The summer he turned fourteen, Freddie began to notice that he didn't have to tilt his head upwards to talk to either of his best friends anymore. He also noticed that when Sam shoved him over, he didn't always collapse. Sometimes he actually managed to stand his ground. At one point, Sam even asked him, "What up with your weird voice?" to which he shrugged and casually responded, "Puberty."

During those few months, he did notice Carly's attitude toward him change just slightly. She seemed less – put off? Was that it? – by him. Occasionally he'd find himself standing or sitting closer to her than was probably necessary, and where before she would have shoved him away (and still did occasionally), there were other times where she let him be, seeming comfortable with his presence so close to hers. She'd fall asleep on his broadening shoulders, or cling to his somewhat-toned arm when she was freaking out about something. And he would try desperately not to read into it.

"Watch it, Freddork," Sam chided for the thousandth time as Freddie inadvertently stole her bounce. It was a dark summer night, and everything around them seemed to be breathing sighs of relief as the heat from the day evaporated with the last of the light in the sky. She reached out and smacked him hard in the side.

"Ow!" he cried indignantly, clutching his side for a moment. Then he stopped in the middle of the trampoline, forcing Sam to steal his bounce and sending her catapulting into the air. He laughed at the split second that utter terror was just barely discernible across her face.

Sam made toward him again, but was stopped by Carly's arm.

"Sam," she said, "It's his birthday. Let him be."

Sam shrugged and then grinned mischievously. "Fine. I'll leave him alone." And as she flung herself down onto the trampoline, splaying her limbs out and closing her eyes, Freddie distinctly heard her mutter under her breath, "'Til it's not his birthday anymore."

Choosing to ignore this, Freddie lowered his body onto the trampoline as well, laying down and spreading himself out comfortably. He laced his fingers and rested his head on them, and soon Carly was next to him. She looked into his face and smiled, and then gestured towards their feet. His were clearly several inches further away than hers were. He grinned.

"I guess I'm not that little dweeb who follows you around anymore, huh?" he asked her playfully, his smile still playing around his lips.

"No," she replied thoughtfully, twisting a lock of her hair between a few fingers, "You're not little anymore."

Sam chucked appreciatively from somewhere above his head.

"Hey!" he retorted indignantly, and he knocked one of her legs with his knee. She laughed a free, natural-sounding laugh, and he smiled. It was more like Carly to let out a self-conscious giggle now and then, and he loved the moments where he felt her open up and stop caring about the way the world saw her.

"Hey you guys! Where'd you go?" Gibby's voice carried from across the lawn, and the three of them sat up on the dark trampoline.

"Oh, there you are!" he called excitedly. "Come on in! Spencer's here with the cake!"

Before he could move a muscle, Sam sprang up and leapt impressively over both him and Carly (had they not been on a trampoline, it would have been particularly astonishing). She bounded across the lawn, and Carly and Freddie heard the screen door slam as they sat up. Carly shook her head, smiling, and then pushed some of her hair out of her face and stood up. She offered him a hand.

"Shall we?" she asked, grinning, her face alight with genuine excitement. It warmed every molecule of blood in his veins to know that her excitement was purely for him. He took her hand gladly, and with his help, Carly pulled him to his feet.

As they crossed the lawn leisurely, their arms swinging into one another's, neither one of them apologized. Just before they reached the screen door where their friends had disappeared, Carly looped her arms around his midsection and squeezed him tightly. It was intimate and comfortable, but not quite romantic.

"Happy birthday, Freddie," she said quietly, looking up at him with shining eyes. He smiled down at her, sliding an arm around her back and squeezing her back. As they crossed the threshold of Gibby's kitchen, they let their arms drop. Freddie stayed close to Carly as his eyes registered what he was seeing.

Gibby's kitchen was completely decked out in blue, green, and red streamers. Sam, Gibby, Spencer, Gibby's mom, and Mrs. Benson were all gathered around Gibby's kitchen table, on which sat the biggest cake Freddie had ever seen in his life. It was shaped like a huge video camera – the camera he always used to tape iCarly, to be exact. The blue antenna on the back of it looked to be about two feet long, and it actually glowed. The screen was propped open on the side, and Spencer had blown up a photo taken of Carly and Sam during one of their bits and attached it there.

