Chapter 2: Raising the Stakes
Disclaimer: "No, if you own iCarly, you have to apply double entendres that most of the youth won't get. Now, what you're doing, well, those are just...well, entendres, no double about them, so I guess you don't own iCarly."
"Sam, what are you doing here?"
He saw her crawling through the window. It had been raining; she shouldn't have been outside. She was going to get sick. She turned to face him, and he could see that she was again wearing a tank top, like she had been when he kissed her on the cheek. Except this one was white, and he could see she wasn't wearing a bra. He could see her areolas, and the strain of her hardened nipples pushing against the cloth She looked at him. "I'm just playing the game, Freddie."
"Sam, you're...wet. You're gonna get sick."
She looked down at herself. She nodded, and before he could say anything she had pulled her shirt over her head. Her breasts bounced freely. She moved closer to him.
"What are you doing, Sam?"
"Isn't this what you want, Freddie?" She got on the bed and straddled his hips and leaned over, so that her breasts were inches from his face. "Isn't this what you dream of?"
He looked at her. "That's it. I'm dreaming. I've had this dream before."
"Have you?" she asked and leaned closer, her breasts resting on his chest, her lips moving closer to him.
"Freddie, time to get up."
He moved the blankets over his groin with a practiced precision, although his eyes had not even opened. "I'm up, Mom."
"It doesn't look like it, sweetie," his mother said. That's because the sheet's hiding it, he thought. She was very close. That more than anything helped with the situation under the blanket. All he had to think about what she might make him endure, with psychiatrists, ointments, the TALK, and his hardness disappeared.
"Sorry, Mom. I'm up." He threw his legs on the side of the bed and gave her a reassuring smile. He still had the blanket over him, but he knew that he should be safe now.
He was tired of the dreams. He had been having them for years, ever since he first noticed Sam as a girl, as a sexual being. That had been after the first kiss. He realized that she didn't see him quite the same way, and the dreams had lessened for a time, if not fully gone away. But over the last year or so, the dreams had increased. Part of that was just because he found her sexually attractive; he had dreams about other girls at school, although all of them combined didn't match the frequency of his Sam dreams. He thought about the dreams he had about Sam. Many of them were more sexual than the one she had been awakened by his mother from. He compared them to the dreams he used to have about Carly. He never had sex dreams about Carly. A lot of the dreams he had with Carly were about the two of them on some mountaintop, with breezes blowing through both their hairs. Sometimes they rode a horse. Freddie hated horses. He loved Carly. Truly, he did. But he didn't desire her. He wished he did, because the thought of being with Carly was comfortable. It was easy. The thought of being with Sam was scary as hell. And arousing.
Stop it, he told himself. He didn't want to have to readjust the blankets. "Mom, can you go? I'm gonna take a shower."
"Sure, Freddie."
He didn't know if cold showers really helped, but this one certainly took his mind off Sam for a few moments, as he rushed through it. He thought about the other reason he dreamed about Sam. Through some type of magic or alchemy, he had been falling in love with her, probably because all the blood rushing to his groin had caused a short in his brain. How could he love the girl who hit him and teased him? Sure, she was beautiful and funny and sometimes surprisingly sweet and whenever he was with her he was excited about the possibility of what they might do.
Oh, yeah, that was why.
He would have to see Sam at school, and all memory of the dream left him. Thoughts of other dreams came up instead, ones in which she had him tied up and was cutting his flesh with a rusty nail. Those were the types of dreams he had the first year they were doing iCarly.
He no longer expected Sam to kill him. After last night, he was sure the punishment would be so much worse. Did she know how he felt about her somehow? Was she using those feelings to torture him? That didn't seem like something Sam would do. She had a cruel streak, he knew, but he had also seen her back off when she could have hurt him, such as when his mother and, ew, Lewbert looked like they might hook up. And if Sam knew that Freddie liked her as more than a friend and that he had those types of dreams about her, wouldn't that be more likely to cause her to kick his ass than to play into his fantasy as part of some elaborate scheme?
