Notes: Heavily inspired by a fanfic in the Teen Titans fandom and conversations on the couch during commercials.
Background Music:"Getchoo" Weezer

Disclaimer: The awesomeness that is iCarly wrapped up in a quirky Seattle belongs to Dan- the CREATOR MAN - Schneider.

Part Two: Hangman

"So you meant to trap me in there?"
Carly's voice cracked on the edge of what Spencer would term a hysterical reaction.
"Uh... yes."

"And how, exactly, would that have been for my own good?" she asked, her tone falling into the I'm-much-more-sensible-than-you-even-though-I'm-younger register that made Spencer feel awkward.
"Well... Mrs. Benson was in on it, too!" he recalled suddenly. Carly wasn't buying it. "No, really! I was tired of you bringing home boyfriends that aren't your type, and she was tired of Freddie pinning after you, so we figured that if we stuck you in an elevator for an hour or two it would bring you closer together. See! Totally for your own good."
"I can't believe you!" she screeched in response, swatting his arm. "Jamming the elevator to play cupid is not only dangerous, it's stupid. And you can't think that being stuck in there for an hour would change my mind about Freddie. He's been trying to woo me for almost two years and it hasn't worked!" She gave a cutely furious huff and stormed upstairs.

"And then she went to take a shower, and she hasn't come out yet!"
"Well, she has every right to be upset, and so do I! I can't believe you dared endanger my Freddie like that!"
Marissa Benson was the very definition of Mother, in Spencer's opinion.
"Nothing happened!" he argued, voice tilting over a whine ledge.
"But something could have! Especially since he was trapped with that Samantha for a whole hour!"
Spencer scratched his head, wanting to just walk away and let her voice her concerns to his living room. But it was his living room.
"Actually, about Sam," he began, taking a deep breath. Best to let the shit fit the fan all at once. "I was thinking... maybe we landed the right people in the elevator after all?"
Mrs. Benson gave him a look that was, quite possibly, the most horrified expression he'd ever seen on her face, moreso even than the rampaging terror of two hours ago.
"I'd rather let Freddie go without his weekly tick bath." she said in a threatening whisper.
Spencer backed off. "Okay, then... you just think about it..." he railed off, darting into his room and locking the door.


"Sam, is there a reason our hangman is starting to look like me?" Freddie asked, exasperated.
"I hope that's a rhetorical question, Freddie," Sam replied easily, adding a collar to the polo shirt of the figure on her yellow legal notepad.
Carly took a long sip of her Strawberry Splatt and wondered when they started spending more time at the Groovy Smoothie. She remembered a month ago when they would simply pop in and get their drinks to go. Maybe they were growing up?
Sam doodled lipstick on the Freddie hangman figure, and Freddie tried to snatch the pencil away.
Fine. So they weren't growing up. Maybe they were just enjoying their time away from adults. Carly's fingernails dug into the Styrofoam. Spencer! He was so lucky she hadn't felt vengeful enough to let it drop that it had been all his fault.
"X," Sam guessed to her right. They's torn up the first game and started a new one.
Freddie frowned. "You mean 'Y'," he corrected her.
"I said 'X', Freddison."
"Yeah, but you usually go: H, A, M, Y, P, E, O, G..."
"We've only played two games," Sam interjected.
"And in both those games you went: H, A, M, Y, P, E, O, G... until you were hung," Freddie argued.
"Do you know how creepy that is? Knowing the order of letters I use?" Sam's voice pitched up, and she looked, to Carly's trained eye, moderately flustered.
"You're just that predictable!" Freddie countered, obviously defensive.
Well.
"Yiddish!" Carly exclaimed, breaking them out of their squabble.
They stared at her with confusion.
"Yiddish," she repeated, pointing to the notepad. Freddie recovered first and scribbled 'Y-I-D-D-I-S-H' into the blank lines.


"Okay, so I really want to keep being angry at you for the other day, but I'm starting to think that your plan didn't entirely backfire."
Spencer, frozen in the middle of the living room with a sculpting tool in one hand and a mango in the other, nodded like an attentive schoolkid.
"So I'm not going to tell Sam it was your fault she got stuck in the elevator with Freddie if you can help me think of a safer way to make sure they spend more time together. Alone."
Carly waited for her brother to drop the items he was holding or to start laughing uncontrollably. "Uh... Spencer? You heard what I just said, right?"
"Get Sam and Freddo together safely?" he summarized.
"Uh-huh... and that doesn't... shock you?"
"Actually, Mrs. Benson and I are ahead of you, but she still needs a little bit of convincing," he confessed.
"Mrs. Benson approves of this?" she asked suspiciously.
"Well... not exactly. I mean, after the elevator fiasco, I got to thinking that maybe Sam rips on Freddie not because she hates him, but because it's her way of acknowledging him, and that maybe Freddie gets it and only lets on that it bothers him? Okay, not when she's taking shots at his budding masculinity or when she publicly humiliates him with pudding, but in general, y'know... but of course I didn't get that far in my argument because Mrs. Benson would apparently rather let Freddie live the rest of his life without tick baths than see him with Sam."
Carly smiled and gave a sigh. "And that's where I come in, isn't it?"
"Please?" Spencer danced on his tip toes.
Snatching the mango away, Carly laughed and consented. "I'm going to peel and cut this up for you, and then I'll see what kind of mood she's in."
"YES!"


She was in a cleaning mood.
"I don't know what's up," Freddie explained. "I came home from the Groovy Smoothie and she was scrubbing the grout out of the bathroom tiles, and she's dusting and polishing stuff in the living room right now. She only cleans like this when she's got something heavy on her mind, but she hasn't told me anything."
Carly chewed her bottom lip. "What about you?"
"Huh?"
"Don't you always write HTML when you've got something heavy on your mind?" she prodded, indicating his computer screen.
"Not always. Mostly I fence. Why?"
"You want to tell me what happened with Sam the other day? In the elevator?"
His face took a guilty expression. "Nothing! I told you! She ate about 8 fatcakes and insisted on using me as a pillow." He coded another sequence into the program he was writing for the site. "Jealous?" he added as an afterthought, hopeful.
"No," she assured him with her same playful tone.
He smiled.
"I mean..." she sat down on his bed and was serious, for the first time. "No, Freddie. In fact, if you liked another girl, even Sam, I'd be happy for you. Not 'I'm just saying I'm happy to hide my disappointment' but real happy, because you're my friend. I won't ever be jealous of another girl with you."


"And he asked me to leave him alone."
"If you've hurt my Freddie..."
"Maybe I did, but I realized that I was never serious when I rejected him, so maybe now he'll get it and he can move on."
"And you want him to move on to that Sam?" Mrs. Benson threw down her polishing rag and attacked the dining room table. The claws of anxiety began to gnaw inside of Carly's stomach.
"Mrs. Benson, you want him to move on to Sam."
"I want no such thing!"
"Yes, you do!" Carly insisted, pushing forward with her line of reasoning. "Think about it. If Freddie ended up with me, or any other girl, then I or she would probably treat him the same way you do."
"And why wouldn't I want that?"
Carly backed up a step. "Because then Freddie wouldn't need you anymore?"


"Why can't we call it operation Geeky Ham?" Spencer whined.
"Because that's too obvious!" Carly snapped. "It has to be something ambiguous, and since Mrs. Benson is still torn up over this – namely me and you being right – that I let her name it, and it's Magnet, got it?"
"Fine."
"You can pick your own code name, though," Carly added hopefully. "I'm Web Princess. Mrs. Benson called Red Cross, and you're...?"
"TUXEDO MAN," Spencer declared, cheered up, as Carly expected.