Notes: Heavily inspired by a fanfic in the Teen Titans fandom and conversations on the couch during commercials.
Background Music:"I Got a Girl" Tripping Daisy
Disclaimer: The awesomeness that is iCarly wrapped up in a quirky Seattle belongs to Dan- the CREATOR MAN - Schneider.
Part One: Scrabble
"Sam, I know that the Dictionary is the only book you read without pictures, but there is no way that's an actual word."
"Look it up, Benson."
Carly rolled her eyes and considered the spray bottle under the sink. Maybe it was just the rain, but today her friends were bickering more than usual. They argued before class about why Sam should have been doing her own homework last night instead of staying up to watch some lame horror movie with clowns because if she had, she wouldn't have been pestering Freddie via text at two in the morning for answers. They argued over lunch about why Freddie's mom insisted on packing healthy lunches that Sam had no benefit in mooching off of. They argued on the way home over the video they were going to use on that night's show. And now they were arguing over a game of Scrabble because Sam insisted that "Litvak" was an actual word.
"Litvak," Sam recited, hands on hips ala Benson-you-nub, "Noun. A Jew from Lithuania or a neighboring country/region."
Freddie gaped and sputted something that Carly translated as "Just because you're Jewish…"
"That's 20 points for me, and the game," Sam replied smugly, waving her empty tile rack around his nose.
Sensing a confrontation, Carly stood up at once and declared they should have snacks.
"And that's the plan."
Marissa Benson chewed on a nail, eyes popping out in frantic anxiety. "Are you sure about this, Spencer? It doesn't sound very safe…" she began.
Spencer looked ceilingward - Gas bubble! - and thought of pointing out that Mrs. Benson thought plastic snap buttons were unsafe. Sadly, there was no way to execute this plan without the help of Freddie's mom, and bringing up unsafe fastenings was not the way to win her over. "I thought you might say that…" he said aloud. "And that's why I went ahead and set it up already."
She stopped chewing on her nail immediately and pinned him with a look of utter shock. "You what?!" she screeched. Spencer winced.
"It'll be okay!" he reassured her, waving his arms around in the space between them, anticipating an attack. "I had an emergency kit installed last year, and I'm wasn't the one who worked out the technical stuff. I paid the guy who fixed it last month set it up this morning." "Wasn't he very unreliable?"
"Uh… no. Just really slow about getting it done."
"Well, I'm very upset that you set it up without telling me all the details, Spencer!" she chided, shoving him out the door and across the hall. "You'd better hope we're not too late to stop them."
In her frenzied Mother Hen mode, she deftly knocked his wrist aside and turned the key herself, jolted when the chain lock denied her. The She pushed it open enough to get her face between the door and its frame, and a loud electronic hissing thump issued from within, followed by a trio of shouts in rapid succession.
"Freddie!" she cried, pummeling her shoulder against the door. Spencer made a mental note to get yet another chain lock for their door and nearly collided with her in front of the couch.
Carly was standing there, a shattered bowl of bacon nacho cheese at her feet, eyes incredibly wide.
"Freddie and Sam are stuck in the elevator!" she said, pointing.
Well, in all fairness, the brilliant plan hadn't been wasted, exactly. More like screwed six ways to Sunday.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
"Carly! Get my mom!"
"I'm here, Freddie!" Mrs. Benson cried, pushing Carly out of the way to stand in front of the elevator.
"I'M STUCK!"
"We're both stuck, Sam!"
"SHUT UP, BENSON!" This exclamation followed by a loud smacking sound and a groan.
"Mom…"
Carly buried her face in her hands. "Sam, please don't kill Freddie!"
It took twenty minutes to get the elevator repairman on the phone, and before Spencer could get a whole sentence out, Mrs. Benson intervened yet again, shooting a "You'd better get down and fix this immediately!!" into the mouthpiece of the phone. Carly, meanwhile, was guiding her friends along the back wall to open the panel that hid the emergency kit.
"Can't we just use the escape hatch?" Freddie whined.
