A+H Club 1 (Patreon)

A lot of this month's scene requests expressed an interest in me doing something different. @RickGriffin wanted to see some A+H Club fanfic since it was something I had pondered back when the first volume cam out. @OhWolfy mentioned A+H Club also and even @Piedunk was asking for something outside of the Hayven Celestia, so here's a scene from Adrian's backstory.

NOTE: Rick may have requested this, but I never asked if this is what her backstory was actually like. I just made it up. It'll be interesting to see how close I've come.

Also, this scene is kinda harsh. We know that eventually, Adrian moves out and things get better for her, so I hope no one is expecting happy-fun-times here...

———

“Hon?” called Adrian as she toweled her hair dry. “Was someone at the door?”

But when she stepped out into the living room, she was shocked to see a guy sitting on the couch. The caramel-colored kangaroo let out a loud “Eep!” in surprise and leaped back inside the bedroom, hiding her bare breasts behind the flimsy wooden door.

Her heart racing, she took a moment to get control of herself and glared daggers around the door’s edge at Wyatt, but her husband lacked even the simple decency to look repentant. He just laid back in her recliner, slapping his thigh and laughing. He wiped at his eyes. “Yeah, Chaz is over to watch the game.” He paused a moment. “I said he was coming over.”

She stared at Wyatt for a long moment, waiting to be let in on the joke, but the punchline never came. He most certainly had not told her that Chaz would be coming over. She would have absolutely remembered that! Chaz had never been invited over before. In fact, she didn’t even realize that he considered Chaz a friend.

And to watch an NBAA game? Wyatt didn’t even follow basketball. Oh, he might bet on a game or two if he had a few bills in his wallet, but he certainly couldn’t this week. Besides, they were only going to watch the game because she was a fan of the Bucks.

So, what was the deal? She wanted to say something, but the last thing she wanted to do was start a fight in front of a stranger. “Uh…” she gasped, “I guess I must have forgotten. I’ll be right out.”

Closing the door until it latched, Adrian quickly grabbed a hoodie and threw her arms into the sleeves, zipping it up over her breasts to within a few inches of her neck. She glanced down at herself and sighed. She wasn’t even wearing a bra, so she threw the towel around her shoulders and let each end of the nearly threadbare terrycloth hang down over her chest to help cover herself.

“I’m so sorry,” Adrian apologized when she opened the door back up. She ran her fingers nervously through her long, wet hair. She hated her hair and always had. If it were up to her, she’d cut the damn stuff off, but Wyatt loved how sexy long hair made her look—despite the drab, mousey color—and keeping it how he liked it had always been a small sacrifice to make. “I should’a showered earlier, so I’d have had time to make myself presentable.”

How presentable she looked was always important to her husband.

She paused, giving Wyatt a moment to respond, to say, “You look great, babe,” or some such thing, but he let the opportunity slip by.

The silence stretched and it was Chaz who actually picked up the slack. “Shit, you don’t gotta clean up for me,” he sighed. Then he pointed to the television. “Is only basketball, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Adrian said, quieter than before.

Chaz patted the cushions beside him. “C’mon, sit,” he said. “Tip-off’s in a minute.”

Adrian looked over at her husband, willing him to get up and let her have her recliner, but he just ignored her and stared at the screen. Was he so afraid of looking gay that he didn’t want to sit beside his friend? She didn’t really even know Chaz.

She looked over at him. Chaz was a pit bull with rusty fur and expensive tastes in clothes and cars. His black silk jacket was stylish—cut to stop at his ribs—and the white button-down beneath it seemed to sparkle. It was quite a contrast to the ratty plaid couch he sat on.

Wyatt favored sleeveless t-shirts and bought them a size too small to show off his muscles, but Chaz never struck her as that insecure. Then again, he could probably have torn Wyatt’s arms from their sockets if he tried. Not that he’d need to. She’d been around him enough times to know that Chaz always wore a shoulder holster hidden inside his jacket.

The gun didn’t make Adrian too nervous. Wyatt kept a revolver on the nightstand, and it wasn’t like they had anything worth stealing. What made her more uncomfortable was the size of Chaz’s package. He was manspreading wide and that hardly surprised her, considering. It was a wonder he didn’t walk like a cowboy in an Old West movie.

Wyatt, on the other hand, was equipped far more in line with his six-foot-tall, two-hundred-some-odd pound frame. But unfortunately for her, he tended to wield his average-sized equipment as if it were some sort of weapon, leaving her battered and sore all the next day, even when she told him she needed some tenderness.

Wyatt still showed no sign of getting up, and—not wanting to make a scene—Adrian curled her tail around her hip and sat at an angle so her lower back was supported by the armrest on one side and the back of the couch on the other.

Then the trio sat in silence while a deodorant ad played on the screen. “I’m really sorry about walking in on you guys—” Adrian started to tell Chaz in a lowered voice, but Wyatt talked over her.

“I don’t care who sees your titties,” he said. “I’m sure Chaz doesn’t care either.”

