A/N: This was written for the Break a Leg Challenge on 5_4_3_2. If you're following the challenge, I actually used all four pictures as inspiration. Have a bit of fun figuring out which bits are from which picture, if you want. (Some of them are obvious, of course.) I'm not totally sure how I feel about this fic, as I dragged it out of myself, forcefully writing it because I haven't written anything in quite some time. It takes place, as you will soon be able to tell, after iSaved Your Life. It's as ship-free as I come. There's pretty much a little nod towards every main ship, actually. I'd really appreciate it if you'd let me know what you think about this one in a review or comment.
On the Mend
Her mother's meds had been adjusted again. So when she came home at 2am with a sack full of corn and a missing shoe, instead of slipping past a snoring parent, passed out on the couch in front of Antiques Roadshow, she was stopped by an overly polite cough halfway down the hall.
"Sam, if you think you're getting away with this, you'd be sorely mistaken."
"Oh, sweet niblets," Sam mumbled under her breath.
This wasn't the first time she'd been grounded, but it was the first time in years that her mother had the willpower and even keel to enforce it. Two weeks! Two weeks of straight-home-after-school, leaving the iCarly broadcast to languish in boring photomontages and special guest appearances that not even a studio full of corn could make funny. Two weeks of being cooped up in her bedroom with nothing but a window to stare out of. Two weeks of being simultaneously furious with modern medicine, and grateful that her mom was a functioning adult again.
Sure, Sam had been pushing it, coming home hours past midnight, if at all, for at least a week. But she had a perfectly good excuse. Her two best friends had started kissing each other, and then they had stopped, and then it was totally weird. It was all Sam could do to keep them and herself entertained and distracted from the pervasive air of awkward. Stupid Carly and her no keeping secrets rule. Sam liked secrets. Sam thrived on secrets. Secrets were what gave her the upperhand.
About eight days into her punishment, she couldn't take it anymore. Sam had run out of homework to ignore, clothing combinations to try on, ways to annoy her cat. And, besides, there was a school dance that night. Carly wasn't going. She'd said something about feeling bad that Freddie couldn't dance with her. Sam had rolled her eyes so hard it had strained a muscle under her left eyebrow.
It's not like Sam wasn't introspective enough to figure out her feelings in this matter. She was angry that Carly was making so many concessions towards Freddie's broken bones, jealous at all the affection she was giving to him, and upset that she had gone back on her many years of insistence that Freddie was just a friend and nothing more. It hadn't taken a bacon metaphor for Sam to figure this out, but eight days into having nothing else to contemplate made for something far from an accepting, understanding state of mind.
The dance would be her secret. She could climb out her window, shimmy down the tree like she'd done hundreds of times before, sneak off to the school dance, and come back before her mother would check on her at bed time. It was a classic teenage activity. She didn't have to tell Carly everything, after all. She didn't need Carly, and she didn't need Freddie, and she would have an excellent time by herself.
She chose her dancing shoes wisely, and clambered up onto her windowsill. The grey winter twilight silhouetted her form, and she swung out an arm to grasp the sturdy branch that had held her weight innumerable times. Her escape would be silent and swift. She might even grab a burrito on her way.
It was with thoughts of burritos in her head that Sam heard a sickening crackle and toppled out of her window with a giant dead tree branch pressing against her skewed calves.
Sam didn't remember much, other than screaming shamelessly for her mother, and a whole lot of sharp, grating pain, and in the ambulance, with her mom's cool hand on her sweating forehead, she fainted.
*
Carly had decided that doing homework on a Friday was definitely more exciting than going to a dumb old school dance. If she couldn't shake a leg with Freddie, she didn't want to go, and he wasn't about to suffer through the humiliation of crutch-dancing with a girl who was, by his insistence, not his date. He was currently at home, resolutely ignoring her and taking refuge in the ministrations of his mother. Besides, Algebra was totally awesome, anyway.
She sighed, and reached out her hand blindly for another cookie, only to meet a crumby plate. "Hey, Spencer?" She pushed herself up away from the kitchen table and hollered into the other room. "Do we have any more fig nooters?"
