The lingering scent of Jade having claimed the room’s potted plant as her own certainly wasn’t helping Claire’s situation.

An hour had passed since then, in which time Claire had gone out to check on the status of the restroom maintenance – and, of course, there was still no end in sight. Not that she was all that bothered by it, necessarily, but there wasn’t much of a chance for her to have fun with indefinitely-inaccessible bathrooms if she was stuck in a dorm room with her friend lying awake on her own bed just a few feet away.

Sure, Jade was occupied with some game or discussion or something on her phone, but even so she would definitely know if Claire decided to have some of her usual fun. Even if she weren’t as vocal as she normally would have been on camera, there was still the issue of justifying why she was filming herself in the first place when Jade inevitably took notice.

So rather than getting involved in anything particularly fun, Claire was sitting cross-legged on her bed, leaning back against the wall and trying to make some more progress through the book she had been reading earlier. If nothing else, it would divert some of her attention away from the constant and growing pressure in her bladder.

But even with the distraction, she could still feel it nagging at her. There was no question – she really needed to go to the bathroom, but simply couldn’t just now. The only thing distracting herself seemed to accomplish was that it got her to drink a little more frequently; still just a little bit at a time, but in an hour her big bottle of water had gone from half-full to somewhere a little over one-third. That was two-thirds of a liter so far in just the past couple of hours, and she was slowly but surely coming up on twenty hours since her last use of a toilet.

Still very much within her limits, of course… but even so more than enough to be cause for concern in a situation like this. At least this time she wasn’t approaching problem territory through any fault of her own – sure, she wouldn’t be quite as full had she just relieved herself in the morning, but at least this time she wasn’t in a situation where she had intentionally filled up then inadvertently found herself in an emergency with no way out.

No, this time she had just… forgotten. She didn’t have any classes scheduled today, so had decided in the morning that she didn’t need to go through the whole process of taking a shower, instead just doing the basics to keep herself reasonably clean. So, since Claire had never set foot in the shower that morning, she had never relieved herself either, and she simply never thought to use the toilet instead.

And now she couldn’t even if she wanted to. She shifted around to try to get a little more comfortable, awkwardly shoving a foot under herself in an attempt to use it to keep some pressure on her nethers. She tried to stay focused on her reading, but even so found herself annoyed at how decidedly uncomfortable such a task was due to the structure of her legs – just like any other canine, she naturally stood on her toes, and as a result negotiating her foot into the correct position was only possible through great effort and a lot of shifting and squirming to get everything lined up. And even then, it didn’t help as much as she had hoped it would.

But she would be okay. Even if she hadn’t relieved herself the whole day, she could still wait a while longer if she had to. It wouldn’t be as fun as it would have been normally, but everything would be fine.

At least for a little while, anyways, so for now Claire just tried to keep the pressure within and the discomfort of her position out of her mind. That book was obviously more important, after all. And it did mostly hold her attention for a time, until after working her way through to the end of one chapter she set the book down and sighed.

“Hey Jade,” she called out while trying to shift into a better position. “What’ve you got for the time?”

“Uh, hold on,” came the response from her roommate, who spoke without much energy and without looking away from her phone. “It’s, uh… 6:46. For another… twelve seconds anyways,” Jade reported.

Nearly nineteen hours now since Claire’s last use of a toilet. “Well God fuckin’ damn. What’s the odds of the bathrooms being open again, you think?”

“Zero, probably,” Jade said, only now looking up from her phone and over at Claire. “How’re you holding up?”

Claire gave a noncommittal shrug as she shifted around atop her bed. “Eh, you know. Could be worse.”

“Yeah, you could be holding onto that whole-ass bottle,” Jade said with a little chuckle.

“Good thing I only drank most of it.” Claire wiggled her way to the edge of the bed, then carefully set her toes on the ground and rose to stand. She groaned quietly as her legs came together and she bent slightly at the knees. “I’mma go check again,” she said as she retrieved her own bathrobe and put it on to hide the fact that she was wearing nothing but a long t-shirt and underpants. “They should be done with whatever the fuck they were doing by now… Hopefully.”

