Chapter 2 - When Doves Cry

"Can you picture this?"

-Prince


Carly had been oblivious of course, too busy bounding about with that undeniable Carly energy, talking to Spencer and her Grandfather, congratulating all her classmates, speaking vivaciously about Berkeley and "The End of an Era!" to all of her adoring admirers. Freddie could never understand why Carly was afraid of making friends next year, there was just something so indistinguishably likable about her. He was sitting at the counter in her apartment, watching her brunette hair whip between various groups of people and taking a breather from the general chaos of Carly's small (by her standards) get together. His eyes roamed the room for a familiar unruly mop of blonde curls to no avail. He sighed and hoisted himself from his seat making his way through the crowd until he reached the edge of it and made a break for the old iCarly studio despite the "Please Stay On The First Level" sign that Carly had placed neatly at the foot of the stairwell.

He let out a sigh of relief upon finally reaching the top and slipping into the studio, shutting the door behind him with a firm 'click'.

As he turned around he was startled by the exact person he had been searching for.

"Sam?" He said surprised.

"Fred-weird." She acknowledged from where she sat in the drivers seat of the prop car, her legs perched precariously over the steering wheel, exposing her bare calves and half of her thighs from the way her skirt was slipping backwards. She looked to the side, blatantly keeping her gaze away from him.

"When did you get here? I never saw you come in." He said feeling awkward and gawky as he tried to keep his voice from trembling. Damn, when had Sam of all people started giving him this inability to control his voice or body. He looked around the room and shuffled his feet too nervous to come any further into the room. Despite the fact that they had been friends for so long there was still something that made Freddie feel uneasy whenever it was just him and the feisty blonde in a room alone.

She shrugged nonchalantly. No one spoke for a moment.

She finally turned her head and stared him down where he still stood practically plastered to the door and his only means of a getaway.

"I used the fire-escape and came in through the window." She explained flatly.

"Oh." He should have figured as much, she never was one to conform to standards, guess that applied to conventional entrances as well.

She sighed roughly and flicked her eyes away again. "Well?" she barked.

"Well what?" He said genuinely confused.

She sighed again, exhaling gruffly as if she were fed up with trying to teach a child something. "Well what do you want?" She blew a stray wisp of blonde hair away from her face and Freddie watched as it fell back to her cheek. He had to curb the strong desire to waltz over and tuck it behind her ear.

Sure she was still Sam, the same Sam that had tortured him relentlessly through grade school and high school; the same Sam that had convinced his mother he was not only gay but a sex addict and in danger of joining the circus; and the same Sam that had spread numerous rumors, cost him most of his lunch money, and christened countless less than flattering nicknames. But in the past years, he had begun to think of her more as Sam, a female, an attractive female, who also happened to be one of his best friends and the girl he had shared his first kiss with. Despite how much he had tried to ignore it, he'd long ago given up denying his change in disposition towards one Samantha Puckett. He had stopped trying to fight the feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever she would lean over him to grab something; or how the smell of her hair (like Lime-Sorbet) made his skin prickle; or how he couldn't help but let his fingers rest on her arm or wrist when he was talking to her, even the idea of touching her making his insides churn. While these emotions had initially gravely worried him, he had increasingly grown bored of evading them all day only to find they had a nasty way of sneaking their way into his mind eventually, usually at night, in graphic ways that would have had his mother locking him away in a nunnery if she'd known.

What had been especially frightening about this whole ordeal was that Freddie had never before felt that way, or had those particular thoughts, about any other girl. He'd finally grown out of his adolescent crush on Carly sometime around the end of 9th grade, though he'd continued the façade because he didn't really know how else to behave. And in high school he'd dated other girls of course. Despite still being totally tech obsessed he'd managed to grow and after discovering that he liked tinkering with cars as much as computers during the fall of 10th grade, he had become increasingly toned from the manual labor. He'd actually ended up quite in demand with a few ladies due to his new physique and intact "nice guy" reputation.

They'd all been pleasant relationships too, though none had ever really been serious. Freddie had tended to stick to the same sort of sweet, pretty, and docile mold. Still, there was never any real spark in the 3 or 4 girls he'd dated; the actions just seemed routine so he went with it. Ask for her number, go to the movies, hang out, make out a bit (pg-13 style), maybe introduce her to his mother, and then after awhile break up. The whole process seemed so uncomplicated and smooth that Freddie had seen nothing at all wrong with the situation until near the end of 10th grade.

He had just clamored up the steps to the Shay's loft, his arms full with a large bucket of wrenches for a skit they were doing on iCarly that week. The door had been closed so he'd struggled to reach one arm around the bucket as the other grappled with the door handle. He'd finally managed to open it and had stumbled into the room.

He had been greeted by a view of the back of Sam slowly dragging a black dress up over her arms, leaving her clad in cotton navy boy-shorts and a matching bra. "Hey Carls, I think this one's more your style than mine. What else you got?"

Freddie's brain had swelled, he hadn't been able to breath, dropping the bucket of wrenches and listening helplessly as they had exploded across the floor.

"Carly!" Sam had spun around, her eyes shooting open the minute they'd taken in Freddie's stunned form.

