Notes: This started out as a oneshot and became this unruly thing that I will be posting in about three or four parts. And I haven't forgotten about Ties or my Drake & Josh fic in case anyone cares.

Again, Laura is Sam's mother.

Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly, and I certainly don't own ham.

For the record, I don't even like ham.

Our Love Was But a Sham

For eumonigy, because she told me to go to sleep, so naturally, I write fic. (I'm thinking of retracting that dedication now though, you know? You shot me last night.)

i.

"Samantha Madison Puckett, if you don't get out of there right now –"

Sam scoffed. Like she'd really see discipline from Laura. "Just hold on a second, will ya?" she shouted back.

The door rattled loudly, shaking on its hinges. "You've been in that bathroom for over an hour, Sammy. I know you're not fixing yourself up in there, now get out."

Sam looked down into her lap. The ham sat there on a platter, its jaggedly-cut, pink edges bright against crinkled tinfoil that looked like hundreds of tiny, crumpled stars.

"I wasn't feeling well after dinner, alright?" she yelled truthfully, and then added: "God mom, do you gotta know everything?" for the sake of irony. Laura really knew nothing about her.

"Well, I need you to hurry it up," Laura said, and this time her voice carried from farther away. "I need a few things in there, and you've been holding me up for the past hour."

Sam rolled her eyes at the ham – those chums at the petting zoo'd said pigs were intelligent creatures; it'd be in perfect understanding – before putting the remains over the bathroom sink. She reached for a purple towel tucked away on a shelf, grabbing for her appreciation of how ridiculous and incongruous the ham appeared in the bathroom all the while.

If Laura saw it, she'd use it as an excuse to look like she had wasting disease and stay in bed all week while wearing a bikini and grumbling about how the only place where ham should be located near a scale was in a butcher's shop.

Whatever. It wasn't like Sam brought ham into the bathroom so it could spend quality time with the bath salts.

Her room was just sadly lacking a lock, due to Laura's almost irrational fear of Sam hiding explosives in the house. So really, there was nowhere that the ham was going to get to spend quality time with her face without Laura screaming at her about her 'no snacks between meals' rule.

The top drawer below the sink was a shallow, long one, and a half-formed idea was all it took to make Sam wrench it open. It displayed only one thing, really, and that was about a hundred tubes of lipstick.

Shades of reds, corals, browns, and pinks quivered like running watercolors, and Sam ran her fingertips over the row of lightest colors until she touched one of pale pink. Laura wouldn't actually use it tonight, but that'd make it all the more better.

Her jagged kitchen knife winked roguishly in the overhead bathroom lights before Sam took it to the ham, carving out a perfectly cylindrical piece to match the shape of the lipstick.

That'd teach Laura to serve her spam for dinner.

When she left the bathroom, she had the ham tucked under the bright towel she had wrapped around head, because really, Laura would never notice there had been no running water. Now she stood at the end of the hall, her arms crossed like it was supposed to be an admonishment.

Sam smiled sarcastically. "All yours, sweet pea." Laura's red mouth pursed into a line like a fresh scar.

"You were trying my lipsticks," Laura said confidently and not at all displeased.

"What is it with you and those lipsticks?" Sam asked, miffed. She was obsessed. "You're obsessed."

"I just think you'd look nice all dolled up," Laura shrugged, looking more pleased by the instant. "If you want me to, I could help you –"

"Save it, mom," Sam said, putting up a hand. She turned on her heel, walking slowly down the hall and toward her room. "If I want to look like I got a bloodied lip, I'll just punch myself in the face."

The walls became duller and the lighting dimmer as she moved farther into the apartment; it was almost like getting sucked into a black hole. Somewhere near the light, Laura mumbled something about the cat. Then, "Alright," she said louder. "I'm not going to be home tonight - not until later on." It didn't matter. "Do you need a ride to the Shay's?"

Sam sighed as she grasped the doorknob. The brass was old and chipped away under her palm, making grooves like a grater, and she let her head fall forward until it hit the collage of bright posters over the door.

"Either that or I'll catch a ride with a rogue circus leader who'll take me away to be his dancing girl," Sam answered brightly.

She waited.

"Be ready in half an hour, Sammy." The click of the bathroom lock was sharp, carrying like a pinprick into her skull.

Sam turned the knob and pushed into her room, letting the pink walls swallow her like the inside of a great, gaping mouth.

oOo

"And…we are clear!" Freddie shouted, lowering his camera. He was beaming like a drunken garden gnome. "Great show, guys."

