AN: I'm going to try and update this once a week, just so you guys know.
While this story is rated T, some characters are prone to use strong language.
Bright sunlight was blaring down on Cam, he slowly blinked the haze from his eyes and sat up. He was in bedroom, but he didn't seem to remember how he'd gotten there. The last thing that he could remember was sitting down on the couch last night after that everything grew fuzzy.
The smell of freshly cooked bacon and eggs wafted through the air, Cam's stomach gave an expectant growl so he reluctantly climbed out of bed. He took a step and suddenly pitched forward, landing on his hands and knees. Confused, he climbed to his feet once more and took a hesitant step. They felt completely normal, he mentally scolded himself for being so clumsy before.
As Cam stumbled into the kitchen and sat down in a stool at the counter his mother placed a plate of steaming bacon and eggs. "Good morning Cameron!" his mother said brightly, "We didn't hear you come in last night."
Cam blinked, from what he could remember he never went out of the house last night, "Mom, I never left."
She raised a quizzical eyebrow, "Really? Because when your father and I got home at nine thirty, you weren't anywhere in the house."
From across the kitchen, his litter sister, Julia, smirked into her breakfast. She tried her hardest not to show her amusement of her brother being punished and she wasn't doing the best job. Cam glared at her from the corner of his eye.
After refocusing himself on his mother once more, Cam repeated. "Mom, I did not remember leaving the house last night."
His mother narrowed her eyes, "Cameron, if you were drunk last night I swear to god that you will be grounded until you turn eighteen." Julia snickered in the background.
"NO! No no no no! Mom, I wasn't drunk last night. I didn't see anybody and I swear that I never left the house." Cam exclaimed, trying desperately to dig himself out of the metaphorical hole that he had somehow fallen into.
His mother gave him a stern look and then glanced at the clock hanging on the wall, "Oh, shit," she muttered, "I'm going to be late for work." She then hurried to the table where her purse and keys were resting. "I'll see you both later, love you," she began to walk out the front door when she must have realized that she forgot to say something because she turned around once more and said, "Oh and Cameron, we'll talk more about this when I get home." And with that, she left, slamming the front door behind her.
Silence filled the house as Cam began to wonder about what did happen to him last night. He couldn't seem to remember anything after sitting on the couch and he kept wondering how he could get that message across to his mother, was it possible that he could have fallen asleep there and his parents didn't see him. It didn't seem very likely, the front door faced the living room and they'd practically have to be ignoring him to not see him.
Julia stood up and moved her plate into the sink, and filled it with water. For some reason the sound drew him, he lifted his eyes from his plate of food and focused on the faucet. Then suddenly it turned off completely. Cam jumped back in disbelief, that wasn't normal. "What is wrong with you?" his sister whined. He then noticed her hand on the knob which controlled the outflow of water, and for the second time that morning, Cam scolded himself so being so jumpy.
"What? Oh, nothing," he responded quietly.
Julia squinted at him, "You were drunk last night! Weren't you?!"
Cam sighed, "No! I wasn't." His sister scoffed in disbelief. Not wanting to be in her presence anymore, he hastily finished his breakfast and started to head towards the stairs. "I'm going to take a shower." He announced to his sister and quickly hurried to the upstairs bathroom. He quickly grabbed a fresh pair of shorts and a shirt from his bedroom and walked down the hall and entered the bathroom. After closing the door behind him, Cam turned on the water and quickly whipped off his clothes. He stepped in so rapidly that the water didn't have time to warm up and it was still slightly chilly. Cam didn't care, he just time to be alone to think.
He didn't get that long. He got ten seconds, to be exact.
Suddenly a tremor swept over Cam's body and he lost his balance and toppled over onto the fiberglass bottom of the bathtub. Cam twisted around to see what caused the problem, and that's when he began to scream.
A tail. That's what caused him to fall over. Cameron Mitchell now had a tail.
A knock at the door startled him, and suddenly Cam twisted the knob in the shower so that the water turned off. "Cam," Julia sounded exasperated, "You okay? I heard you screaming."