Adrian said nothing. Chaz’s eyes flicked between the two roos, but his muzzle remained closed.

“Hell,” said her husband, “I don’t really care who you fuck.”

“Oh,” she said, too stunned to know how precisely to reply. He wasn’t acting like himself at all! The last week had been really stressful, sure, and they’d fought several times, but now this? Was he accusing her of something? She shouldn’t have said it, but she felt so strangely out of her element that the words just slipped out. “Real shame then that you broke that poor cat’s nose a couple years back when you thought he was staring at me.”

Instead of getting angry, Wyatt actually grinned. “Oh yeah, him,” he said. “Didn’t even see me comin’. Bam!” He punched a fist into his palm. “Laid him out.”

When she and Chaz stared at him, he backpedaled. “Yeah, well… We didn’t even know that guy. Just some weirdo stranger at the club, staring at my wife.”

The silence between them was so heavy that Adrian almost didn’t hear the game start. They just sat together awkwardly until Wyatt slapped his thighs and stood. “Y’know what? I’m gonna run down to Snake Creek to see if they’ve got anything special on tap.”

“Hon?” gasped Adrian in surprise. They were flat broke, and he knew it. There hadn’t been beer in the fridge for days. And now he was talking about driving all the way down to Snake Creek? It was a good ten or fifteen minutes each way, and the beer they had was even more expensive than the limited selection available from the corner bodega.

“I’m just gonna look,” he said, grabbing his keys off the table. Then he went through the front door, leaving her alone with Chaz.

A moment passed, and they looked at each other. “I am so sorry,” said Adrian. “I have no idea what’s got into him today.”

“Beats me,” he said with a shrug. “And shit, don’t stress about me seein’ yer titties. From what I saw, they were damn fine.”

The insides of Adrian’s ears blushed red and she laid them back against her head. “Um, thanks,” she whispered as she crossed her arms over her chest. But she believed him. On at least two separate occasions when Adrian and Wyatt had stopped over at Chaz’s apartment, she’d seen naked women walking around—rooting through the fridge, walking from one room to another—without even trying to cover up. “Was a bit like your place there for a moment, eh?”

“Oh yeah,” he said with a wide grin. A gold fang sparkled in the light. “They know I dig that shit, walkin’ around with their titties hangin’ out. They do that shit just to get me goin’.”

Adrian chuckled nervously and then groaned as an unusually sharp pain shot through her.

“You okay, girl?” he asked.

She nodded and straightened back up when the pain ebbed. “Endometriosis,” she groaned. “It’s pretty bad today.”

“Ain’t no cure?” he asked, his folded ears lifting.

“Well, there is,” she admitted, “but not one I’m particularly fond of. Best just to control the pain for now.”

Chaz nodded. “Yeah, been kinda surprised you two hadn’t dropped by this week.”

Adrian nodded and looked down at her hands in her lap. “Yeah, our car broke down last week. Between that and rent…” She didn’t need to say the rest.

If she were rich, she’d just go to the doctor and get a prescription for Oxycontin, but as it was, that wasn’t much of an option. She and Wyatt couldn’t afford insurance, and even if they could, the doctors would just presume she was feeding a habit since they were poor. That left her abusing Ibuprofen or buying oxy from Chaz when they could afford it.”

“Shit, that sucks, girl. I’m real sorry,” said Chaz. “I kinda wondered if that were why he invited me over—t’hit me up for a favor.”

“I guess,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t realize he was going to blindside you with our problems.”

He waved a hand, cutting her off. “It’s cool. It happens. When ya got stuff to sell, there’s always someone lookin’ for handouts.”

Adrian frowned and stared at the television in silence. She didn’t want to think about the two of them being a charity case for a drug dealer, but she did hurt pretty bad today, and the Advil wasn’t even denting it. Eventually, she found her voice in a near-whisper. “I don’t suppose that’s the sort of favor you might grant him…”

Him. The word ran through her mind and it surprised her. Sure, buying drugs had been something he’d always taken care of, and even though they were for her—most of them, at least—she never wanted to be a party to the dealing.

Chaz sucked some air loudly through his teeth and she turned to look at him. His sour expression did not give her hope. “Thing is…” he said at last, “Wyatt ain’t my friend. He’s a customer. I appreciate him inviting me over to watch the game and all, but…”—he sighed—“I dun wanna talk shit about your husband.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know. He’s pretty rough around the edges.”

“He’s a douchebag,” said Chaz without sugar-coating it. “I don’t even like him.”

“Oh.” Adrian nodded and turned away. “So, why did you even…” Then it dawned on her. She had scarcely said a half-dozen words to Chaz in all the times they’d gone over. She’d just let Wyatt handle the purchases. But if he was willing to do her a favor…

“Well…” she said, taking a moment to swallow down her fear, “if that were the sort of favor you could do for a friend—”

Chaz didn’t hesitate. “Are you my friend?” he asked.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HthknPkb_ZWC3qX0Lfx89CdPLM6CPnIukuiyLuI8Qh4/edit?usp=sharing

Episode 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/h-club-2-43656899

Thoughts?