"'Cause you weren't on camera," Sam intoned brightly. She watched his face fall until she was satisfied with the damage she'd inflicted. "Now if you kids don't mind, I need some ham."

Sam looked at Carly, an eyebrow raised in question as she swung her arms at her sides, measuring the meters, keeping the time it'd take for her to have the ham in her mouth.

Carly laughed. "You're lucky Spencer just bought some," she said. "If not, we'd probably have to check you into a clinic for ham withdrawals. One with ham IVs."

Sam's vision blurred a bit as she let her mind mold itself around that vision of perfection. That is, before she started toward the stairs, and it was all business.

"No," Sam scoffed, then answered more cheerfully: "More like I'd be checked into prison for slaughtering you all." She got to the edge of the staircase and paused, hearing the steps behind her halt also. "Except Carly," she said before continuing in her steps.

"Aw," Carly sang.

Freddie made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat as the three of them made their way downstairs. "If you love ham so much, why don't you just marry it?" he asked, because Freddie was all swollen wit.

Sam let out a short, supremely un-amused laugh. "That's mature," she deadpanned. "But hey, if you love Carly so much, why don't you marry her?" The banister of the second floor staircase slid under her palm. "Oh, wait," she pouted sarcastically. "It's because Carly doesn't want you."

"Can you guys please not discuss marriage so loudly?" Carly hissed in a frantic whisper. Her steps behind Sam were lighter, bouncier. "You know Spencer's upset because Clarice just dumped him." Sam jumped down off of the last step. "And I don't like you trying to give away my hand in marriage," Carly said as an afterthought.

Sam was going to throw a comment back at Carly, but her mind was held all too flimsily together by visions of tangled pink and cream strands of pork flesh flushing through the fissures of her brain, so she strode over to the refrigerator instead.

She almost forgot where she was – almost - as her hand curled around the handle of the refrigerator and she pulled, but that was at the same moment the front door crashed open, and she heard a shout from behind.

"Don't!" Spencer screamed, and with that one irrational request streaming behind him, he lunged all the way to the refrigerator. Once he was there, he slammed the door closed.

Apparently after that big rumpus, all he could do was let out a sound like a dying moose, and Sam, Carly, and Freddie all gaped at the bent and heaving arch of his back.

Spencer hacked and sputtered, looking more wretched than The Little Engine Who Could in his old age. "Theresben arakel honsam," he said.

Ok. It would ok, as long as they could hide his insanity from Carly's granddad -

Spencer shot up then, shaking himself out like he was made of bags of Jell-o before he slumped against the refrigerator.

"Um…Spence?" Carly asked warily, moving forward. He was hers, after all.

"I just got back from the supermarket," Spencer breathed in response. He leaned his head back onto the refrigerator and looked down at them through hooded, haunted eyes. "There's been a recall on ham."

"What?" Carly and Sam said simultaneously, and Sam heard Carly's voice a lot closer than she would have thought.

"On ham?" Freddie asked incredulously, so for once, Sam was in agreement.

"There're fliers all down the meats section," Spencer breathed heavily, making a swooping gesture that almost caused a bad reaction with Carly's face. "Then I asked the butcher. Boy, am I out of shape."

"What do you mean it was recalled?" Sam asked frantically. "What did he say? Tell me you're lying!" This was madness.

"There was something about bad feed," Spencer wheezed, full of as much information as the back of a cereal box. "Turn on the TV."

Sam lunged, and it only took an agonizing ten seconds of confused bustle to get the truth from a newscaster:

"…this fact, consumers are strongly advised to throw out their pork products or return them to their local supermarket for a full refund. This includes bacon, pork chops, pork rinds, sliced ham, spam, some variety of hot dogs, and bologna, among other things. Factory managers are being questioned, and the FDA deduces-"

The edges of everything went a bit fuzzy, and for a moment Sam couldn't tell if it was her about to lose consciousness or the TV reception being in sympathy with her, before she sensed Carly and Freddie staring at her.

It was like being prodded in the face with electrodes. She needed something the sooth her, and that called for one thing. "I'm just gunna go to the refrigerator…have some ham now," Sam said dazedly.

"Sam, no. You heard the newscaster. You'll get some crazy ham disease!" Carly cried out as Freddie said, "Seriously, Sam. Don't do it."

"No," Sam smiled, feeling too many of her teeth exposed. "No, ham's never hurt me."

Spencer was watching them from over by the refrigerator, and catching her gaze, he said, "I think you guys should go back up to your room." Every part of Sam trembled.

