“Sarah, I came to give your dress back,” Kim called out through the door.

Kim and Sarah had been roommates for a while now. They met each other in their first year in college and became fast friends. Not satisfied with the on-campus housing options, the friends decided to both pitch in and rent a nearby place together.

Kim thought she heard a “yeah” coming from the opposite side of the door and interpreted this as permission to enter. When Kim opened the door, she discovered Sarah in a compromising position. Her legs spread wide, and her laptop nestled neatly between them. Sarah’s clit and part of her labia were hidden from view by the head of a wand vibrator pressed against them.

Kim, unsure how to handle the situation, threw Sarah’s dress in the general direction of a chair close to the door and quickly turned around to leave. Right as she did so, Sarah squealed in surprise and shock. It took her until that moment to notice that she no longer had her room to herself.

“Sorry,” Kim mumbled as she closed the door behind her.

Something had to change, Kim thought to herself. It was the third time this week that they had caught each other like this. Both Kim and Sarah understood each other's desire to masturbate, but because the house was small with many shared rooms and because they frequently borrowed each other's stuff, it was challenging to find true privacy.

The standard "retreat to your room" approach failed them many times now, and keeping the sole bathroom occupied to masturbate at the annoyance of your roommate did not seem like a good option either. They could always masturbate while the other roommate was away for classes, were it not for the fact that their school had decided to continue offering some classes remotely, even after the pandemic. No, there were no clear-cut solutions as far as Kim knew, so she decided to discuss their situation with Sarah later that night.

Kim remained distracted for the rest of the day, her mind racing, thinking about how to best bring up the subject without it being awkward. Eventually she settled on starting the conversation with another apology for what happened earlier that day.

“Sorry for earlier today,” Kim said at the dinner table.

“It is not your fault. We just need to find a way to make it not awkward whenever this happens,” Sarah replied.

“Okay, but how?”

“Well, since getting privacy does not work here, we could both agree to just not care about privacy while masturbating,” Sarah said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“People call it ‘me-time’ for a reason though,” Kim said, slightly confused.

Sarah nodded in understanding, “True, but I do not see an alternative. In my eyes, we either decide not to care, or we only masturbate while the other is not home, and I think the latter is not a good solution.”

“Why not?” Kim replied after taking a bite of her meal.

Sarah gave Kim a questioning look as if to say, “Did you really ask me that,” before explaining her reasoning behind her previous statement. “Well, we have walked in on each other often enough to have a rough idea of how often we need to rub one out. Do you think we could take care of our needs effectively if we limited ourselves to masturbating only when the other is not home?”

“No,” answered Kim timidly as she felt her cheeks starting to glow, her face turning red.

Even though Kim was not the one who got caught masturbating this morning, she now felt put on the spot, forced to admit that she loved masturbating way too much to accept a house rule stating that they would only masturbate if they were home alone. Despite her initial reluctance, she had to face the truth. Sarah was right.

“You are right,” said Kim as she and Sarah stood up to put their dishes in the sink.

“There is no reason to be embarrassed, Kim,” reassured Sarah.

“Well, how exactly should we go about this then; should we notify the other when we are about to masturbate?” Kim asked when the blush on her cheeks faded away.

“We could do, especially in the beginning, so we would not surprise each other, but my eventual goal would be that the sight of either of us mid-masturbation will become just as normal as seeing one another in pajamas, making notifying no longer necessary,” Sarah explained.

Kim nodded as Sarah’s idea took shape in her mind. It felt odd because it directly opposed the unwritten social rule of keeping this private, yet she could not help but find Sarah’s proposal intriguing and liberating.

“Let’s do it,” Kim said, now with conviction.

She did not even hear Sarah’s answer. Kim’s mind drifted away to some idealized version of a possible future scenario in which she was horny and decided to pleasure herself while watching porn. No longer would Kim have to watch it on a tiny phone screen in her bedroom. Instead, she would be on the living room couch, taking advantage of the large TV. All while being unconcerned about what her roommate was up to.

When Kim went to her room after dinner, her mind was racing with potential future scenarios, but also with one single question: “Why had social norms prevented them from doing this for so long?” The same social norms that, after nothing more than an awkward moment and a heart-to-heart conversation between friends, were put aside. Finding herself unable to answer that question, Kim concluded that it was unimportant. What was important was to be thankful for her open-minded roommate, who suggested this new way of thinking to her.

During the weekend, Kim found herself particularly aroused. Sarah was away for a haircut, so Kim wanted to put her idea from earlier that week into practice. She ran upstairs to get her wand vibrator. Not a minute later, she was naked on the living room couch, vibrator in hand, trying to decide what kind of porn she wanted to watch. She eventually settled on a long video depicting a man orally satisfying his partner's vagina.

With a hot video playing on the TV and soft moans coming out of the speaker, Kim quickly texted Sarah, “Masturbating,” getting a thumbs-up emoji as a response. She pressed the wand between her legs and swiftly got whisked away to a world of pleasure. After an unknown length of time, the front door slamming shut startled Kim. Sarah was back. In a flash, Kim’s head filled with panic. She wanted to turn off the wand and the TV, but then she remembered the new house rule, relaxed, and continued masturbating.

Not long after, Sarah opened the door a crack and flashed a knowing smile before saying, “We are even now.”

Kim gave Sarah a wink in acknowledgment, after which Sarah closed the door. Twenty minutes later, Kim had an intense climax on the couch when the video ended, smirked, and thought, “Yes, I like the new house rules.”