"If we can fit your fat butt through, Benson."
Carly made an exasperated face. "It's too small. The last time we had to get the elevator fixed they had to close up the big one to install that hydraulic cable-whatever to make sure that the next time it failed it wouldn't drop faster than the Tower of Terror. The new one is only big enough to access the emergency she new one is only big enough to access the emergency she new one is only big enough to access the emergency she new one is only big enough to access the emergency switch, which doesn't do us much good, since Freddie's mom threatened the repairman already."
"Can you at least shove a sandwich though there?" Sam pleaded.
"A ham sandwich," Freddie added. "I don't want to be the only thing around when she gets hungry." This was followed by the sound of scuffling. Carly guessed that Freddie had been kicked.
"Don't you dare hurt my Freddie, Missy!" Mrs. Benson snapped, pounding on the elevator door once. Sam made a retching noise.
"Don't call her that, mom," Freddie whimpered. The doorbell rang.
"It's about time!" Mrs. Benson raged, dragging the repairman in. "What kind of idiot agrees to tamper with an elevator at the request of a – a hapless idiot!"
Spencer tried to look as though he wasn't a hapless idiot at all. Carly's mouth and eyes were suddenly very big.
"Spencer... what does she mean, he agreed to do this?"
Under fire from both women, Spencer and the repairman exchanged looks of desperation.
"I did it for your own good!" he cried, leaping over the couch and making a break for his room. The repairman made a dash around Mrs. Benson and started pulling out tools as fast as he could in an attempt to keep her at bay. Carly buried her face in her hands again and retreated to the kitchen. She had every intention of telling Sam whose fault it was that she was stuck in the elevator with Freddie.
"Give me your sandwich or die, Benson."
"Carly made five! and you just inhaled four! This one's mine!"
Sam raised en eyebrow, ala Momma-is-not-amused, Benson and snatched it away. Whatever possessed the kid to think that he could stand up to her? – in a halted elevator, no less! "Sam," he protested.
There it was. The faintest stab of guilt. Groaning, she tore the sandwich in half and pretended she didn't notice when she threw him the bigger half.
"This is agonizing," she grumbled, slouching into the corner.
Most of Carly's face appeared through the opened emergency switch window. "I've got fatcakes and Scrabble!" she called, trying to sound cheerful, like a mom popping in on her kid and the neighbor girl while they were up in his treehouse.
"Scrabble?" Sam asked, sitting up a little.
"So you won't get bored. The repairman's got Freddie's mom standing over him and his every move, so I think it'll be another twenty minutes...?" she speculated, shoving a dozen fatcake packages through plus the folded up Scrabble board, two trays and the bag of tiles. Freddie heaved an annoyed sigh.
"What's wrong, Freddork? Can't taking losing to me any more today?" Sam asked around a huge bite of fatcake. Freddie considered it a skill to be able to understand what she was saying. "My mom's going to smother me for the rest of the week after we get out," he explained. Sam grinned.
"Probably." Throwing him a tray, she set up the board and passed him his tiles. X, D, M, I, L, B. What a lousy rack. She knew it, too, by the way she was grinning.
He spelled out "DIM" on the board and drew an A and a T.
Sam took his D and finished it up with "-ORK".
"Sam..."
"Don't you dare tell me that's not a word, Freddie," she threatened, holding up a fist.
He added "-AT" to her R. She punched his shoulder.
The whole elevator shuddered and dropped an inch.
Sam added "-ATCAKE" to Freddie's "FINK". He countered with an S and "-UPID". She knocked over the board and wrestled him into the opposite corner.
"Don't kill each other!" Carly's voice warned from above.
It took another half hour to get the elevator to respond to the light panel, and when it finally opened, Carly crossed her fingers behind her back and prayed. The floor was littered with fatcake wrappers and Scrabble tiles, as expected. The surprising thing, however, was Sam's head in Freddie's lap. She was fast asleep, and the look on his face was bewildered.
"Uh... I don't want to wake her," he said slowly. "Could you just close the door again?" Mrs. Benson gaped.