"What are you gunna do?" Sam asked stiffly.

"Come on, Sam," Carly urged. "Let's go back up to the studio. Freddie, maybe you should -"

Sam shook her head wildly, pointing accusatorily at Spencer. "No, no, no, no, no. Don't you hurt that ham. It never did anything to you!"

Spencer stared back, looking like a ham-threatening deer-in-the-headlights, and his hand twitched, turning some invisible switch that churned the tension in the room to chaotic.

Sam lunged.

Before she could get far, she felt Carly reach for her from behind, scrabbling at her arms, and Sam flailed and clawed and reached, as everything pounded down on her, her movement becoming more difficult when she saw Spencer wrench open the refrigerator and take out the platter of ham.

"Don't you dare!" Sam warned as he edged against the counters, the ham teetering nervously in his hands.

"Do it, Spencer," Carly called into Sam's ear. Her nails were digging into Sam's arms.

Spencer sidled over toward the door like he had something down his pants, clutching the ham so it laid against his chest. "I'm um. Just going to dispose of this...elsewhere," he said before scrambling to the front door.

"Spencer!" Sam screamed, and suddenly there was another pair of hands on her as she kicked and screamed. "Don't you – let go of me! Spencer, where are you going with that ham?"

Carly and a lump that was probably Freddie tore at her, and she couldn't see anything but hands and hair and a door closing. "Come on, Sam, it's for your own good," Carly panted. "Ow, that was my eye!"

"No!" Sam screamed, supremely unconcerned with the punctured eyes of traitors.

Freddie's mom rushed in then, holding a red aerosol can and hollering frantically about ticks as the three of them toppled to the floor. There was something sharp in her side and something bitter in her mouth as Freddie's mom sprayed whatever was in that bottle over them, and Sam kicked, and she pushed, and she got nowhere.

"You can't do this!" Sam hacked, moving her mouth against sharp drops of liquid that felt more like fire, though now she wasn't the only one who was shouting. She screamed louder. "I'll always eat ham! You hear me? Always!"

oOo

The atmosphere was a heaving thing, its breath pounding against her like the rhythmic flow of ocean waves. She curled her hands around the hard plastic of her cafeteria tray, but they only recalled brittle, wide-splintering twigs trying to hold up a fortress.

It'd been three days.

Sam stared through a filter of pulsing steam pushing itself away from the mounds drained-looking vegetables. It reached out to her, scraping wispy, curling fingers against the clear plastic of the salad bar.

The light above seemed raw and blinding, and the harshness of it burned her eyes.

Nothing was uglier than this.

Someone knocked her from behind, and her hip rammed painfully into the edge of the salad bar. She turned to give a menacing glare, but it was half-hearted. She was so hungry.

"Come on," someone grumbled from her left, and the sound felt like broken glass being lodged into her ears.

She couldn't stay here any longer. Sam tore away from the salad bar, feeling sick.

So far the cafeteria hadn't shown a whit of respect for the downfall of one of its troops – not even a black spork - though while they didn't serve ham often, Sam thought she saw clouds of unease and woe behind the lunch ladies' eyes.

She had to consider then that they did answer to a higher authority.

The plastic utensils on her tray rattled as she strode toward the exit, and she threw the entire tray into the trash can near the door on her way out, wishing the resulting clatter didn't sound so hollow.

oOo

Sam never thought she'd needed anything before, but now she knew, undoubtedly, what need was – what it was to hunger – and it etched its way down her throat like something dry and infinitely hollow, lodging itself in corners, making her need.

She needed this, and the words were pushed from her mouth before she'd even come to a stop.

"I need ham."

Rodney quirked an eyebrow.

"You're a growing girl –" he started, turning around to put a few very illegal items into his locker. Sam strode around to his other side, reaching out and slamming the door against his arm, the metal-to-flesh clang weaving into his pained "Ow." Of course, she had his attention now. "What was that for?" he hissed indignantly, massaging his wrist.

"I couldn't care less if I were a shrub," Sam said heatedly. "I told you what I wanted, now do your job, and get it."

Rodney slammed his locker shut, his face twisting like he was looking into something too bright. All he mustered then was some sort of sidelong leer. "I always thought you were kind of a delinquent," he said, sounding almost pensive if not for the complete indignation turning his lips and making the words sounds bitter. "But now I know you're a complete nutjob."

Sam just stared. From somewhere around the corner, she heard a teacher scolding someone for dragging a pencil across a row of lockers.

