Disclaimer: iCarly, much like the Statue Of Liberty, is a gift from France, and is made of a copper... okay. I don't own it. I'll be quiet now.

"I don't think you can kiss Sam."

I snap out of my daze from where I'm reclined on Carly's couch, half-watching Girly Cow. Freddie's chatting to Carly over near the counter, and I'd been successfully tuning him out until now. I fix my attention on them... there's no way I heard Fredbag right.

"Why not?" Carly says, confusion on her face.

I roll onto my stomach, facing them better. There's no way. I wish I'd been paying attention.

Freddie shifts uncomfortably. "Because it's too much like kissing her."

Carly stares at Freddie blankly. "I'm not following. I thought that was the whole idea."

"The idea was to kiss her squirrel, yeah, and it was fine in theory. But in practice it looks more like you're... well, kissing Sam."

Carly looks taken aback. "I didn't even think..." She bites her lip, her eyebrows furrowing pensively.

"Hey, none of us did." Freddie says comfortingly.

I don't say a word. I thought that... I couldn't stop thinking that. Carly looks over to me, and I try to pretend I'm still watching TV. "Sam, what do you think?"

I swallow hard. What I'm about to do goes against everything I believe in. I'm about to agree with Freddie. I don't mind the thought of Carly kissing me, in fact, it's one of my favourite thoughts. But I can't do that again, I can't have her lips so close to me, kissing just above my lips. It was hard enough the first time. "I actually agree with Fredwad." Oh. That can't be good for me. "It does kind of look like you're... you're kissing me." My voice comes out unevenly.

Freddie looks surprised. "You... you agree with me?"

My stomach is not having a good week. "Don't remind me."

Carly looks disappointed. I've always backed her up before, usually without even thinking about it, but this... this is different. "What are we gonna do to replace it?"

Freddie's face turns thoughtful. "Well... Gibby said he learned a new dance. Maybe he-"

I wave a hand at Freddie, cutting him off. "We'll think of something."

–

"Why didn't you say something?" Carly says curiously, coming to sit beside me on the couch. I turn the TV down and shift to face her. I swear, I practically live here now. Freddie's gone home, so it's a lot nicer than usual to be here.

"Say something about what?" Carly's vague like that sometimes. She expects you to know what she's talking about, just because she's thinking about it.

"About the play."

I blink at her. We stopped talking about this ages ago... I thought Carly was over it, but it's obviously stuck in her mind. "W-what do you mean?" I stutter. This is dangerous ground, and I'm barefoot.

Carly shrugs. "It's just you agreed with Freddie, so you must've thought that when we were doing it. Why didn't you say anything?"

"I...I..." My mind is a blank. It's a piece of paper soaked in bleach and left in the snow. It'd be great if I wanted to meditate, not so good when I'm trying to figure out a way to tell Carly that I didn't say anything because I was too busy physically restraining myself from actually kissing her. "I thought it was just me."

Carly looks at me oddly, and my stomach twists. "If you were uncomfortable you could've said something. I mean, the last thing I want to do is kiss you."

Fuck. I can't help but wince, Carly catching it. She waves her hands at me frantically. "No no, no no. I didn't mean... I mean if you were a guy I'd... I just- That's not what I meant." She puts a hand to her forehead, sighing. I know she didn't mean it like that, but it reminded me that it is like that. That she wouldn't... she wouldn't want to kiss me.

Carly pulls her knees up onto the couch, hugging them and resting her chin on them. "Sam, what's happening?" She sounds so lost, it snaps me out of my pessimistic thoughts.

"What do you mean?"

She looks over at me sullenly, and I feel an urge to hug her, to comfort her. "You don't tell me anything anymore."

"I told you about my nightmares." Even though they were a lie. She has a point though, I'd just hoped she hadn't noticed. But of course she has, Carly's perceptive. Once you hide one thing, you have to hide everything connected with it, so no one would ever suspect you hid anything in the first place. And it means that being in love with Carly... it infects everything I do, so I have to bandage that up too and pretend that the infection isn't spreading.

"I had to literally pin you on the ground for you to tell me." Carly says flatly. She sighs again, biting her lip and glancing at me apprehensively. "Do you not trust me anymore?"

I almost have to fight back incredulous laughter, leaning forward. "No! No, Carls... you're the only one I do trust."

Carly reaches over impulsively, taking my hand in hers and raising it, uncurling my loose fist and splaying my fingers out. I swallow hard; the sensation of her fingertips brushing over the sensitive skin on my palm is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She presses her hand flat against mine, matching our fingers up. She studies our hands carefully. Her fingers are just a little longer than mine. "I just..." She says slowly, wistfully. "I feel like we're drifting apart." She takes her hand away, and I lower my arm hesitantly, my palm tingling.

Carly looks downcast. "Sam, I love you so much."

I think my blood has frozen in my veins. Every time she says it, it hurts a little more. My brain knows what she means, but my body just hears 'love' and goes crazy.

"I just want things to be like they used to be."

I have nothing I can say. I wish things were the way they used to be as well. I wish I didn't feel like this about her. I wish that nothing had changed, that I still loved her as a friend and nothing more. But I can't escape it. I've tried so many times to quash how she makes me feel, but it just keeps springing back again and again, no matter how hard I try to ignore it, and it makes me stutter and sweat and say stupid things around her. It makes me lie to her, hide things from her.

I want to feel like I can say anything again, and know that she won't judge me, that it won't change how she feels about me, but I can't, because all the things I have to hide are about her.

I want to be able to promise her that things'll be like they were, but it's a promise I can't keep. I can't reassure her, I can't make her feel better, not with the truth.

"Things change Carls." I pick at the seam of my pants, glancing at her. "I wish they didn't but they do. I l-love you, you know that. You're my best friend in the whole world. Nothing's ever gonna change that."

Carly nods slowly, looking disappointed. "But why can't you tell me this stuff? You know whatever it is, I'll understand."

That's what I've always loved about Carly. She's always just accepted me as I am. And she makes it so hard to resist telling her. But it's this, it's this type of stuff that I can't lose. She makes me feel like I can tell her anything, and the irony is, it's one of the things that have made it so I can't. Her being so accepting, so understanding; it's a part of the reason I fell in love with her, and it's made it so where I could tell her anything before, I can't tell her this. It hurts my brain, going round in circles. I want to tell her, I do, but once it's done, it's done. There's no, 'Surprise!' or 'April Fool's!', once I've told her - that's it. Everything changes. The best case scenario? She loves me. The worst? She hates me. The most likely? She's shocked, but she treats me like she treats Freddie and doesn't let me get too close to her. At least if I don't tell her I can pretend there's a chance she'll love me, at least then I don't know for sure.

Carly takes a deep breath. "I know. Things change. I just never thought we would, y'know?"

Dammit. Does she even realise how bad she's making me feel? I already feel guilty for keeping this stuff from her.

I want to tell her. Not everything, but something. I want to tell her without telling her, because at least then I can deny it. If she guesses, I can at least see what she thinks of it. And I can still escape.

At least I won't feel so guilty.

All I need to do is tell her something. The difficulty is gonna be in not telling her everything.

A/N: I know, this chapter wasn't full of wriggly, squirmy, in-the-pants moments. But I'm trying to think of the people who read this from the beginning, cumulatively. It'd get overwhelming, all that tension...

Also, I've gotta build a plot sometime. So don't worry, your awkward moments are coming back, they've just taken a small hiatus in which to become more excruciatingly awkward. They were children then. When they come back, they'll be the most awkward creature known to man – the teenager.

So review, just 'cause you love me/it. Pwease?

Oh my. How low I've sunk.

Still, review though.