But if she was doing this to torture him, she was doing a great job.
He stood at his locker in the hallway. If he wanted, he could probably put off seeing Sam for most of the day. But Freddie Benson hated anticipation. Better to just rip the band-aid off in one swoop than drag it out. He looked down the hall and saw Sam and Carly walking together. Sam didn't appear to pay any particular attention to him, or to anything else around her.
"Hey, Freddie," Carly said. Sam glanced at him and then looked away.
"Hey, Carly, how was your visit with your grandfather?" he asked. He only gave Sam a slight glance. Another silent agreement he had with Sam was that they were careful about what they shared with Carly or what they let her witness. She tended to go overboard with situations.
"Pretty boring until Spencer accidentally set his petunias on fire," she said. Neither Sam or Freddie had much of a reaction to that. Spencer was always setting something on fire.
"I'm going to class," Sam said, and walked away. Carly and Freddie watched her walk down the hall. The first bell hadn't even rung yet. Sam was never on time for a class if she could help it. Whatever she has planned for me is going to be bad, Freddie thought.
"Do you know what's up with Sam? She's been quiet all morning," Carly said. Freddie shrugged.
"You think she would share with me that anything was happening?" Freddie asked.
"I guess not," Carly said. He shook his head as she continued to look down the hall. He loved Carly, but sometimes she just didn't see what was happening around her. "Oh, did I tell you Matt's taking me out Saturday?"
"No," Freddie said shortly. Carly frowned at him. She wondered if he still had feelings for her. Ever since they had gotten together and then broke up after he had saved her life, he hadn't asked her out again. He actually hadn't said anything about liking her in that way, and before he couldn't go a day without saying something. She thought he had gotten over her, which relieved her. And saddened her a little-it was nice to have somebody who admired you, no matter what. But it was better for Freddie if he had gotten over her.
Freddie wasn't bothered by Carly dating. He just didn't want to hear about it. Carly treated him like he was another one of her girlfriends, like she could just gush about this boy or that boy. He was okay with not being the boy for her, but he didn't need his friends, who were girls, to forget that he was actually a boy.
"I think I'm gonna go to class, too," Freddie said and walked away.
"Well, welcome back, Carly," Carly muttered to herself.
Freddie knew he had been rude to Carly. He would apologize later. If Sam weren't occupying his thoughts so much, it wouldn't have happened. He thought Sam might drag out the torture forever. He realized, despite every atom in his body protesting the thought, he would have to confront her directly.
He saw he had the chance after lunch. She wasn't in study hall. He slipped out of the class himself and went to find her. That was another thing that surprised him: he knew where she would be. Carly didn't. He had actually gone there with her a few times, although she had insisted he could only be there if he didn't talk. Sometimes she meant it; other times, she would be the one to start a conversation.
He went on the roof and saw her standing near the edge, looking onto the parking lot. He came behind her, making no effort to be quiet. She didn't turn around. He reached out and pressed on her arm with his finger.
"Tag, you're it," he whispered.
She didn't turn around. "Doesn't count, Freddie. You changed the game."
"What are you saying, Sam?"
She did turn around, then. "I'm saying the game's different now, Freddie." She walked by him. She stopped. "You can always quit. You must be used to losing by now." She left without looking back.
She wasn't going to kill him. That was his first thought. That didn't really explain why he felt more scared than when he thought his life was forfeit.
That was the first time in his life that Freddie Benson cut two classes in one day. He stayed on the roof to think. You changed the game. Okay, so he had. He had kissed her on the cheek instead of tagging her, and she had countered by giving him what he considered the best kiss he had ever had in his admittedly limited experience. So what did that make his next step? Something beyond her kiss? This was stepping into dangerous territory, even for Sam Puckett.
