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They’re all of them crowded around the coffee table in front of the television, lights dimmed but not off because Cameron is making a valiant effort to do some actual studying while Ferris overlays his own personal narrative track over the top of the flick that he and Sloane are watching. It’s some romantic movie with a dreamy, dark-haired lead and it had been at the top of the stack of videos she’d hauled home from the rental place after her class on Friday, for better or worse.
Mostly worse, as Ferris had decided roughly eight minutes in that the sleepy-eyed hero was infringing on his dreamboat territory and started up a running commentary that was not especially kind, interspersed with the occasional break to oscillate between jamming popcorn into his mouth and tossing it toward the screen. His aim is pretty good, at least - Cameron notices the few times he glances up to watch, because he’s always loved to see Ferris make a spectacle and everyone damn well knows it even if he’d never admit it aloud - nailing the romantic lead in the forehead four times out of five and leaving little greasy smears on the glass.
“You’re gonna clean that after, right?” Cameron asks, sharing a look of fond resignation with Sloane while Ferris, sandwiched between them as per usual, lobs another puffed kernel in the direction of the screen, lush lower lip pulled into his mouth in concentration.
“Sure I’m gonna clean it,” Ferris agrees in the immediate, easy way that means he’s definitely lying.
Cameron sighs and shakes his head, ducking his attention back to his textbook and making a mental note to wipe down the T.V. with a little glass cleaner before they go to bed. Or, well, before they go to sleep anyway. Jittery-edged as Ferris is this weekend, Cameron would have to be a moron to put big money on the chances that he would concede to anything so dull as sacking out at a reasonable hour with just a little rudimentary pawing. Once he’s had his fill of casting aspersions upon his unfortunate movie doppelgänger, Cameron has no doubt that he’ll slide seamlessly into his usual gleeful goading in an attempt to draw both Cameron and Sloane into the three-ring circus that their bedroom so frequently becomes.
And isn't that a thought, Cameron considers, lightheaded for a second with the occasional, overwhelming wave of disbelief that crashes over him every time he remembers that he has the admittedly somewhat bizarre privilege of calling the two beautiful weirdos posted up next to him on the sofa his own.
“Oh, now what is this garbage!” Ferris grumbles, and takes an entire handful of popcorn out of the gargantuan bowl balanced on his knees, throwing it in a buttery cascade. His aim this time leaves significantly more to be desired, sending a shower of tumbling corn kernels all across the coffee table and, accordingly, Cameron’s carefully curated notes.
“Dammit Ferris,” Cameron grumbles and shifts so that his feet are on the floor instead of tucked up underneath him, which is something of a production considering that even in his junior year of college Cameron is as much a lanky beanpole as he’s ever been.
(“You could quit anytime,” Ferris had murmured against his mouth one night a few months after they’d started this thing, leaning up on his toes while Cameron ducked his head down to meet him.
“Quit what?” Cameron had asked, feeling dopey and dazed, like they’d been smoking reefer on the roof of the library again, though that dizziness had been altogether less pleasant than the one currently setting Cameron’s head to spinning.
“Growing,” Ferris had grumbled, as if it should be obvious. “You’re already tall, dark, and handsome. No need to overachieve when it makes it difficult to do this.” And then he’d gotten his fingers into Cameron’s hair and slipped his tongue past his teeth and Cameron had been able to think of very little beyond the slick, hot slide of Ferris’s mouth for the next several hours.)
He reaches for the college-ruled composition book lying open on the coffee table and spends a long moment staring consideringly at the popcorn kernels therein, rapidly leaking grease spots onto his rows of tidy copperplate while he hems and haws over what he’s supposed to do with them. He glances at Ferris’s popcorn bowl, shifts slightly toward it, and then reconsiders when Ferris darts him a narrow glare and curls his arms protectively over his snack.
