camren one shots

princes to princesses

wc: 1300 words - camila comes out, non-au style, not too much camren but this idea was living in my brain rent-free

it was a scary moment in my life when the princes in my fantasies turned to princesses.

a constant in my life until that point was my mother's talking about the boys floundering through my school and how one day i would find a man that my father would, quote, "scare the crap out of." we humored what i would want in a future husband when i hit my teen years, someone kind, someone loving, someone funny, someone supportive of my dreams.

those conversations lingered through my time in x-factor and into the early days of what would become a chart-topping girl group, even though i started having too many questions for someone now in the public eye and too few issues with people putting me with men to "boost my image" or make me more favorable as an up and coming popstar with the other four girls.

it started in my head, the hes turning to shes for my future spouse as i dreamed lazily during late nights when i couldn't sleep. they then moved out of my head and into song lyrics that i crafted between long days of working when i couldn't get a certain woman out of my head and just had to vent it somewhere, even though i was reluctant to show it anywhere else.

one night, however, when i was talking to my mom and having that conversation again, she asked me why things didn't work out with the boy i was dating for no more than two weeks.

i blurted out, "no boobs."

we both went silent and didn't speak of it for a long time. this only solidified what i already was scared of, coming out.

things shifted in the coming months. i would be asked what i wanted in a boy and instead of saying he, i said they. instead of saying boy, i said somebody.

i was wandering around the hallways of the hotel we were stuck in one night because i couldn't sleep when someone tapped me on the shoulder. i turned and looked, and it was dinah, bleary-eyed and confused. she asked me what i was doing up and i told her the simple truth, i couldn't sleep. she wrinkled her brow, but told me that she would instead walk with me until i decided to go to bed because there was strength in numbers.

she woke up more as we walked, talking about the random things that had happened over the past few weeks since we started our headlining tour. we talked about the reactions of people meeting us for the first time and oh my god, we're actually famous, people look up to us, and how lauren and normani almost got kicked out of a rest stop for bickering about god knows what.

the conversation then turned to one of her favorite topics, gossip. she asked me about shawn, the boy that i had befriended in the past year and seemed to get along with. i told her that he was just a friend and not what i was looking for in a significant other.

she then asked why i always said significant other? why not use the word that everyone else uses, husband?

i then told her how it was because the idea of spending my life with a man was near physically repulsive and her eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she put the pieces together. i didn't have to say it for her to understand, and while in front of everyone else she'd tease me about boys, it was in the depths of the nights that we were all alone and talking over her hot cheetos and my bananas that she would ask me about girls.

i ended up coming out to my mother by accident two years later after i had left the group. i was in a meeting with her, my manager, and some studio people when i blurted out that i didn't want to use male pronouns in my songs because "i like girls!"

unsurprisingly, i was turned down and told that i was a new pop star and if i wanted my career to take off, i would have to suck it up and write he in place of she, even though the thought of a man doing half the things i wrote about made me want to throw up on stage.

they told me that my coming out would be a pr nightmare and i bit my tongue and nodded along, all the while my stomach ripped itself apart.

enter shawn mendes.

he had been my best friend throughout my leaving from fifth harmony and embarking on my budding solo career with my debut album that did better than i ever expected. he told me one night when we were facetiming and rambling about chinese food of all things that his people presented him with the framework of a duet that he wanted me on.

i shrugged, we had done a duet before and it was more fun than i had expected, so i asked him what it was. he explained the concept and i remember so distinctly biting my lip and wincing. his explanation made me less keen on the idea, and he decided to table it for later.

ten fast months passed before my people came to me and begged me to do the project with him, so i complied and we did the song.

it wasn't until the day before the song came out that my manager gave me a crazed look and told me that shawn and i would make a good couple.

everything made sense all of a sudden, and i really did throw up. why did they have to do this with my best friend? why couldn't it be someone that i had just met? i had to reiterate to my manager that i was in fact not attracted to men and i didn't want a repeat of bad pr boyfriends that made my stomach churn with anxiety, especially when my songs reeked of someone from a previous life that made happiness thrum through my entire body and made me feel a million times more alive than the human puppet i was now conditioned to be.

i was instead told again to suck it up and shove my tongue down my best friend's throat and choke on the fact that i watched him fall in love with me even though i could never reciprocate.

that ended almost as quickly as it started out of the preservation of his feelings, and i came out for the third time in my life.

years of anger started to pool when quarantine started, and he heard my lengthy rants when he stayed with my family and i about how i hated the fact that i left the group to be more me but i was still confined to the heterosexual narrative that was only making me hate my job. he told me that that's just the industry, mila and the anger kept building and building and building.

until one day when i did this. i comprised this message of how my princes turned to princesses.

this has sat in my notes for six months now. it has been here since before i shot the film that made me so eager to tell my truth once and for all in the first place. i've added to it, i've eliminated parts, i've definitely pissed off some people along the way.

when i initially begged to use she instead of he, i was told that my switch would hurt sales and people wouldn't want to support a lesbian.

i told them then and i'll tell them again today, i am gay, and if people have a problem with that, then i didn't need their support in the first place.

princesses can love princesses. princes can love princes. princesses can love princes. who do we think we are to bar anyone from loving and being loved in return?

love only,

camila