This was stepping into unknown territory for Sam Puckett. He knew her as well as anybody who wasn't Carly, and in some ways better than Carly. He didn't necessarily know every boy she had dated or crushed on. Unlike Carly, she didn't overshare. If you wanted information from Sam, you had to work for it. But he knew that her kissing experience was maybe less than his. If not, it wasn't much more. He had gotten that much from accidentally overhearing a conversation between her and Carly. Other boys hit on her; he had seen that in person. Almost without fail, she turned them down. If she was in a good mood, she wouldn't humiliate them or hit them. Sam wasn't easy. And Sam didn't play hard to get. It seemed when it came to love, romance, sex, whatever name you wanted to give it, Sam didn't play at all.
So why was she doing this with Freddie? It could be that she liked him, but he dismissed that almost out of hand. Sure, they were more friends than either of them pretended, but it was something else entirely for her to like him like that.
You like her like that. There was that. Whatever may be, he had choices to make: he could concede defeat, or he could take the next step.
Conceding defeat would be easy. He had done it before, but although the thought of what might happen if he didn't concede frightened him, he knew right away that he wouldn't quit. At least not yet.
So again Freddie was going to do something completely insane, and unlike the kiss on the cheek that occurred before he really had time to form a rational thought telling him to not do it, he knew exactly what he was going to do.
The opportunity presented itself that night. He, Carly, and Sam were in the studio. They had gone over some ideas for their next broadcast, but except for Carly frantically speaking, trying to fill the silence, they spoke of little. When Matt called Carly on her PearPhone, she practically ran from the room to talk to him, glad to be away from the others until whatever weirdness there was around them disappeared.
"Going home," Sam said.
Freddie stood up and followed her to the door. "I'll give you one chance, Sam."
She stopped. "One chance to what, Fredward?" she asked without turning around.
"Quit."
He heard her chuckle. "What makes you think I would ever quit, Freddie. I told you before and I tell you again: Mama plays to win."
"Okay," he said, disbelieving how in control of himself he felt at the moment considering what he planned to do. "You just want to remember that you had the opportunity to quit."
"What-" she began. She started to turn around, and that wouldn't do. He made his move, recalling the last time Sam had really hit him, over six months before. The imprint of her slap had been on his face for two days. If his mother hadn't been at an aggressive parenting seminar that weekend, he might never have seen Sam and Carly again, for his mother surely would have moved him to a different school district, to a different state, maybe a different country.
"What the hell, Sam?" He held his cheek.
"Don't you ever do that again, nub. I mean it." Sam was standing over him, anger making dark marks on her cheeks. The flush spread to her neck and chest.
"I was just trying to help, Sam. Jeez!" He started to get up, and she pushed him down. He was angry now, too. He would never hit her, but he wasn't going to let her push him when he was just being nice. There was no telling what might have happened if Carly hadn't dragged Sam away, into Carly's bedroom.
Freddie normally wasn't the eavesdropping type. Eavesdropping was rude, and his mother had taught him "those who are rude have a conscience crude". But he was more angry at Sam than he could remember being since the whole first-kiss incident. And he remembered that happened because she had eavesdropped on him. Turn-about was fair play, he decided. He snuck up to the room.
"Why would you do that, Sam? I thought Freddie was your friend."
"That nub was never my friend."
"Oh, cut that out, Sam. That's boring. Nobody believes that anymore. Everybody knows you are friends. Why did you hit him? He told you there was some barbecue sauce on your neck. I can still see it. He was just trying to clean it up."
"Nobody can touch my neck!" Sam said.
"Why, Sam?" No answer. "Sam, are you blushing?"
Sam's answer was quieter. "You remember that conversation we had about two weeks ago, when you made me watch those stupid chick movies with you and we talked about, you know, stuff."
"Sam, what are you-wait a minute. Are you saying that saying your neck is one of your erogenous zones? When Freddie touched you, did you-"
"No, Carly, holy cow. What do you think I am, a light switch? But I don't want anybody, especially Freddie Benson, knowing about it, okay? I can't help it. I don't need him to think it was him that did it. It could have been anybody."
"Okay, Sam, I'm sorry. You're still going to have to apologize to Freddie, though. You hit him pretty hard." Freddie didn't hear Sam's reply, because he knew the sound of an argument ending, so he hustled downstairs. He pretended to watch the show they had been watching before everything had happened.