Spencer sauntered out of his bedroom, wearing protective goggles, a smoking jacket and wielding a cheese grater, about to answer the request for cookies, when his phone rang. He dug under the velvety folds of his robe until he found his back pocket and answered. Carly posed with a hand on her hip and a plate in her hand, observing as her brother's facial expression went from curious to surprised to concerned.
"Oh my goodness. Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay, yes." He dropped the cheese grater and dramatically ripped off his safety goggles. "Carly, Sam's in the hospital."
*
His arm itched, so he reached mindlessly to scratch it, and hit his cast instead. When he fell back onto the couch with a sigh, his leg throbbed with a dull ache. Freddie was having trouble dealing with the whole six weeks to heal a bone thing. Three weeks in and he was restless, anxious, extremely itchy, and if he had to choke down another one of his mother's questionably legal calcium supplements for bone health, he was going to cry.
Saturday morning cartoons on his own couch, at least, were a nice change of pace. Normally he would have had to let himself into Carly's apartment to catch the latest anthropomorphic animal violence, but his mother had graciously unlocked the tv channels for his convalescence.
It wasn't so much that he wanted to stay out of Carly's way. It was more that he had grown used to functioning with her attention split between Sam, himself, and whatever momentary obsession Carly was experiencing. Being the momentary obsession had the unfortunate side effect of doubling up the attention and making it obvious that Sam felt uncomfortable, which led to things like lofts full of corn and late nights full of searching for deliberately lost, and essential, articles of Sam's clothing. And then all Carly did was make goo-goo eyes at him, blush, and proclaim loudly that Freddie wasn't up for searching for anything, and Sam should just go home.
He wanted to shake Carly by the shoulders and tell her to snap out of it, but then he would lose his balance and fall on the floor, which would make the entire exercise self-defeating, as she'd gently caress his bicep while helping him up and flutter her eyelashes at him and he'd hate himself all over again.
Freddie grumbled, flicking through the channels, and swigged down a glass of orange juice. He was just about to confront the prospect of a calcium supplement when his doorbell rang. There was a hollow knocking noise, like metal bumping wood.
"Hold on! A cripple's answering the door!" He shouted down the hall and grunted up onto his crutches. When he loped to the door and managed to open it, his eyebrows shot up and he was rendered nearly speechless. He rooted out a piece of turkey bacon from his back molar with his tongue and swallowed, to give himself time.
Sam cut him off before he began. "You want some of my vicodin? They gave me tons."
"What did you do, Sam?"
She wheeled her way into his foyer, pushing Freddie backwards and nearly off-balance. She shrugged. "I was saving Carly from a runaway sausage-van. I pushed it out of her way. With my legs."
Carly chose that moment to trot across the hall. "Sam, you forgot to take your pills!"
Freddie eyed the orange bottle of medication in Carly's hand. "So she's not just faking?" He watched Sam idly bump into a floor lamp with the tips of her casts, over and over, and wondered how many pain killers she was already on.
"Why would you think Sam would fake breaking both her legs? That horrible!" Carly grabbed the back of Sam's wheelchair and pulled her, backwards, out of his apartment and into hers. Sam shot him a thin-lipped smile and waved like a beauty queen as she receded.
*
After having her bones set and her cast color chosen, Sam had fallen asleep the second her head touched the pillow on the hospital bed. When her eyes opened again, they fell onto Carly and her mother whispering quietly in the corner. Suddenly Spencer's long face hovered into view.
"Hey lady, had a fight with a tree I hear?" His enormous smile glinted in the fluorescent light as he reached up and brushed her bangs to the side. Sam blinked and reached behind herself to sit up, but she was dragged down by the weight of two casts on her painful legs, and she flomped back down onto the pillows.
"What are you doing here?" She heard Spencer groan a little. "Not that I don't appreciate your presence, of course." She rubbed her chilly shoulders and Spencer pulled a blanket up to her neck.
The bed sunk a little as Spencer perched on the edge and continued to hover. "Your mom called me."
"Not Carly?"
"Sam, both your legs are broken. You'll be in a wheelchair for weeks. You live in a tiny house with stairs to the front door."
