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This is what Cameron has learned:
And it's not like it's something he wanted to learn, or tried to learn, like he did with "not sucking at soccer" or "talking to girls without throwing up a little bit in your mouth beforehand." It's not as though he was all like, Oh yeah, Ferris, teach me this thing about yourself, and when I say "teach me" I mean do so by forcing me through a series of humiliating, illegal, and/or life-threatening experiences. That's what I mean, Ferris. Teach me, oh Holy One.
That's not how it is. Like, at all. But if there's one thing he's learned about Ferris Bueller, it's this:
He likes to play games.
Par example: In the sixth grade Cameron kept getting his lunch money stolen, which bothered Ferris not only because he missed out on commandeering half of Cameron's chicken nuggets (Mrs. Bueller spent ten minutes every morning putting together a homemade lunch for Ferris, balogna on white bread or chicken soup in a thermos or sometimes even a pack of red Jell-O, because Mrs. Bueller wanted Ferris to have a big, healthy, non-cafeteria lunch. Ferris wanted half Cameron's chicken nuggets), but also because it was, as he put it, the least original form that bullying could take.
"And I would've let them off the hook if they'd at least shown a little creativity in the execution," Ferris explains, eyebrows raised, Doritos staining his fingertips and the corners of his mouth. "But they had to be so boring about the whole thing. I mean, first off, to pick you as a target—skinny, nervous, weird—is such a predictable move."
Cameron squinted. "Maybe that's why they—"
"—and then the whole—" Ferris curves his arms into muscles at his sides, furrows his brow, drops his voice into an oafish imitation "—'Hey! You! String bean!' thing..." He sighs, rolls his eyes, leans back into the pillows at the head of Cameron's bed. "So trite."
Ferris had said, Whoa whoa whoa, hey fellas—later he likened this opening line unto that of the cool cop from Hill Street Blues stepping in to break up a fight between two ruffians, while Cameron likened it unto that of Benvolio mediating a potentially fatal brawl between the Capulets and the Montagues, to which Ferris replied, 'Cameron, that's not required reading till eighth grade, put that shit away'—You know what's better than stolen lunch money?
The bully and his posse had been dumb and easily enthralled, the ideal audience for one Ferris Bueller, who was, first and foremost, clever and enthralling. "What," the ringleader had posed, stuff-nosed, cross-armed.
"Homemade lunch," Ferris answered, that simple, open grin. Bit lopsided. Like Han Solo. So he said, anyway.
"What, you got one?" the beefy kid prodded, turning his eyes away from Cameron's wadded-up ball of dollar bills (he had already extended it, face-up in his sweaty palm, so as to save time) and towards the brown paper bag Ferris had swung nonchalantly over his shoulder.
"Yes," Ferris confirmed, dumping the contents out onto the tabletop. It was one of the good ones, Campbell's in a thermos, red apple already in perfect slices, bag of Cheetos, container of pudding. And a note from Ferris' mom, sweetheart in there somewhere. "Would you look at that?" Ferris whistled, and Cameron ducked his head, shoved his hands into his pockets. Which was dumb, actually. He should've known by then that Ferris would win.
The bullies gathered round, observing this suddenly glamorous prospect of a mom-made lunch, and just as the big one reached for the pudding Ferris caught his wrist, tutted, "Ah, ah, ah! This one's mine—my mom made it for me. But in the future, you could tell your moms to make you lunches, and then you won't have to steal lunch money. Doesn't that sound fun?" It was bordering on blatantly condescending, and Cameron visibly blushed, eyed the bullies from beneath downcast eyes, thinking of all the ways despite his bravado in which Ferris was painfully naive—like that he couldn't conceive of a mom who wanted to pack her son a homemade lunch but couldn't, or one who didn't want to at all, besides Cameron's.
The bullies blinked, slack-jawed. Cameron saw victory in Ferris' eyes, but that was always there. Still: something about the combination of pudding and Cheetos and Ferris' easy smile had them wandering away, nodding and buzzing to each other.