Five minutes later, Sam came down without Carly. "Freddie?"
"Hmm," he said. This television show was interesting. Boy, nothing would be more interesting than this television show. It's so interesting that there would have been no reason for a boy to leave it alone and go upstairs for any reason.
"I'm sorry." He turned to her and immediately saw that she meant it.
"Okay," he said. Then, pushing his luck, "why'd you do it, Sam?" He looked at her and saw that, unlike the apology, whatever she was going to say would be a lie.
"You know, female issues. You really want to talk about it?"
"No, thank you," he said, quickly.
That was what he remembered, and then he leaned over, before she could turn around and ran his tongue along the length of her exposed neck. He felt her shiver against him.
"What-"
He silenced her with quick, tiny kisses against her neck. She fell back against him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist to hold her up. He leaned her neck to the side and ran his lips up and down her throat. She moaned, and he felt triumph and desire rush through him.
"St...st...stop, Freddie," she moaned. He stilled his lips, but still had them pressed against her flesh.
"Do you quit?" he asked. She said nothing. He took the arm not holding her by the waist and put it against her neck, feeling her heat against his palm and lightly stroked the side of her throat with his thumb, like he had the day she had slapped him. He let his lips continue their mission, only reminding himself not to suck, not to leave marks. He might win the game of tag, but he didn't want to lose vital parts if she saw he had marked her.
She threw her head back. "Oh, god, Freddie," she whispered. Her hand went to his head and pulled his hair. He felt an almost electric shock in his body. He had to stop. If he didn't stop, this would turn from a game of tag to something he might not be able to stop himself in.
Are we still playing tag?
He moved away from her, noting the shakiness of her body. He stepped away and felt his own nerves try to claim him.
"Tag, you're it," he said, and then he left the studio. Downstairs he saw Carly in the kitchen, turned away from him, talking on the phone. He hurried out before she could see him.
Carly came back up to the studio five minutes later. Sam was sitting on one of the bean bags, with a distant look in her eyes.
"Sam, where's Freddie?"
"Nub went home."
"Sam, did you do something to him?" Sam smirked at that. She do something to him. Not this time. "What is going on with you two?"
"Nothing. Just playing a game." She reached up and felt the heat of her throat. "Just playing a game."
A/N: I hope everybody is enjoying the story, despite the change from my normal type of story (do I have a normal type of story?). Yes, as somebody mentioned in a review, you can probably guess the direction the story is heading in, but there might be a surprise or two along the way, and sometimes the story isn't about the destination, but the journey.
Thanks for reviews from: Purple550, MattFujiwara, Darsnider, mamaluvsangst, Geekquality, iLovePurpleRomance, afanoffanfic, WhiteKnightRo, maxifae, and Tbayleyt.
MattFujiwara: I definitely know that females have dirty minds, too. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew what they were getting into with my story, because I hadn't written a "M" story before, and I didn't want somebody who had read my previous work to be caught unawares by something they didn't want to read. I'm not a fan of the angst myself. So, yes again, no deaths in this one (legal notification: temporary deaths which could be argued were no death at all in previous stories do not count. Anybody who argues differently agrees through writ and sanctum and throw-some-more-Latin-terms-in-here that they are a poo-face.
afanoffanfic: Freddie always deserves to win. Yet, somehow, it seems most fanfic writers (including me) feel they really need to make it very difficult for him to do so. Ah well, hard-earned victory always tastes the sweetest.
WhiteKnightRo: Nobody has given me that review yet, but if they did (not that review, but something like it, since now it would just be copying your example) I would have to applaud their creativity (but then chastise them for not elaborating exactly why it blew and so forth). I feel the Dance Master USA thing is okay, because it's a game, also, so it's just something else for Mama to win.
TbayleyT: The Carly shouting at them and the tag game are two different things. Competing to get Carly shouting at them was a different game they played outside the tag game. Sorry if I confused anybody on that. After reading that chapter again, I do realize I should have (as I did with this chapter) given at least half a day between writing it and editing it.