Cameron doesn’t want a repetition of the Trail Mix Incident. He’d been pulling half-melted, off-brand M&Ms out of his pockets for weeks after Ferris had upturned the entire dish over his head. Not seeing any other immediate course of action beyond getting up and carting the whole mess to the trash can in the kitchen - which would require him to abandon both the perfect dip he’s worn into the sofa cushion over the last hour and a half and the warmth of Ferris next to him - Cameron sighs despondently and tips the popcorn onto the carpet. They're going to have to clean up Ferris’s mess anyway. A few extra kernels slowly growing stale on their bland, stain-resistant shag in the meantime probably won’t kill anyone.
“This is what you’ve reduced me to,” Cameron says forlornly. “I used to be responsible. Trustworthy.” He wipes his hand across the neatly organized pages, dusting them free of any lingering crumbs. “Now I’m just the guy who knocks trash to the floor because he’s too lazy to walk ten feet.”
“We’ll vacuum when it’s over,” Sloane provides, tilting a reassuring little smile at Cameron over Ferris’s shoulder.
Ferris, it appears, doesn’t notice either of them talking, too busy scowling at the screen where the male lead is serenading his lady love with a boombox foisted dramatically over his head, in a move not unlike one of the many, many patented Ferris Bueller Big Ideas to which Cameron has had a front row seat throughout their long years of friendship. He’s worrying at something in his mouth, maybe a piece of popcorn stuck between his teeth, or maybe just chewing the inside of his cheek, but Cameron can tell from the way his jaw is clenching and unclenching that he’s legitimately miffed when he mutters, “That’s our thing.”
“Hm?” Sloane asks absently, obviously only half an ear on whatever shrieking tantrum Ferris is building up to.
“That’s our thing,” Ferris repeats, voice an acidic hiss. He wheels to look at Sloane, and then Cameron in turn. “That’s our thing! This asshole stole our move.”
Sloane squints thoughtfully at the screen and tilts her head, twisting her mouth into an amused little moue while she says doubtfully, “I’m pretty sure that singing under a lover’s window is something of a bardic tradition. I don’t know that we can really claim it as ours.”
“Bullshit we can’t,” Ferris grumbles, sinking sullenly back into the sofa and throwing another piece of popcorn in a lazy, haphazard arc at the television. He looks over at Cameron with his brows knit together, that pretty mouth pulled down into a pout that’s only mostly affectation. “We spent the entire summer wooing you and it was the moonlit serenade that did you in, you remember?”
“How could he forget?” Sloane asks, teasing and fond, hooking her chin over Ferris’s shoulder and nuzzling her cheek against his. “You remind him all the time.”
“It was a good move!” Ferris says, voice tight and defensive, but he leans into the contact without even seeming to think about it, and something in Cameron’s stomach swoops at the beautiful picture they make.
Sloane is grinning at him past those big, wet puppy eyes that Ferris likes to turn on them both pretty routinely, despite the fact that Sloane has been fairly immune to most of Ferris’s standard tricks since her senior year of highschool and Cameron considerably longer than that. He catches the mischievous glint in her gaze and screws his mouth up thoughtfully for a second, letting his eyes meander toward the ceiling while he considers.
“I don’t know if a choreographed lip sync to Whitney Houston really counts as a serenade,” he hedges, trying not to grin too much when Ferris immediately blusters into debate mode, puffing himself up and glaring at Cameron with righteous disbelief while he splutters.
It’s mostly for show, and they all know it. Sloane is biting her lip to try and keep from laughing, face tucked into the pale curve of Ferris’s throat, and Cameron has his mouth pressed into a thin line in his efforts to contain his amusement, eyebrows high and expectant.
Even Ferris can’t quite keep a straight face as he gestures between himself and Sloane, mouth tilting up at the corners while he half-hollers, “We spent two weeks perfecting that routine! I overcame my chronically weak ankles to let Sloane spin me at the end!”
“The dip was a nice touch,” Cameron concedes, nodding at Sloane, who inclines her head graciously in return, bestowing one of her sly, sweet smiles from just beyond the dark spill of hair curtaining her face.