"It's all a game to you, isn't it," Cameron had said then, and he says it again now, just hours later, at the foot of his own bed, and Ferris grins wide and lopsided and says, "You got it, Cam. Now if you don't come to Sally Porter's Halloween party this weekend I'm gonna find a new best friend."
He pops another chip into his mouth and wipes the orangish dust on Cameron's pillow, and after Ferris leaves and Cameron's mom gets home she yells at him, and he doesn't say anything, but Ferris never does it again anyway.
Sloane moves into town when they're thirteen, and her hair is the color of chocolate and she wears boots sometimes instead of shoes and sweaters that fall off one shoulder to display the slender bone and a smile that's crooked, too, so Ferris and Cameron ride their bikes round and round her cul-de-sac like they belong there, trying, without success, to get the new girl to come outside.
"Don't you have a plan?" Cameron finally hisses, and Ferris licks his lips.
"Let's play a little game," he says, spindly legs scraping against the spokes of his bike as he wheels past Sloane's open window.
"That's your plan?" Cameron clarifies. "We're going to—"
"—make her think we're riding away," Ferris whispers (like there's anyone really listening), and while Ferris's games are always effective, sometimes they are blissfully simple too.
They ride their bikes one last time to the top of the street, then let the wind from the downward slant pull back the hair at the slope of their foreheads and just like that, they turn the corner and they wait.
Sloane comes outside. She stomps onto her front lawn, hands landing on her hips beneath the strappy red dress she is wearing. It has flowers on it. She looks around.
Ferris pushes forward on his pedals and Cameron follows, cruising back up the road like they were only on a bit of a detour, and when Sloane catches sight of them she smiles. Lopsided.
"I think you should dance with Sloane this Friday," Ferris tells him their junior year. "I think she likes you."
"Seriously?" Cameron wonders, even though the thought of asking Sloane out makes his stomach churn. Last year they played seven minutes in heaven at a birthday party and Ferris somehow forced him into the closet with Sally Porter, who had really shiny hair, and Cameron made out with her for seven minutes and then for seven minutes after that Ferris had to guide him through deep breaths by the sink in the bathroom. He'd wanted to ask Sally out but when Ferris asked, days later, why he didn't, Cameron could only answer that he liked her too much.
"Seriously," Ferris tells him, whipping out the grin, which isn't supposed to work on Cameron at this point but not-so-secretly still does. That's another thing Cameron wants to learn, can't seem to: how to be immune to Ferris.
And so at homecoming Cameron asks Sloane to dance, and they're dancing and they're talking and she laughs every once in a while at the things Cameron says, and he's feeling okay, he's feeling all right, and it's not until Sloane looks up at him, dead serious, and says, "Do you know if Ferris came with anyone?" that he realizes what this is about.
Ferris asks if she asked, his eyes doing that thing they did right before he hoisted the Canadian flag up the pole last September—excited, Cameron thinks it's called, somewhere between mischievous and excited—and Cameron says yeah, yeah she did.
Ferris slaps a hand down on Cameron's shoulder, stares across the dance floor to where Sloane is chatting with a football player, toying with her earlobe, and without even looking away he says, "Thanks, Cam," and pushes through the crowd of girls who are trying, failing to talk to him and walks right up to Sloane, whose round red lips mouth, Yes.
They dance. Someone spikes the punch, and Cameron doesn't care.
It's Wednesday. They're on the couch. There is sun streaming in through the windows. They are watching Madonna gyrate on MTV. They are alone.
Ferris's house has this warmth about it, and the big open windows seem to add to that effect, beams of golden sunlight slanting in from on high, lighting the particles of dust that float in the air. One of the beams is angling towards the bookcase, one's hitting the TV, and one is landing right on Cameron's thigh.
Cameron's slightly hyperventilating over the fact that a couple minutes ago he stopped using Madonna as background music for his thoughts and is now actively observing her hip thrusts, and listening to her lyrics, and thinking thoughts like, I wonder if she writes her own music, when Ferris pokes his knee.