"Sam!" He'd squeaked, "I'm so sorry!"

"What the hell Freddie! Get out!" She'd bellowed, struggling ungracefully to get the dress back on.

He hadn't needed to be told twice. He'd practically flown out the studio door, sprinting to the bottom of the stairs and almost knocking his other best friend down as he'd hurried past her holding a plethora of dresses.

"Freddie?" She'd asked bewildered.

He hadn't even turned to look at her as he'd yelled, "Gotta go, see you tomorrow!"

"But what about rehearsal? Sam's just trying on one more dress for Semi!"

Freddie had already been out the door. "Mom emergency, we'll have to reschedule!"

And with that he'd barreled across the hall and into his own apartment, stumbling over his feet as he'd narrowly evaded his mother in a mad dash for his room. Upon crossing the threshold he'd slammed the door shut behind him and leaned his forehead against it.

He'd been panting heavily, unsure of what to attribute his ragged breath to; the 400 dash he had just broken a personal record in, the sheer terror of what he'd assumed Sam was more than likely plotting in her head for revenge, or the unfathomable urgency he'd felt (had still been feeling) to rip that dress the rest of the way off her, push her back onto one of those bean bags and-

The panting had grown heavier.

He was not going there.

"Hey nub!" Sam's timeless insult broke Freddie out of his daze. "I said," She drawled, dragging out the 'i', "What do you want? You're bugging me."

"Oh." Jeez, he sure was on the top of his game tonight.

"Some genius." Sam scoffed, adding to the sinking feeling of failure in his stomach. "And you and the rest of the nerd-herd at Yale are supposed to be in charge of the future of our world?"

That hurt.

"Sam-" He warned.

"Just- just go away." He thought he heard her voice crack a bit at the end and he noticed she was still pointedly looking away from him, her eyes lifted to some intensely interesting patch of ceiling.

Was Sam, The Samantha Puckett, about to cry?


The noise from below had seemingly faded as Sam's cigarette disintegrated and fell away in a lonely charred lump. She sighed loftily, wishing for another as the chill of the metal crept up her spine and into the base of her neck, unfurling into a headache that banished the rest of her buzz.

Letting the remaining base of her still smoking cigarette fall, she lifted her hands to grip the bar above her head and craned her head over the landing, peering at the alley below her. Trashcans lined the buildings, overflowing and grotesque they swarmed her vision until all she could see was their dingy light twinkling back at her from the dark. Her head swam a bit and she tilted back, hanging to the bar and turning her knuckles whiter.

Had March always been this dreary?

Begrudgingly, she hoisted herself up and slowly made her way back to her apartment. She stuck the key in numbly and forced the door open, welcoming herself into the entryway of an environment that somehow seemed even less welcoming than the one she'd just come inside to escape. She barreled through, stepping over a broken lamp and jamming her toe painfully into the newly overturned couch. She cussed, yanking the offending appendage back. She passed by her roommates open door and caught a brief glimpse of two bodies slumped on top of one another, one snoring heavily and the other, more petite figure, appeared to be shivering.

All the while her breath frosted the air in front of her, painting her way down the hallway until she arrived at her own room. More than anything she just wanted to curl up in her bed and fall asleep until June. Unfortunately, when she finally felt her work-attire-clad body collapse on her messy sheets, she couldn't even properly close her eyes.

The clock on her bed-stand flipped its numbers to read 12:14

Something just didn't feel right.

So she dragged her exhausted body back out of bed and made her way to the bathroom feeling nauseous. She splashed her face with cold water, adding to her already smudged mascara, and glowered at the lost little girl staring back her from the mirror.

It wasn't that she hadn't suffered from insomnia before, she had been a fitful sleeper since she'd ditched Seattle. At first she'd attributed it to her lack of meat and fat-cake consumption, switching her diet to a mixture of Ramen and whatever she could sneak out of the various diners she'd worked for throughout the seasons. But after years of finally adjusting to the new diet and, having slept in odd locations ever since she was young, she had begrudgingly admitted that the inability to sleep probably stemmed from a small rather unpleasant cavity in the pit of her stomach which she preferred not to label as loneliness. Or rather, pure and utter isolation to the extent of which she hadn't felt since she was 5. The year her father had left and long before she'd met Carly.

Still, she thought she'd left that behind her, or at least buried it to some unknown area of her body where it couldn't get its claws anywhere near enough to sink into her heart and drown her.

No, this couldn't be that creeping longing crawling its way back into her limbs.

She splashed her face again and watched as the water drops pooled at her chin and dripped off her jawline. It almost looked like she was crying.


A/N:

Hey guys, thanks for those of you who messaged me and posted about being beta readers, my good friend from back home actually took a look at the story and really enjoyed it. She want's to go into editing so I decided to let her look over my story even though she's not a huge iCarly fan.

Like I said, I've finished the story except I'm not sure I like the ending so I may have to rewrite it. All in all looks like this is going to be 5 chapters. I hate to be one of those authors but it's really hard to stay motivated about posting without reviews so until I get up to 20 (I have 9 now I believe) I'm not posting Chapter 3.

I'll love you forever if you just click that lovely little button below :D