She stared at the spots on the ceiling tiles. "Oh, yeah. That will kinda suck I guess. Why are you here?" She finally noticed a needle in her arm. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open.
He smirked a little and poked her forehead. "You're gonna stay with us, okay?"
"But, I'm grounded!" Man, these drugs were working.
That was when her mother and Carly came into view. "You're still grounded. You'll just be grounded at Carly's."
"What! But, Mom-"
Carly cut her off. "Sam, you won't be able to walk. What would you even do if you weren't grounded?"
Sam yawned. "I'unno, cripple-dance with Freddie?" And then she fell back asleep.
She remembered being lifted into a wheelchair, taken in a car, and falling asleep on a cot in Carly's living room. The next morning she was awoken by the smell of bacon and an excruciating pain in her calves.
*
Carly felt like the worst friend in the world. What had Sam been doing, falling out of a tree like that? Where had she been going, or coming home from? It was all Carly's fault, though, she had no doubt. It was the least she could do to insist Sam stay in her wheelchair-accessible, elevator-having apartment and provide her with bacon and pancakes on a Saturday morning.
But Sam wasn't having any of it. She heaved herself up by her arms, swung her legs over the cot and hopped into the wheelchair Spencer had left nearby. Before Carly could ask if she needed a vicodin from the giant orange bottle of it on the side table, Sam was out the door, banging on Freddie's by ramming her chair's wheels into it.
Whatever they'd given her last night hadn't really worn off, it seemed, but Carly wasn't going to let her best friend suffer one minute. After saving the bacon from burning in its pan, she retrieved Sam from Freddie's foyer, sheepishly grinning her apologies at him as she backed away.
"Carls?" Sam popped a vicodin and took a swig of water.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"If I'm grounded doesn't that mean I still can't do iCarly?"
"Why are you even thinking about the show? You have to get better!" She heaved the couch at an angle so Sam could wheel over and get an optimum view of the television.
Sam shrugged and picked some bacon out of her teeth. "Yeah but the show's been more boring than a slow-mo Gibby Shuffle on loop without me, don't you think?"
Carly crossed her arms. Sam was drugged, she had to remember, and probably didn't realize how much work she'd put into the last two shows. She pushed Sam over and turned on the cartoons. "I'm sure you mom won't really keep you grounded."
"She better not! I'm her baby girl." Sam grabbed a pancake and shoved it into her mouth.
*
He could only wait so long before crossing the hall. Freddie was incredibly curious. He pushed open Carly's door without knocking and poked his head in to see Sam pouring some maple syrup directly into her mouth, a rerun of Super Rangers blaring and the sound of the shower running upstairs.
"Eating healthy to keep your strength up, I see."
Sam looked up at him and smiled a mapley grin. Hoisting himself over the carpet, Freddie settled into the angled couch next to her wheelchair. She uncharacteristically proffered a plateful of pancakes to him. "I think I stole your nurse," she whispered, and then had another pancake after Freddie pushed the plate away.
"What? Is my mom over here?"
"No, no, Carly, she's, I'm surprised she hasn't made out with me yet."
Freddie coughed. "Did you actually save her life?"
Spencer chose that moment to glide across the room in a pair of vintage roller skates to retrieve a wooden spoon for mysterious purposes. "Hey Freddo! Sam's got a grudge with gravity. And the half-dead tree in her front yard."
"Yep. I went splat!" Sam chuckled.
Spencer rapped her gently on the head with the wooden spoon as he rolled backwards to his bedroom. "She's doped to the gills, as you can see."
Sam blushed and rubbed her head. "No I am not, I have a very high tolerance for pain and I am perfectly capable of…" her attention drifted, "where's the remote? This show's dumb."
Spencer winked at Freddie, dropped the remote into Sam's lap, and left.
Freddie sat for a little bit, processing the situation as Sam flipped wildly through the channels, landing on Power Friends, the cartoon explosions catching her eye. This could work out well, really. Carly could split her attention between the two of them again, and maybe he'd stop feeling so incredibly sorry for himself. "Nice color choices, by the way." It also didn't hurt that Sam would be functionally immobilized for at least a couple of weeks.