Cameron looks over, blinking in the sun. Ferris's knees are tucked up to his side, one arm is along the opposite side of the couch and the other is across the cushion between them, dangling there loose and guilty.
"What," Cameron says, because, what.
"Nothing," Ferris tells him, and this time he pokes the outside of Cameron's thigh, one finger digging into the ironed lines of corduroy. "There's a rainbow," he explains, solemnly. "You know, from the sun."
"On my thigh?" Cameron wonders, looking down, because if the angle of the sun were such that—
"You can only see it from here," Ferris informs him, that voice of his, almost like there should be a duh tacked on to the end of it.
Cameron looks back at Madonna. What exactly constitutes a material girl, he wonders.
Ferris's finger presses an indent a few inches up Cameron's thigh, and this time Cameron shifts away and frowns.
"Ow," he offers. "That hurts." A pause. "What are you doing, Ferris."
"Nothing," says Ferris, dropping his arm from the top of the couch and retracting the other. He was straightfaced before, but now his lips begin to curl up at one end. His eyes look like they did right before he hijacked the school intercom, and why does that—why does Cameron's stomach lurch. Why does it do that. "The rainbow," Ferris explains.
"Oh," says Cameron, because right now the sun is numbing up his legs, and his mouth is kind of dry, and he's feeling lazy and lethargic and like all his limbs are sticky, heavy. Molasses. He looks back at Madonna.
Ferris scoots over a cushion.
It's a Madonna marathon, apparently, because even though Cameron was hoping they would play "Thriller" again, "Vogue" pops up instead, which blows, not only because it isn't "Thriller" but because it's really, really catchy.
This time it's four fingers curling around the middle of Cameron's thigh and recoiling as soon as Cameron snaps his head, which is a little bit funny, because it's not like he wouldn't be able to tell who it was.
"Was that—" Cameron stutters, and he's blushing, and he's half expecting Ferris to blush and interrupt him in fellow stuttering, but this is Ferris, and he should know better.
Cameron knows Ferris, or at least he kind of knows Ferris, and he can tell Ferris is swallowing a grin when he answers, "Man, that rainbow sure is a bother, Cam."
What is this, Cameron thinks. What's this game, because the whole thing would be a lot easier to understand if he knew the name of it, wouldn't it. He wishes Ferris would let him in on the plan beforehand, but that's not really Ferris's style, and Cameron's kidding himself if he honestly thinks he's special enough to have been in on the joke all these years.
Maybe Cameron ought to look Ferris in the eyes, and not ignore the four-finger grab, and say, like, Hey, whoa, Ferris, but he's never been good with confrontation so instead, instead he looks back at Madonna.
It's not even a full ten seconds later that Ferris wraps his fingers around Cameron's thigh again—rests them there like he's waiting—and when Cameron doesn't flinch away Ferris slides his hand up, up, up, until—
Just a glance, then. Just one glance, and this time Ferris isn't waiting to field his questioning gaze, he's leaning forward and sideways, his shoulder brushing Cameron's, and strands of his hair are spilling over to veil his flashing eyes and he's got one tooth sinking into the curve of his bottom lip, which is slowly tugging, tugging, tugging upward into a grin.
Cameron looks away—Madonna's dressed like she's in a Jane Austen movie and she's singing Beauty's where you find it, not just where you bump and grind it, but instead of drinking tea and eating crumpets she's grinding her hips into this guy's crotch, it's all so fucking provocative—and Ferris's hand is reaching for the zipper on Cameron's jeans, and unzipping it, and reaching beneath the tight band of his boxers to wind his fingers around the head of Cameron's cock one by one.
Cameron jumps at the first touch, and stiffens, but suddenly Ferris is chuckling against his side, his mouth right there, the wet inside of his lips catching against the top of Cameron's ear, and his whole torso straining into Cameron's rigid side, and he breathes, "Relax, Cam," and sounds so amused. Cameron almost says, "What are you playing at?" but decides against it and gulps instead, lets his limbs go limp.