Rodney licked his lips and turned so his shoulder was pressing itself into his locker. He stared Sam down like it really mattered to Sam how he looked at her.

"Sixty," he said, inclining his head, and Sam could see no reason for this other than so he could look down at her with more ease.

"Sixt - you don't know how close I am to losing it," Sam bristled, and he stayed steady, pleasantly observing her discomfort like he was watching nothing more than a fly caught between a glass pane and a fine-netted screen - like he saw this all the time. And well, considering who he was, Sam thought he probably did.

"Okay," he conceded, framing his words with the conviction that the ham would be crafted from gold. "Fifty, but it's as low as I go."

Sam gritted her teeth. "I want it by tomorrow."

oOo

Eighteen hours.

Eighteen hours was manageable. Sam'd waited longer for something she'd really wanted. There was the time she couldn't insult the dweeb for a week, there was the time -

"- and someone's not listening."

"Huh?"

Sam turned her head slowly to see Carly's curled hair very close to her face. Sam mustered a smile. "Your hair's all curly today," she observed.

Carly made a face and grabbed the twisted ends, pulling herself back like Sam was about to snap at her.

From somewhere beyond Carly, Freddie made a noncommittal noise that made him sound like a banshee caught under the wheels of a semi-truck. Sam took this as a pained noises and proof that the universe was taking care of her duties in her time of need.

Carly made a face at him and then turned back to Sam, her entire expression shifting suddenly, the way only Carly could do, as if it had been pressed and folded out in a matter of seconds. "Freddie just told me about how he wants to open one really geeky shop," she said, adding needless inflections until she was almost shouting. "Tell her Freddie!" Freddie bared his teeth in what was probably supposed to be a smile. Sam gave him a fail. "He's going to call it US-B US," Carly continued.

"That makes no sense," Freddie grumbled quietly. Carly smiled even wider, as if exposing all of her teeth would mask his words. And well, Sam wished they would.

Sam looked from one to the other; it all seemed eerily like the time she was in grade school and Laura had gotten her a tutor: the lump tutoring her kept flashing index cards at her whenever she opened her mouth to speak. She pressed her palms to her eyelids; she had a headache.

"Geeky," Sam said indulgently, dropping her hands and fingering the flap on her pants pocket. The pieces of whatever snack Laura had washed with her cargo pants were gritty crumbles at the bottom, and they collected uncomfortably under her fingernails.

Carly and Freddie whispered together in a frenetic rush that sounded more like two spitting cats than anything human, ending when Carly nudged Freddie in the ribs.

"Uh…yeah," Freddy contrived horribly, tugging at his shirtsleeves. "And I'm going to have my employees dressed up as DRAM," he said, like it was a prompt.

"And what's DRAM, Freddie?" Carly asked in a voice that was wrong outside anywhere other than a game show.

"DRAM is a type of random access memory. It stores each bit of data in a separate -"

Carly laughed a loud, dry laugh, making even Freddie inch back, before she wiped away a fake tear and muttered "Oh, DRAM!" like DRAM had just asked her to put on her best dress and go with it to the sock hop, before promptly shutting her mouth and looking intensely at Sam. Sam stared. "Well?" Carly prompted, leaning over in her beanbag. It crinkled anxiously.

Now was definitely the time for some sort of action. She was too tired and too hamless for this. "I'm gunna go get a tuna fish sandwich," Sam said lazily, rising from the beanbag. She stretched and looked down at Carly, who was gaping at her. "And I think you need to check yourself for fever, kiddo."

"Spencer doesn't buy tuna fish anymore," Carly said feebly, with the care more suited for stroking a broken, asthmatic kitten. "It has too much mercury in it, and he said if he wanted toxic fish he'd eat the little, fishy magnets off the refrigerator - after spraying them with rat poison, and - hollowing out their little bubble eyes and filling them with arsenic."

Sam stopped in the doorway, suddenly retracing her steps back to the elevator. She didn't have the energy she needed to run downstairs.

oOo

The first thing Rodney said to her when she met him behind the cafeteria was: "This is really sick, ya know?"

"Yeah, yeah, says the guy who takes gold teeth from hobos while they sleep and then sells burritos from his coat of many pockets," Sam said, her anticipation letting her neglect any marvelling she was required to do at how those two awesome facts might mesh together. She gesticulated impatiently before thrusting a hand out to him, palm up.

Rodney shook his head and unzipped the duffel bag by his feet, his glasses sliding down his nose as he bent over. "That's all very classified information," he said vaguely. Distantly, Sam registered that the bag had been lodged under the dumpster, though that really didn't need to bear thinking about.