"Green and purple bring out my eyes and hair," Sam knocked on her plastered left calf, winced, and ate a slice of bacon.
"I thought it was so you could still sleep in two different colored socks."
"That, too. What, are you sad we don't match?"
Freddie shrugged the shoulder that didn't hurt to shrug. "Were you deliberately trying to one-up me?"
Sam nodded. "Yes." She blinked, slowly. "No."
"Well you didn't anyway."
"But I've got two broken legs! Count 'em!" Sam slapped her thighs in turn. "One, and two!"
"Yeah but I have a broken leg and a broken arm. That's still two broken limbs. We're even. Except that I was also chivalrous."
Sam made a hmph noise and crossed her perfectly functioning arms. "But you can walk. And sleep in your own bed."
Freddie stole a pancake. "Hey, if you want, I can break your arm for you."
"What!" A little piece of bacon flew across the room from her mouth.
"Take enough pills, steal Spencer's sledgehammer…" Freddie put his hand to his heart. "Sam, you're my friend, I'd break your radius and your ulna, if that's what you really wanted."
She reached over, grabbed one of his crutches, and whapped him on the cast around his arm. He hissed with shock at the vibration. "Okay, so we're even," he said.
Sam handed him back his crutch. "Yeah, and I got Carly off your back. She's a real Florence Nightingale."
Freddie laughed. "Who knew, right?"
"We should see if we can get her into a little nurse's outfit." Sam shot him a lecherous smile.
"And she can give you a sponge-bath? While I watch?"
"Freddie Benson that is disgusting!" Carly chose the best moments to come downstairs wrapped in three towels and a fluffy purple robe. "Sam, if you're going to laugh at least don't do it with your mouth full!"
Sam swallowed while Freddie schooled the blush off of his face. "I think Sam needs a glass of juice, don't you?" Freddie wiggled an eyebrow at her, and Sam nodded back, vigorously.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry Sam, why didn't you ask before I took a shower?" Carly bustled over to the kitchen, her slippers making shuffling noises across the wood and linoleum. Freddie breathed in her freshly-showered scent as it wafted across the room.
"Yeah, and Freddie's so bored, he really wants to watch this thing on Pay Per View, but his mom won't let him!" Sam flipped through the cable menus until she landed on a ten dollar action movie that had been in theaters last month.
"Well, sure, we can watch it here!" Carly's voice came from inside her fridge.
Freddie looked at Sam and attempted to convey a complex thought through eyebrow movements. Sam replied in kind, a bit mushily due to her compromised state, but clearly all the same. She was up for it if he was.
"Can Sam get some popcorn?"
"I'll get it popping!"
"Freddie wants some butter on that!"
"Sure!"
"Sam's hair is really flat, can you curl it for her?"
"Freddie's got a rash around the edges of his casts, can you rub some ointment on it?"
"I don't think Sam has had her pillows fluffed in the last twenty minutes!"
"Freddie aches all over, can you give him a backrub?"
Carly stopped in the middle of the living room, a curling iron, ointment, popcorn, and pillows in her hands. Someone was killing a ninja on television behind her.
Freddie stopped rubbing his shoulder and making pained faces. "Can you move? We can't see the TV."
Carly tried to put her hands on her hips, realized halfway into the gesture that she was about to drop everything, and readjusted her arms. "No I will not move! Who do you think I am, your mother?"
Sam yawned. "Exactly!" She made a grabby motion for the popcorn and dove her hand into the bowl when Carly plopped it onto her lap. "Thanks babe." Sam was still functioning in a bit of haze, Freddie realized, as she willingly shared her popcorn with him.
He shifted over on the couch to let Carly sit next to Sam. "You've got to treat us like your friends, not invalids," he uncapped the itch cream and started fingering around the top of the cast on his leg.
"Yeah, we're just gonna keep taking advantage of you till you don't let us."
Carly reached over to Sam's hair and started separating out the loose curls. "You're both very mean people," she said.
"But look at us! We're both extremely pitiful," Freddie objected, lying back on the couch cushions.
Carly rolled her eyes. "That doesn't mean you deserve me."
"Well, I do," Sam insisted, and turned up the volume as Carly continued to card through her hair.