The pads of Ferris's fingers are tracing feather-light lines over Cameron's dick, which is painful and cruel and very, very distracting, so distracting that Cameron almost doesn't register it when Ferris starts to slide off the couch, not even bothering to stop his lips from sweeping against Cameron's jaw and throat on his way down, leaving a glistening trail there from his tongue.
Ferris's knees make a quiet plunk when they hit the floor. Cameron can see the itchy carpet start to dig in already, circling red above Ferris's calves, and he's about to be like, Ah, hey man, that must hurt, you don't have to—which, of all the dumb things that have happened so far would be the fucking dumbest reason to stop. So. Why stop.
Ferris is pulling Cameron's jeans down, and yanking his boxers with it, and as Cameron's dick springs out of his underwear and into the air—dear god, the open, definitely-not-private, golden, sunwarmed air—Cameron chokes out, "Ferris, what—" his voice gravelly, low in his throat, but Ferris just says Sshh and Cameron always follows Ferris's instructions, so he does.
And then it's Ferris shuffling closer, his elbows hitting Cameron's knees, knocking them apart so Cameron is open, exposed, his arms out wide as well, and Ferris slipping his head between Cameron's thighs and opening his mouth, and sliding his lips around Cameron's cock so Cameron's head falls back and hits the back of the couch. "Oh, fuck," he says, because the head of his cock is rushing against the velvet inside of Ferris's cheek, and Ferris's tongue is lagging up the bottom from base to head, and more than anything it's the sight of Ferris's head bobbing, up and down and up and down and up and down, slow, so slow, and Ferris's smirking lips forced out around his length, and Ferris's fingers plunging ten purple bruises into the sensitive pale inside of his thighs, keeping them apart.
Cameron bucks his hips and Ferris stops, hovering with his mouth poised around just the tip of Cameron's cock, because he knows Cameron will wish it was more, wish the wet heat of his mouth was wrapped around every inch of him till the tip was nudging the back of Ferris's throat. Cameron stills, tension building in the muscles of his stomach, a groan itching at the back of his teeth. Ferris takes him all the way in, then, and his mouth is everywhere, he's everywhere, the sun, the sun is everywhere, dust lazing above Ferris's head, and that's when Cameron whimpers because fuck it, at this point Ferris has taken every ounce of pride he has left in him and he doesn't care, he doesn't care. And that's why he digs his hands into Ferris's hair—because he has no pride so there's no point in denying he wants to feel him, feel the sweat begin to form at the nape of his neck as he drags his lips up Cameron's cock, flicks his tongue against the tip, then slams back down. He wants to push down, light, with all ten fingers tangled in the hair on the back of Cameron's head, and maybe, just maybe, feel him yield at the touch.
When Cameron cums the words that tear out of his mouth are nothing profound, mostly just a string of fuckferrisfuckfuckfuckferris (which, objectively, is pretty catchy—all that alliteration), and Ferris swallows and pulls off with an obscene popping sound. Wipes his lips with the back of his hand. Rocks back onto his heels, fully cloathed. And grins. Lopsided.
"Man, what a rainbow that was!" he chirps, winsome as ever, and that's when Cameron realizes it hadn't rained.
It doesn't rain Thursday either, but Ferris' fingers are wet anyway on Cameron's cheek, Sloane's hand is on his hip, her frown, his voice, "Hey, wake—oh shit. Cameron, come on... Cameron! Come on, wake up! Hey!"
And a lot of what Ferris does is a lie. And a lot of the time it fucking blows being his best friend.
Right now, though—right now it's Thursday and he isn't joking. He's scared, he looks scared, he looks like Cameron most of the time. Ha. Ah. Cameron starts to smile.
"Ferris Bueller, you're my hero!"
And then it's "Oh, you bast—you son of a bitch!" and Cameron laughs, lets Ferris not-laugh, laughs harder for it. Feels better than he has in a long time