"Yeah, that's why I heard it from the janitor," Sam deadpanned, crossing her arms.

He stopped and smiled wryly up at her. They met at the dumpster behind the cafeteria because it wasn't somewhere most kids could get to without being in some type of cahoots with the janitor. He was a shady guy, so of course, Sam was, though Rodney'd threatened to cut her off if she went snooping.

Rodney had also said this was the perfect spot to stash the ham because the garbage masked the smell.

Sam didn't think about what this said about her or ham, but it was better that she didn't, because then she might have had to hit him, and then she couldn't be together again with her ham.

"Money first," Rodney said, holding the duffel bag back a bit. Really, like she was going to gnaw at him for it. She'd never gnawed anyone who wasn't a lowerclassman.

Anyway, why would she want to gnaw on him when there was -

"Let me see the ham first," Sam said impatiently. Her stomach grumbled loudly, and Rodney raised an eyebrow.

He peeled back the flaps of the duffel bag, and a package caked with a sparkling layer of droplets was underneath, sweating a cold sweat that matched the uncomfortable feeling on the back of her neck.

Sam's mouth watered, and she dug into her pocket.

oOo

Sam'd never considered herself a lucky girl - not really - or at least not until one day when she was eight and had gotten insanely hungry because Laura hadn't packed her a lunch. What she lacked in luck, she made up for with the abrasive manner she took on for getting what she couldn't achieve any other way.

When she'd shoved Carly off that bench for her tuna fish sandwich that day, Sam'd expected her to be something more like a shy mouse that'd scurry back into a corner than something distinctly feline, someone who bristled and had tiny scythes for claws under all that fluff.

And she'd really never expected to find something that was so much more like home than anything she'd experienced before. Sam thought she'd gotten lucky that day, and as it turned out, she was lucky today too.

Laura wasn't home, and she wouldn't be home all day, which was the only reason why she was able to do this.

That, and the fact that Carly thought she had detention, and well – Sam hadn't lied. She did have detention.

She just wasn't planning on showing up. And anyway, she'd go back to Carly's place when she was finished here. Here is where she needed to be.

The plastic netting around the ham was a pattern of bright, yellow diamonds that mirrored the shape of a chain-linked fence, something that surrounded anything that was ever worth getting into.

That had come away as easily as tugging the laces from her shoes while she rode the elevator up to her apartment.

She'd bolted when the elevator started to inch open, running farther than she had ever had to run in such a short distance, working at the wrapper, digging her fingers in like a spider working its web.

The second layer of plastic finally came away in the kitchen like the skin of a great snake under the pair of large, red-handled scissors Laura always futilely hid from her.

This pink was a color she'd only seen far behind her closed eyelids lately, not pressed to spots where she could see it, and absolutely not pressed up against her mouth, and so she pressed the ham to herself when that honey-pink color was revealed, running down the hall like the ham was held captive at the other end. The lights shone dimmer as she went, and the ham felt warmer.

There was a terrible moment when her back was against her bedroom door and there was a question against her mind about whether the ham was pre-cooked, but that was after the first piece was between her fingertips and on its way to her mouth; there was no question a couple of seconds later, because it was sweet and tasted nothing like old blood or something that would get her sent to the ER for food betrayal.

Then there was nothing - nothing but her and ham as she chewed and inhaled and tasted and was alive, alive through the taste of sweet meat, how it felt against her tongue and the trails she chewed to the edges of bone that came slowly unveiled; and it all lasted until she felt ready to burst and the bone had been picked clean.

Mostly picked clean. She slumped into the dark carpet when there wasn't anything left, the painful swell in her belly stinging, and the only thought she had then was that she didn't even care that the bone was in her way this time.

It was only an empty thing, now. Lacking purpose.

Dully, she thought that she could go back to Carly's now, since technically, she was supposed to stop by after detention anyway, but -

Sam took the knife and worked - actually worked for something - whittling away the last pieces of meat that looked like tiny, pink leeches. She didn't feel like she could move but still, she drudged over to the kitchen to get a Ziploc bag, placing those morsels there instead of in the trash, since she thought she'd knocked over the trash can anyway.

In the end, she shoved the bag under her bed. In case.

In case. Which was weird, because she never planned ahead. But - she might need those pieces again.

One thing was for sure, though.

Sam had no idea how hungry she'd really been.

Thank you muchly for reading! Your thoughts are appreciated. :D