"Happy Birthday, Freddo!" Spencer yelled happily, and Freddie continued to stare speechlessly.

"Say something!" laughed Carly, nudging him in the ribs.

"I…I don't think I can!" Freddie managed to get out. "This is so amazing, Spence! Thank you so much!"

Spencer smiled. "Anything for a kid who's practically a member of the family."

They each ended up with a slice of cake that was approximately the size of their heads, and they barely made a dent in the monstrous cake. Mrs. Benson kept eyeing it warily, as though it was a syringe full of diabetes just waiting for an opportunity to attack her son. Spencer and Gibby's mom alternated between making awkward conversation and talking to the teenagers. And Freddie sat happily amidst the people he loved most in the world and shoveled cake into his body.

A couple hours later, when nobody could do much more than grunt lazily from being so full of birthday camera cake, Mrs. Benson insisted the party break up.

"It's a school night, Freddie," she said sternly as she asked him to start saying his goodbyes.

"Mom," he groaned, and Sam giggled.

"Hey Gib, come help me load this cake into Mrs. Benson's Prius!" Spencer called from the hallway. Gibby trotted out of the room, followed by Mrs. Benson, who nervously called things like, "Don't you dare get any icing on the upholstery!"

Freddie sighed and turned to his two best friends. "Thanks, you guys. This was the best birthday celebration I could have asked for."

Carly stepped forward and gave him another tight hug, and Sam clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. He turned, thanked Gibby's mom for the party, and followed the sound of his mother arguing with Spencer out to the driveway in front of the house.

"This is the only way it'll fit, Mrs. Benson!" Spencer protested as he heaved the last corner of the cake-sculpture into the Bensons' tiny Prius.

"But it's going to make my car smell like dessert!" she cried. She stopped abruptly when she noticed Freddie, however, and said, "Regardless of its inconvenient size, thank you for the cake, Spencer. You really made Freddie's birthday special."

Spencer looked rather surprised. "I…he…um…"

Mrs. Benson didn't wait for a reply, but hopped into the drivers' seat of her car. Freddie slid into the passenger's side and buckled himself in, rolling the window down and leaning his head back. His heart fluttered contentedly when he thought about the evening's events, and how even Sam had seemed to genuinely want him to have a nice birthday. He felt warm from all the company and pleasantly full from all the cake. He smiled to himself, glad it was dark so his mom wouldn't notice and start to question him or take his temperature.

Mrs. Benson rolled the Prius forward painfully slowly. She braked several times, backing up again and again, trying to arrange her car at just the right angle to get down the rest of the wooded driveway path. Beginning to feel irritated by this, Freddie opened his mouth to say something, but got distracted by the two girls walking toward Spencer's van in the darkness, the porch light illuminating their silhouettes but leaving their faces in darkness. He raised his hand to wave, and caught snippets of what they were saying through his open window.

"You guys were out there alone for a minute, huh? Did you tell him?" Sam's low voice carried in the silence of the night. Freddie didn't have to strain to hear her. He lowered his hand curiously, and his mom braked and backed up again.

"No," Carly's voice responded dejectedly, "I didn't want to ruin his birthday."

"I thought you guys got past all that chizz!" Sam replied, sounding surprised.

"Shh! We did! But…I don't know, I just didn't want to give him anything to feel weird about. It's his fourteenth birthday, and he's one of my best friends."

"Whatever you say, Carls, but I still say it's better he hears it from you than from somebody else. People at school are gonna talk. He's gonna find out you're dating Evan."

"We're not dating!"

"Okay. He's gonna find out you have 'a thing' with Evan."

The shadows of Carly and Sam disappeared around the other side of Spencer's van, and Mrs. Benson was finally satisfied with the angle of her car and began to pull forward earnestly. Freddie sat in the darkness, his smile fading, his hands twisting in his lap, and began to realize just how sick all that cake was making him feel.

A/n:

Aww, don't worry. I know it's frustrating, but things will heat up eventually. :)

Besides, I've decided I really want this to follow a realistic, somewhat-believable pattern. So you might have to be patient with me.