Jade shrugged and turned her attention back to her phone. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

“We’ll see,” Claire said on her way out the door. Once in the hallway, she padded carefully but confidently in the direction of the bathrooms, trying not to shake things up too much while also trying to suppress any hints that she’d been holding for longer than a normal person would. Her clothing was doing most of the work to that end, a shirt and robe being more than enough to cover up the little bump in her belly that had developed from ignoring her needs for so long. Beyond that, Claire just had to make sure she acted like someone who had only been waiting to use the bathroom for a quarter of the time that she had spent without a break so far.

And, as she approached the nearest bathroom, she noted that the squirming and shifting her body wanted her to do appeared to be blending in perfectly. A handful of people had gathered by the door to the ladies’ room to interrogate one of the janitors supposedly working on the situation, and of the maybe half-dozen women assembled there, Claire could only identify one doing any more than subtle wiggling – a white-furred cat with a hand pressing up hard against the light-blue denim between her legs. She appeared to be the one doing most of the arguing with the custodian currently serving as the target for everyone’s vitriol, gesturing with the hand not squeezing herself while her tail lashed about wildly behind her.

But before Claire could process what she was saying, the cat abruptly removed herself from the largely one-sided conversation and took off running in the direction Claire had just come from – she pushed past a couple of other girls and practically ran right through where Claire was standing with a hard shove.

“Move, bitch,” spoken with a panicked hiss, was the only thing Claire heard the cat say as she herself took a moment to recover from the incident. The sudden movement had greatly agitated her bladder – which, Claire figured, surely contained far more than that cat could ever dream of – and she stood with legs crossed and body slightly hunched over for a little while. She responded positively but with some strain to the concerned inquiry from a girl nearby as to whether she was alright, then took a deep breath and slowly returned to standing normally again, with her thighs kept close together.

Resting her hands gently over her belly, she moved a little closer to the crowd and took a moment to properly look around at everyone. Then she turned to the tall mare standing with arms folded and legs crossed next to her.

“So what’s the situation?” Claire’s gaze drifted from the mare’s powerful-looking thighs up her well-toned body to her muscular arms, and then to her worried eyes. The slight bend at her knees and waist, her subtle swaying back and forth, the way she was rubbing her arms, and the occasional twitching visible on her face altogether only made her look more attractive.

The mare turned her head to look down at Claire, and spoke with a soft quivering voice unbefitting of her stature and build. “I don’t think anyone knows,” she said. “They won’t even give us a time estimate anymore, just vague promises.” Grumbling, she added, “Shoulda just gone outside and looked for somewhere else when I had the chance…”

“What’s stopping you from going now?”

“You looked out a window at all today? There’s snow and ice everywhere and the whole damn campus just went and closed up shop for the day. Dorms are the only place you can get to a toilet now, and I’m not about to break my neck trying to get to another building.”

“Shit.” Claire took a deep breath in, then let out a quick huff. “So this is it, then. What’s even going on in there?”

The mare shrugged. “All I know is they’re not letting anyone in there.”

“Huh. Figures.” After taking a moment to look around and shuffle idly, Claire turned again to the mare, glancing first at the bit of exposed midriff she was showing off, then up at her eyes. “Hey, do you mind if I ask you a bit of a weird question?”

“Shoot,” the mare said with a stressed sigh.

“How long’s it been since you last went?”

Looking at Claire with a raised eyebrow, the mare shrugged. “Uh, I dunno. Last time was right after I got up in the morning, I guess.”

“That’s… quite the wait,” Claire mused, trying to hide her satisfaction that she had been holding longer than this random anonymous mare, but seemed to be equally in need of the facilities.

“Yup. If I’d known this was gonna happen I’d have gone easy on my morning routine so I wouldn’t have to drink so much…”

“Morning routine?”

“Oh, I just get a little bit of a workout, go for a run around campus, you know. Stuff like that. Nothing too intense, but I still gotta drink a lot.”