“Two weeks we worked on that and this chucklehead couldn’t even be bothered with mouthing the words?” Ferris continues. He leans back into Sloane, frowning and throwing another, half-hearted handful of popcorn. “I can’t believe this guy is the guy that’s going to go down in history as the window serenade guy. I was supposed to be that guy.”
“We,” Sloane corrects gently, while Cameron ducks his head to keep from laughing.
Ferris pats at Sloane’s hair and dutifully parrots, “We were supposed to be that guy. It’s a damned travesty is what it is.”
“I don’t know,” Cameron says thoughtfully, affecting a studied air of distraction and making a point not to look up from his notes because he knows that when Ferris is in a mood like this one, he hates seeing that all the attention in an immediate radius hasn’t succumbed to his gravitational pull. “His production value’s a lot better than yours was.”
Ferris makes a high, keening, wounded noise and claps both palms to his chest, upturning the popcorn bucket in all his drama while Sloane sighs, low and long-suffering.
“Et tu, Cameron?” Ferris demands, and when Cameron sneaks a glance his dark eyes are wide and stricken, brow knit handsomely under his gently wilting fringe. “How can you say that?” He reaches a hand up without looking but continues on admirably despite the fact that his palm lands nearly dead-center on Sloane’s face. She corrects him with a guiding hand around his wrist so that he’s cupping her cheek, and leans her head so that her temple is resting against Ferris's crown. “You know Sloane is very sensitive about her dance moves.”
“Sloane took six years of ballet classes,” Cameron sighs, rolling his eyes and closing his textbook over his notebook and his pencil.
(During their second semester, when Ferris had still been making half-hearted overtures toward earning a degree despite the fact that it was clear to everyone that he was monstrously ill-suited to pursuing further education, he’d carted home a couple of packs of multi-hued Gelly Rollers and announced loudly that Cameron was playing it too safe.
“I’m instigating a fast in protest!” Ferris had said, legs sprawled out over Sloane’s knees and head in Cameron’s lap, squarely atop the introductory American History textbook Cameron had been attempting to parse.
“Tonight is spaghetti night,” Sloane had said absently, her hand curled around Ferris’s ankle. Ferris had considered this for a moment.
“A sexual fast,” he had corrected, grinning up at Cameron and wagging his eyebrows. “No more nookie until you learn not to fear your mistakes, young man.”
Cameron had arched a disbelieving eyebrow.
“You,” he clarified, “Ferris Bueller, are going to abstain from sex until I start writing my notes in pen?”
He’d slipped his thumb casually up under the hem of Ferris’s undershirt, letting it drag warm and promising along the waistband of his slacks, and Ferris had given him a narrow, calculated look while he cheeks flushed rosy.
In the end, Ferris had lost that particular bet, but Cameron appreciated his concern and he and Sloane had fallen into the habit of doodling on each other’s bare limbs when they were both too wound up about their exams instead which Ferris seemed to like a hell of a lot better, anyway.)
Cameron slides his homework onto the popcorn-littered coffee table while Ferris admonishes him for his cruelty, gazing dreamily up at Sloane and reassuring her that she’s an elegant dancer despite all of the ballet lessons.
“Thank you, darling,” Sloane murmurs, and ducks her head to kiss him.
It isn’t especially salacious - just the bare press of their lips together, Ferris leaning up into it like he always does, so eager for affection and lapping it up like a cat in the sunshine - but the way that they slot together, the decadent curl of their mouths where they’re smirking at the corners, lights a little fire in Cameron’s belly that he had no idea what to do with for so many miserable months of his misspent youth.
Now, he reaches out and curls a palm over Ferris’s knee - he looks faintly ridiculous, sitting sideways with his legs crossed, whole torso slumping back into the curves of Sloane’s body beside him. Cameron squeezes gently, and says, “We both know who was leading that number, Fer, and it sure wasn’t you.”