"Y-yeah," He replied unconvincingly, if she came in here and saw him like this it would probably be the end of the world, "I'm fine." He said gaining a bit more confidence. He couldn't blow his secret only seconds after discovering it himself.
He heard retreating footsteps from the other side of the door and once again he was alone. Cam took a moment to collect himself, he inspected the appendage that now took place of his legs. Right below his naval, his pale skin melted seamlessly into dark blue and black speckled scales. A small dorsal fin ran from the tip of his tailbone to about his mid calf. His wide fin spread out where his feet should have been. His tail looked practically identical to Zac's, except for the fact that Cam's was a few shades of a darker blue.
Cam couldn't breathe. This was all too much for him! He was a fish, just like the others. Now he was different than everybody, his parents, sister, some of his friends and most importantly Carly. His stomach churned, this could't be happening. He had to stop thinking about everything, he could tell that he was on the verge of having a panic attack. He just focused on getting his breathing even.
After taking a minute to examine his new extension and calming himself down, Cam began to pull himself from the bathtub. He had to hand it to Zac for lugging this stupid thing around for almost year now, his tail was really heavy and it took him about ten minutes and a whole lot of upper body strength to get him out of the tub. After he was finally successful, Cam sat himself up and began to run a towel vigorsselly up and down his tail until there was no more water left on his body.
Once again the tingling feeling returned to the bottom half of his body and Cam watched in awe as his tail shrunk and separated, leaving two very human looking legs in its place. Gradually he began to stand up on his reformed legs, he expected them to be shaky and not be able to hold his weight, but surprisingly enough, they stood as strong as ever.
Cam picked up the change of clothes that he had brought into the bathroom with him. He hurriedly pulled the shirt over his head and zipped up his shorts. He left the bathroom and took off down the stairs. As he approached the front door he hastily called out to his sister, "I'm going out."
Her response came from back upstairs, "Um, okay?" He'd definitely need to come up with an excuse for his weird behavior for her.
Cam didn't need anymore of a reply from her, he stepped over the threshold, slammed the door behind him and began to jog down the street. He couldn't believe it, he didn't know whether to be terrified or excited. At the moment, he was leaning more towards terrified. Suddenly, everything began to make sense. He thought back to the night that Zac had first transformed, the next morning he had suffered from memory loss as well. How he was going to end up explaining this to his mother, he had no idea. With more thought on the subject, he realized that this was his life now, lying to everyone. He could not tell anybody, especially Carly.
He almost trembled at the thought of Carly finding out, she specifically told him that he did not want him to have powers and if she found out now, then he'd most likely be dumped. And if Zac or the girls ever found out, then they'd, of course, never trust him again but it wasn't like he remembered planning on doing this to himself. He most definitely couldn't let anybody find about about his tail, at least not just yet.
Cam walked until his feet were sore and his throat was parched, so he made his way to the Ocean Cafe. As he walked through the front door he tried to hide his paranoia, he never noticed that water was literally everywhere. Maybe he just wasn't ready to face the public just yet, he turned to leave but "Hey stranger!" said a voice from behind him. He whirled around and came face to face with his girlfriend Carly, she smiled and planted a small kiss on his lips.
Cam forced a smile as best as he could, it probably came out more like a grimace, "Hi, Babe."
"I need to get back to work, but I made you this." She handed him a glass with his favorite juice in it (tropical punch) and gave him a small wave before returning behind the front counter with David. He was lucky that she didn't notice that he wasn't acting like is normal self.
Cam scanned the crowd of busy patrons until he found Zac sitting at a table by himself. Before he could convince himself that it was a bad idea, Cam weaved his way in and out of the crowd of customers making his way over to Zac's table. As he approached, Zac looked up from his phone and smiled at him. Cam sat down in the seat across the table. "How's everything?"
"Oh, fine. Fine." Cam tried his hardest to sound casual, "How did everything go last night?"
"It was a completely uneventful evening. Evie's getting really good at fighting the full moon and of course you know that I'm an expert." Zac said with a laugh, taking a careful sip of his drink.