Glancing again at the mare’s belly, Claire hesitantly commented, “So I don’t suppose it’d be racist to assume you’ve got like a gallon in there, then…”

The mare shot Claire an odd look and replied, “I dunno. Would it be racist to assume you’re looking for a fire hydrant?” When Claire just stared back at her, blinking repeatedly, she added, “That’s a joke. Sorry, I’d… I’d laugh if I didn’t think it’d make me piss, uh… Uh, yeah, actually, I can hold a lot, I suppose. I dunno about a gallon but I guess I do kinda, like, start sooner and finish later, you know?” Uncrossing her legs and recrossing them the other way, she added, “Like, I’ve had road trips where we needed to pull over for, y’know, emergencies, and I’d always be the first to get out of the car and the last to get back in. That… That makes sense… Doesn’t it?” Then she groaned and bent deeper at the knees, speaking again after sucking air in through her teeth. “Why are we talking about this?” Her question came out as a quiet whine.

“Sorry,” Claire said, moving her hands down over her crotch. “Just… Really hard to think about, fucking… anything other than piss right now.” It was true, only it wasn’t merely Claire’s own fluids that were turning her thoughts yellow.

“Preaching to the goddamn choir there…” Then the mare went quiet, no doubt to focus on herself and the state of her underwear.

Claire was silent for a while, too, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she watched more arguments unfold between the janitor and aggravated women who’d gone too long since their last break. She wasn’t paying too much attention, but it definitely seemed like no meaningful progress was going to be made towards restoring toilet access.

“Fuck this shit,” she said, followed by a sigh as she turned to the mare one last time. “Hey, good luck, man. Sure hope you don’t have to wait too much longer.”

Casting a sideways glance at Claire, the mare responded, “Oh, uh… Thanks? I guess? Where are you going? Please tell me you know about some secret bathroom somewhere, because holy fuck I need something like that so bad right now.”

“Uh, no. No, nothing like that. I was just… I dunno, I’m just gonna go back to my room and… Hope I can figure something out.

“Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be getting out of this that easily…” After a drawn-out groan, the mare added, “Nice meeting you, uh…?”

“Claire.”

The mare nodded gently as she spoke. “Claire. Hi. I’m Heather.”

“Cool.” Claire turned to go back to her own room. “See you around, I guess?”

“I guess.” Heather cracked a bit of a smile. “Maybe next time we’ll actually meet in the bathroom instead of waiting outside, huh?”

Claire nodded and allowed herself to let out a light chuckle. “Maybe…” Then she walked away, leaving Heather to her own devices again and trying to come up with solutions to her own problem. The only option that immediately came to mind was to do as Jade had done and relieve herself into the plantpot in their room… But it had already received one full bladder worth of urine; surely it would just end up dying if Claire were to add hers to it. Come to think of it, her full bladder alone would probably be more than enough to drown the plant without Jade’s help, so… Maybe that wasn’t the best option.

Another option briefly popped into her head as she passed the door to a stairwell on the way, but the same thing that had prompted the idea was cause for its dismissal – from the other side of the door Claire could detect the powerful odor of fresh cat urine, indicating both that the stairs were a perfectly valid toilet, and that for the moment they were to be avoided because someone had left a massive puddle behind. An unfortunate surprise for anyone who happened to be climbing the stairs, but at least someone had been able to resolve the bathroom problem.

The smell of course made Claire more eager to relieve herself, but she forced herself to ignore it and finish the short walk back to her room, removing her bathrobe and tossing it over to her bed as soon as she was through the door.

“So how’d that work out for you?” Jade was still focused on her phone, speaking to Claire from her comfortable position.

Claire dropped onto her own bed, sitting back and grabbing a pillow to shove between her legs while she squirmed. “Nothing,” she said. “I guess I sort of made a new friend, though?” Looking off to the side, she added, “Kinda cute, too, so all in all not a total loss.”

“Yeah? Who is it?” Jade lowered her phone and tipped her head a little to the side.

“Some horse girl. Said her name was Heather.”

“Heather… Davis? Big muscly bitch, right?” When she saw Claire nodding quietly, Jade continued, “Yeah, sounds like Heather Davis. She’s actually in a couple of the same classes as me. I don’t talk to her much, but she seems cool.” Then she went back to idly tapping at her phone. “And, no, I’m not going to try to set you up with her.”