Ferris makes a faint, wounded sound against Sloane’s mouth and pulls back from the kiss to turn and gape at Cameron. Sloane is biting her lip so hard that Cameron is worried it might bruise, and he can see her shoulders shaking from here.
“I go to work and slave all day to bring home the big money and this is the kind of disrespect I get from the man I love,” Ferris laments, even as Cameron shifts to turn toward him.
“You spend eight hours schmoozing assholes in fancy suits,” Cameron says, unimpressed. “You love your job.”
“You’re missing the point, Cameron, my love,” Ferris says easily, and that warm little twist in Cameron’s belly swoops and dives again. “I work hard to keep you both in the manner to which you’re accustomed and this - ” he waves a hand at the T.V., where the credits have started to roll, “ - this charlatan is going to go down in the annals of history as a romantic dreamboat when I was running that scam three years ago and much more elegantly.”
“So it was all a scam?” Cameron asks, leaning up and bracing himself with one hand on the back of the couch so that he can hover over top of Ferris, who gets with the program almost instantaneously. He uncrosses his legs and wiggles around for a second until Cameron can slot comfortably between them, reaching up to grab a loose handful of Cameron’s sweater.
“I’m afraid so,” Ferris says mournfully, though the way that he’s grinning dampens the effect somewhat. “Pretty good one, though.”
“Yeah?” Cameron presses, smirking.
He’s close enough that he can feel the warmth of Ferris’s breath when his smile tilts, lush and sweet and self-satisfied, and says, “Well, it netted me you, so - ”
Cameron doesn’t bother letting him finish. If you give Ferris an inch he’ll have conquered half the country before you stop him so it’s better not to let him get started at all, if you can help it.
He’s always been an exceptionally tactile sort, Ferris, and he pushes up into the kiss with his whole body, knees pressing in toward Cameron’s thighs and fingers tightening sweetly in the fabric of his sweater. Cameron has always liked kissing, and swapping spit with these two particular people is so much better than it has been with anyone else that Cameron can hardly believe it.
Ferris’s mouth is soft and a little wet and he moves so beautifully under Cameron that it sends a little lick of heat sparking up Cameron's spine. After a long, slow second, Cameron pulls away with a sigh, grinning a little at the way Ferris just lies there for a beat, eyes closed and face flushed, looking totally blissed out. He darts another, quick kiss to Ferris’s cheek and then tilts his face up to meet the weight of the gaze he can feel lingering on him.
“Hello Sloane.”
She gifts him with a sweet, pleased smile, eyes dark and hooded, cheeks dusted pink, and reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“Hello Cam,” she replies, and her tone is so warm with its slight, subtle lilt, and her mouth looks so soft that Cameron can’t help but kiss her too.
Her lips are slick with some kind of sweet gloss, but Cameron doesn’t mind, revels in the slide as she tilts her head to better meet him and slips her fingers into his hair. She licks at the seam of his mouth, quick and warm and flirting, and Cameron opens up for her without a thought.
Sloane is so much steadier than Ferris is, in so many ways. Steadier than Cameron, too, where it counts, and Cameron never really understood the expression ‘safe at anchor’ until she was there with him to temper Hurricane Ferris and hold Cameron still in the moments he needs it most, when he would have otherwise been tossed about in the wild throes of Ferris’s personality to both their detriment.
She runs her thumb along the plane of his cheek and pulls away with a contented little hum.
Cameron takes a breath to steady himself and risks a glance down to find Ferris peering up at them with his lip pinned under his teeth, pupils blown wide and wanting, hand still twisted in Cameron’s sweater.
“Did you want to keep moaning about some nobody stealing your thunder or - ” Cameron asks, trailing off while Ferris smirks approvingly up at him.
“Cameron Frye, you know the way to my heart,” he sighs.
“I know the way into your pants,” Cameron says.
Ferris rolls his eyes, mutters, “Same, difference,” and pulls him down again.