt. It didn’t take long for it to get wet enough that a puddle started forming, spreading the wetness around the inside of the plant pot with a subtle but audible splashing.

Claire shifted around and crossed her own legs as she lay on her bed, watching and listening to Jade’s relief and letting it agitate her own moderately-full bladder. And yet she still drank more from her bottle, at this point unsure of whether she was really thirsty or just subconsciously trying to speed things along. She certainly didn’t want to land herself in any kind of trouble, but…

Well, it seemed to be working out for Jade, at least, though clearly she hadn’t been waiting as long as Claire, nor drinking quite as much; the hissing and pattering stopped well within a minute of starting. Perfectly normal by typical standards, but then Claire didn’t have typical standards, and was left confused for a moment as to how Jade could have needed to pee so badly only to take a mere thirty seconds or so to empty herself.

Jade, meanwhile, silently stood and dressed herself up again, stepping away from the overhydrated plant and heading back to her bed, retrieving her phone from where she had left it and lying down over the covers as if nothing had happened.

Now it was just a question of how much longer Claire would be able to wait…