“That wasn’t even… All I said was I thought she was cute.”

“Sure. That’s just how it starts.”

“Ah, fuck off,” Claire said in a lighthearted tone, adding in a little tail-wagging. Mere seconds later, she groaned through clenched teeth, pressing herself down against her pillow with her tail still waving happily – hopefully Jade wouldn’t notice that part.

She did seem to notice the noise, though, and glanced over at Claire with a concerned look in her eyes. “You alright over there?”

“I’ve been better, that’s for sure,” came the lightly-strained response. Claire had just barely fought off a leak, so she certainly wasn’t lying. The pressure in her bladder had been building for only a few hours short of a full day, and the effects were making themselves very obvious now. Were she at home, or otherwise alone, that would have been great, but without the privacy to properly enjoy her situation she was starting to worry about its outcome.

“About time to start looking for a solution, then, don’t you think?”

Claire looked around the room for a moment. “Like what? Not really seeing too much useful here.”

“Dunno,” Jade said with a shrug. “Not my underwear on the line, though, so don’t expect any ideas outta me.”

“Some friend you are, then.” Claire’s words were clearly soaked in sarcasm. “You already peed so it’s not your problem anymore. I see how it is.”

Jade chuckled softly in response. “Now you’re getting it.” After a brief pause, she muttered, “I do actually kind of have to go again… Could wait now, for sure, though.”

“Well, lucky you. I still have to go just a little bit more than kind of, so if…” Then she trailed off.

“If…?” Properly sitting up, Jade continued, “Claire? You good?”

“Yeah… I just had a really dumb idea though.” Claire leaned over, making sure to keep her pillow between her legs, and reached for the water bottle she’d set on the nightstand some time ago. “And I’m pretty sure it’s gonna work.” She sat back with the bottle in hand, examining it and giving it a little shake so she could enjoy the effect of watching what was left in it sloshing around.

Jade just gave her an odd look. “You’re not really gonna…? You ever even done that before?”

“Once,” Claire said, careful not to give away too much information. “When I was like sixteen.” And several times afterwards, but Claire figured that Jade didn’t need to know about all of those, since those had mainly been self-inflicted emergencies.

“Okay, well… I’ll just trust that you know what you’re doing. Don’t come crying to me for help cleaning if you fuck up, though.” Then Jade returned her attention to her phone, leaving Claire alone with her bottle.

“Right,” she said to herself while gently moving her lower half back and forth across her pillow. “Let’s see how this is gonna go…” Without slowing her grinding, she opened the bottle and set the cap aside, biting her lip as she held the bottle up to take another look at its contents. “Mm…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then looked once more at the remaining water. “This should be interesting…”

Slipping a hand between her legs, she tipped her head back and downed half of what was still in the bottle before pausing to breathe and squirm. As she added water to her system, what was already inside threatened to leave her body without her approval, and she had to take a moment to dedicate herself to blocking its escape.

Despite her efforts, she felt a patch of warmth appear on her shorts, causing her to press down harder with her fingers and groan quietly. From years of experience she knew that a little leak was nothing to worry about on its own, but given her situation it would certainly be best, she figured, to not allow too many slip-ups.

Once she was sure everything was under control – and could feel some residual moisture on her fingers and clinging to her personal fur – Claire lifted herself up to pull the pillow out from underneath her and toss it aside, now simply kneeling on the bed with her rear hovering slightly above the covers.

Then her free hand immediately went back between her legs, and once again she brought her bottle to her mouth and poured what remained in it into herself. Before she could finish, she felt another jet of urine slip out, trickling through to properly dampen her hand and leave a few stray droplets on the bed; but she carried on and soon found herself sighing with an empty bottle in hand.

From there, Claire shuffled forwards until she was at the edge of the mattress, then carefully repositioned herself to slide off and drop into a high crouch with her back up against the bed. The hand between her legs moved to lift the hem of her shirt for just a moment before reaching down to tug at the waistband of her shorts, dragging them down past her knees as well as she could with just one hand.

As her shorts moved out of the way, she dropped into a slightly-lower squat while moving her bottle vaguely into position. Once her underwear was down far enough, the hand pulling them down went back between her legs, but now only two fingers that she used to part her bottom set of lips while biting the lower half of her top set.

