Chameleon | ONC 2020

2: Coran

The nightclub attic was essentially a useless roof cavity. Useless to the owners of the building, at least, just a place to store spare glasses and bits of seasonal rubbish. Chameleon lay awake in the dark with her feet resting on a box of dusty tinsel and old baubles, her nose almost pressed against the roof beam. On one side of her was the back wall of the nightclub. On the other side, an empty space and a cold draught.

Somewhere below, her boyfriend was hanging out with his nocturnal posse, knocking back drinks and talking about awful things, undoubtedly. She could have gone with them, but Coran was different around his friends. It was harder to forget he was a werewolf. She couldn't say she enjoyed being stared at like a slab of meat or a bloodbank, either, which was all she was to the others. There were some faces she could never replicate, some groups she could never blend into, and the sorrow-clouds over many of the wandering undead and cursed were so thick and dark as to be suffocating.

She was still awake when Coran lumbered up to their little space hours later, drunk and glazed-over. To her relief he didn't bring anyone with him, but she could tell from the dense cloud trailing him that he wasn't in a good mood and that it might have been better if he had.

He grunted by way of greeting as he lay down beside her.

"Argument?" she murmured, shifting over onto her side with a rustle and the tinkle of the baubles in the box at her feet.

"No," he muttered. His hand slipped onto her waist and rested there, a warm weight. Once, she had found it comforting, another soul who she could talk to about her issues, because he had gifts no one understood, too. Now, she silently wished he would get off. She wished she hadn't asked anything, because she could tell from the next intake of breath that he was going to expand on that 'no' whether she wanted it or not. "Some people just can't accept that they're idiots."

"You're surprised?" she muttered.

"When it's obvious to everyone else, can't help it." He rolled onto his back with a groan, and she found herself pressed further into the dusty shadows, staring at the seam where the roof met the floor. He stank of sweat, and booze, and wet dog. It was funny; she never used to notice the wet dog part.

He sighed. "You? What's got you in a funk?"

"Work," she said. "What else?"

Coran snorted gently. "You played that dude like a fiddle today. It was impressive."

Chameleon wasn't sure it was a compliment. Of course he had meant it as one, but she wasn't proud of it. He never complimented her hair like that, or her makeup, or her outfit. That was what normal boyfriends did, right? And at that thought, she almost laughed aloud, because nothing about her life had ever been or could ever be normal. There were probably girls out there who would envy her for dating a werewolf, though god only knew why. Perhaps they just enjoyed pulling clumps of fur out of the plughole and never being done with the hoovering.

Coran sighed, and Chameleon tensed. "Wanna...you know..."

"No."

"You never want to anymore."

"Always tired. Sleeping in attics doesn't help."

"You're hard to please, you know that?"

Chameleon let loose a humourless huff, watching a spider crawl further into the darkness a few inches from her nose. "I think most people would say I put up with way more than I have to, actually."

"Christ, Cham, you have got a head on," Coran muttered, heaving his bulk away from her. She only regretted that it let the draught back in. "Look, I'm sorry you had to run a job tonight. Me and the guys are planning something good, we just needed a stopgap."

"Not even much of a stopgap," Chameleon muttered. She rummaged in her bag for Desmond's phone and chucked it behind her, then flicked just one of the two twenties he'd given her in Coran's general direction. The other she shoved deeper into her pocket, just in case.

"The phone's pretty good. It'll fetch at least fifty," Coran muttered. "And if I can find someone to hack it, he might have left some accounts open."

"I don't care what you do with it," Chameleon muttered. "I just do not care. Go to sleep."

Chameleon didn't need to see Coran's sorrow cloud to know what the seething silence meant. There was a common misconception about werewolves - that they shifted when they got angry - but they typically had a lot more control than that. Coran had never shifted on her, and they'd had plenty of fights.

But you couldn't half tell when they were pissed.

A low growl filled the room. Chameleon tensed, and a moment later the barrage she had been expecting washed over her.

"I didn't make you join us," he snapped, and she could feel his gaze burning into the back of her head. "You were doing this stuff before we even met! And now you just whine all the time, like it's my fault you ended up here."

Chameleon clenched her teeth. She wouldn't rise to the bait, she always rose to the bait...and she was going to do it again, just like she always did.

"I'm just tired, okay?" she snapped, rolling over to glare at him. "I'm tired of sleeping in attics, I'm tired of dodging your awful friends, I'm tired of running." And I'm tired of you. "Just because you get a kick out of it doesn't mean I do."

His eyes shone yellow in the dim blue light, flashing a challenge at her. She wasn't stupid; she didn't meet his gaze. The smell of him was suffocating. "Then why haven't you left yet?"

His sorrow cloud was closing in on her, making the space seem even more cramped. There was nowhere for her to go except past him, and even the thought of touching him suddenly seemed repulsive. She wondered if she was just out of practice, so the job had put her in a worse mood than it normally did. It was hard to fathom now, but there had been a time when she'd enjoyed running cons; it had given her a sense of control nothing else had ever provided. Whatever it was, it had crumbled, and so had the excitement that came with dating Coran.

"I will," she said, even as she realised that was what she intended to do. "Get out of the way. I'm going."

He blinked. "What?"

"Move, Coran. I'm leaving."

"Wait, no, Cham..."

"You're right," she snarled. "I'm sick of this. I don't why I've been here this long. Enjoy the phone."

She crawled past him and shuffled down the attic ladder, leaving shocked silence behind her. She was shocked; it had never been in her plans to leave. Certainly not tonight. It was as if someone else had taken possession of her, spoken through her mouth, and it was only when she was halfway down the road outside the nightclub that she slowed, stopped, and realised she had nowhere else to go.

Desmond's face flashed into her mind. She should have picked someone like him; someone safe, and boring, but secure. Human.

She sighed and covered her face with both hands. She couldn't face going back straight away, but now she was facing a streetside doorway to sleep in instead of an attic. At least the attic was closed in.

"What am I doing?" she whispered.

Something had snapped today; something had been threatening to snap for a long time. Even she'd been taken aback.

Maybe that's what the girl at the station had seen.

The girl at the station.

Chameleon dug in her pocket and retrieved the business card. She had no idea what time of night it was by then, but she had limited options. She wished she'd kept Desmond's phone, but she still had the twenty; she'd go to an open off-licence and break it down into change, and then she'd find a phone box.

That seemed easy enough.