They exchanged small talk for a couple of minutes but were both silenced when a waitress tripped while walking past their table and sent drinks flying through the air. Unfortunately, that left Cam and Zac completely drenched in sticky juice. For a moment, Cam was about to laugh it off when he remembered the new changes that he was undergoing.
Realizing that Zac was already out of sight, Cam sprinted to the cool room and banged on the locked door. "Zac, open the door," Cam insisted.
"Cam, just guard. I'll be out in a minute." Came Zac's response from the other side of the door. If he didn't open the door in the next five seconds it was game over, he would be completely exposed.
"Zac! Let me in right now!" Cam demanded.
Hearing the urgency in his voice, Zac obliged and only opened the door wide enough for Cam to squeeze through. Zac began to ask, "What's so imp-" but he never got to finish his sentence because they both collapsed to the floor all in their fishy glory.
Zac started to dry himself but then noticed Cam on the floor next to him, now shirtless as well, and Zacy asked, "Cam, what the hell is going on with you today..." his voice faded as Zac's eyes traveled to the lower part of Cam and they rested on where his legs should have been. And Zac's mouth fell wide open, Cam cringed.
"Cam. You're a- a... Well you have a..." Zac stuttered, after finally regaining his voice he burst out with, "You're a merman!"
Cam sighed, "Yes, I know." He really sucked at this whole secret keeping thing.
After his initial shock wore off, Zac's expression turned cold and stern. "You did this to yourself last night." It was more of an accusation than a question. They were still laying out with their tails on the cold tile of the cool room floor.
"Yes, I assume so," Cam said quietly, he averted his eyes from Zac's.
"You assume?! How the hell could you not remember doing something like this!?" Zac yelled at him, his voice growing with intensity and volume with each word.
"I don't remember doing this! I don't even remember leaving the house last night! I didn't want to be like this!" Cam roared back, the thought crossed his mind that someone might be able to hear them but at the moment Cam was to overcome with fury.
"I seem to recall you being very keen on acquiring a tail a few months ago," Zac retorted. "Why did you change your mind?"
"Carly," Cam stated, "She wouldn't want to date a fish. She told me herself. Now look at me," Cam gestured to his tail, "We'll be broken up in less than a week."
Zac's expression softened a bit, "Then we won't let her find out. We won't let anybody find out. It'll be okay." Zac had barely been able to finish his sentence when the door of the cool room was tugged open. Zac didn't even have time to make himself invisible, not the it mattered, it was David who opened it. He was still fairly new to the whole mermaid secret and wasn't completely used to it yet.
Sirena had done her best to explain everything, who had a tail (Zac and Erik were a big shock to him), how powers worked, the moon pool and the pod. David took it all really well, but he just sometimes couldn't help getting a little over excited.
"Okay, I'll need your help in a minute Carly." David called out. He turned to enter the cool room and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of two mermen laying on the floor. His jaw dropped to the floor. "C-cam?" He stuttered. "You're a merman too."
Cam sighed and nodded. His tally was up to two people who already knew within the first twenty-four hours of his transformation. This had to be some kind of merman record.
"But how-," David was cut off.
"David, do you still need my help back there?" Carly called from out in the restaurant.
Cam's eyes widened in fear and he vigorously shook his head, "Do not let her see me!" he whispered urgently to David. He nodded and went to distract Carly so that she wouldn't come into the back.
As quickly as he could, Zac dried the both of them off and their legs and clothes returned. They both walked out of the cool room as nonchalantly as possible and tried to escape from the cafe. As they walked along the pier Cam slowly tried to separate himself from Zac, but he grabbed Cam's arm, forcing him to follow. "You're not going anywhere. We need to talk." Zac said sternly.
Then Zac got out his phone and sent a quick text to David, telling him to meet them at Zac's house after his shift and not to tell anybody about Cam. After Zac received a confirmation text from David, he put his phone back into his pocket.
The two of them completed the walk to Zac's house, both dreading the talk that was about to come.