A few overeager drops escaped and got lost in the carpet as she adjusted both her aim and the position of the bottle, but before anything had the chance to go significantly wrong she had everything arranged how she wanted, and she took a deep breath in.

For just a moment a weak trickle fell near-silently to the floor, but then a hiss accompanied the unmistakable sound of a heavy flow striking against plastic, and after another moment splashing could be heard, gradually increasing in pitch as Claire relieved herself into her bottle with a sigh.

From her own bed, Jade could be heard sniffing in response to Claire’s unique scent filling the room and joining what still lingered from Jade’s marking of the plant in the corner. “Damn, bitch,” she said, looking over at Claire. “You’ve got some strong-ass piss.”

Claire shrugged, looking up at Jade for just a second before returning her attention to her own business. “Been holding for a while,” she said nonchalantly – though the pale yellow tone of the liquid accumulating in the bottle indicated that she hadn’t been particularly forgetful of her need to drink throughout the day.

“No shit?” Looking back at her phone for a moment, Jade commented, “At least the bottle’s gonna keep the smell from sticking around too long. Should probably see about opening the window too, though…”

“Ah, fuck off,” Claire said, once again glancing up for a moment, adjusting herself upon looking down again to correct a bit of drift. “Whole room still smells like you after what you did to the fucking plant, but you don’t see me whining about that.”

“Well of course the room would smell like me. I’m the top bitch around here, after all.”

“Sure you are…”

Jade just laughed in response, then went back to whatever she was doing on her phone, and Claire was able to focus entirely on her bottle. She sighed as she watched a thick stream leave her to raise the “water” level within the bottle fast enough that, after a minute, she became concerned that somehow her bottle would run out of space.

Fortunately, the hissing and splashing came to a stop just before the pale fluids in the bottle reached its neck, and she stood up with her underwear down around her legs after a last stray spurt hit the carpet, and further drops simply fell down to her already-wet shorts.

As Claire carefully reached over to retrieve the cap from where she’d left it on the bed, Jade looked up again, eyes immediately going wide.

“Jesus fucking… Dude.” Holding out a hand in a bewildered expression, she added, “What the fuck?”

“What?” Claire turned around as if everything were normal, screwing the cap back onto the bottle with her tail wagging and underwear still at her feet. Coming to a sudden realization, she tried to force her tail to calm down, and tugged on the back of her shirt. “Oh, sorry about the view.”

“Huh? No, fuck that, I mean your fucking piss. How big is that damn bottle?”

“Oh!” Holding up the bottle with a blush, Claire eyed it up and down to gauge its size. “A liter, I think.”

“What the fuck?”

Claire looked to be legitimately confused. “What?”

“How the fuck do you piss that much?”

“Uh…” Claire shrugged and tried not to make eye contact. “I did tell you I was holding it for a while.”

Jade shook her head. “Bitch, that ain’t just a few hours without a toilet. You fucking…” After a little chuckle, Jade finished her thought. “You’ve gotta be fucking part camel or something.”

“I… don’t think that’s how that works.”

“Whatever.” Jade hopped out of bed and held up her phone. “Now, hey, hold that shit up where I can see it good. This is crazy.”

With an eyebrow raised, Claire hesitantly lifted up her full, hot bottle and looked over at Jade and the phone held out obviously to take a picture.

“Yeah, there we go. Gotta smile, too though, and… Oh, and pull up your fuckin’ undies, I’ve gotta share this shit with everyone.”

“Please don’t.”

Jade used her free hand for a dismissive wave and rolled her eyes. “Pfft, you’re no fun. Fine. But this is still nuts and I need a picture so we don’t forget this shit.”

Claire shrugged, bent down to pull her underwear back into place, just barely covered by her shirt, and put on a half-hearted smile; she blinked repeatedly after the flash from Jade’s phone and started looking around the room again.

“That’s fuckin’ brilliant.”

“Sure, whatever,” Claire said, then she continued while gesturing to the bottle. “Now what are we supposed to do about this while the bathroom’s still fucked?”