Disclaimer: Nothing has changed in the last few days. I still don't own iCarly nor am I profiting from this story.
A/N - I am saying that the fire escape (from iKiss) is attached to Freddie's apartment. Whether or not that is the case, I don't know. But this is my story, so yeah.
Chapter 6
May 7
Sam had to mentally encourage herself to climb the last flight of hot metal stairs. It was tempting in the evening heat to just collapse on the 7th landing and take a breezy nap for just a few hours. In the end, it was the cat staring straight at her from the 7th floor window, in a creepy knowing way, that convinced her to put all of her effort into the last twenty steps. She was going to start working out tomorrow – definitely – well, maybe – eh, probably not.
When she reached the desired landing she collapsed into the vaguely familiar camping chair. She took a moment to relax her panting and then stared up in frustration at the window a few feet away – in her current state the distance felt impossible. She rummaged through her short pockets and emerged with an old yo-yo, 3 bottle caps, a pack of sugar, a bottle of white-out, and her cell phone.
She threw the pack of sugar towards the window, and it pathetically plopped against it with the daintiest of sounds. She stared at it in mild disgust before reaching for the bottle caps. She threw each of them in a perfect arch and they clanged resolutely against the window, echoing lightly as they then fell along the sill. She waited. Nothing happened. She let out a sigh of frustration as she considered the yo-yo and the white-out. The strain of trying to determine which was more valuable to her took its toll and eventually she just chucked both of them simultaneously towards the window. They crashed loudly, and for a second, Sam thought that the window had cracked, but upon further inspection she realized that the white-out had opened up midair and a thin line of white paint was now splattered across the large glass pane.
She waited again, and again nothing happened. Now she was beyond frustrated and tinkering on the edge of seriously pissed off. She turned her cell phone over in her hands and considered what kind of damage the window would do to it and vice versa. After a moment, she shrugged and worked her arm back into her best pitching stance when suddenly the window flung open.
"Sam? What the hell."
Freddie climbed out onto the window sill, slightly damp and in a messier than usual ensemble. He aptly avoided the spilled white-out and picked up two of the bottle caps before he settled in the corner of the sill and looked over at Sam across from him in his chair.
"You couldn't just knock?"
Sam smirked. "Too tired – soooo many stairs."
Freddie rolled his eyes and flipped the bottle caps between his fingers.
They sat in silence, Sam still too tired to really put much of an effort into conversation. She began to comfortably doze off, blanketed within the warm May evening air, when Freddie loudly cleared his throat. She rolled her head over to face him and shot him a look with hooded eyes.
"What?" She asked, and as she took in his fidgeting she realized that he did not find the silence as comfortable as she had. She narrowed her eyes in brief consideration before he quickly interrupted her thoughts.
"So, what's up?" He drew out the so, as if to imply there were additional questions loaded into those three words that she should be aware of and answer.
Sam looked at him flatly. "The ninth floor."
Freddie narrowed his eyes. "Ha. Ha. I mean, why are you here?"
Her chin jutted out slightly. "Carly kicked me out. She is planning some romantic anniversary dinner for Peter, and apparently, having me there ruins the mood."
Freddie nodded. "Two years right?"
"Yup." She waved her hand as if to bat away any further discussion of Carly's love life. "And my mom is having this dude she's been seeing over for dinner tonight and I'm pretty sure her rambunctious teen daughter on the scene will not help seal the deal. He owns a hotdog stand so I really want things to work out."
Freddie shook his head in disbelief but shot her a half smile. "So, I'm the lucky winner?"
She stretched out her arms above her head. "Yep. You get a fun filled evening of Sam Puckett because everyone else has deserted me to pursue their own selfish needs."
Freddie let out a short laugh and turned his face downward to examine the bottle caps in his hands. Neither of them spoke as the distant sounds of Seattle traffic filled the air around them. He looked everywhere but towards her, and she kept her eyes trained on him, trying to decipher the new, weird tension that seemed to always settle between them whenever they were alone together. When he finally looked up he seemed relatively surprised at her nonchalant examination of him, but he attempted to play it off by returning her smirk.
"You could have used the front door you know."
"No offense Fredward, but your mother is kind of the bane of my existence. Last time I was here she tried to cut my hair and rub some smelly cream all over me."
His lips quirked up slightly in a sly smile. "She's not here."
Sam stared at him in mild shock for a moment before looking meaningfully over at the eight flights of stairs leading back to the pavement. "Well, damn."
Freddie shifted his position slightly. "So actually, we can go inside if you want. I just got a new sound editing software on my laptop. It edits sound into units of nanoseconds."
She wrinkled her forehead and studied him for a long second before shaking her head slowly and scooting her chair forward so she could prop her feet up on the window sill beside him. "As stimulating as that sounds, it's actually kind of nice out here."
He played with the shoestrings on her ragged pair of sneakers and nodded in consent.
Sam looked down at the arm of her chair, some distant memory from years ago being tugged forward in her memory. "Do you leave this outside all the time?"
Freddie looked up and she gestured towards the chair so he would understand. He nodded and pursed his lips. "Yeah."
She smirked. "Didn't your mom teach you not to leave your valuables out where anyone can take them? I'm sure she has some lame rhyme and everything."
"Actually she does. Keep things of value to you and me firmly under lock and key." He lifted his eyebrows. "I guess my old camping chair doesn't qualify."
"I don't know Fredward. Someone could just climb right on up here and steal it."
He shot her a look. "You're going to steal it now aren't you?"
"Probably."
"You're such a delinquent."
"And you're such a dweeb."
"An odd couple." The words seemed to come automatically, and he flushed soon after he realized what he said and turned his eyes down awkwardly.
She looked at him quizzically for a split second, before gently nudging his thigh with the toe of her shoe, forcing him to look back up at her.
She smirked "Yeah, I guess on some level it works."
His face lit up briefly, before he cleared his throat and seemed to regain his cool demeanor. He rested his hand on her bare shin, and Sam resisted the urge to move her legs, to try and extinguish this weird, unstoppable change occurring between them.
"I can't believe it's already May. It feels like yesterday we just started our junior year."
She smiled brightly as she threw her arms up and yawned widely. "Yep. Only a few more weeks of school and then three full months of total senselessness."
"I'm pretty sure you're living a life of total senselessness now."
She shrugged. "I try, but school tends to get in the way. This summer it will be uninhibited senselessness Fredward."
He rolled his eyes and looked down at the bottle cap in his hand. "So --- what are your plans --- for this summer?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I guess just the usual."
"You know Carly is spending a month at the University of Washington for that gifted students program."
Sam looked over her shoulder and became enthralled with a pigeon perched on the edge of the fire escape. "Yeah, she told me. They won't let her leave campus even though she lives in Seattle." She shrugged slightly. "Lame."
"So what are you going to do while she's gone?" Freddie seemed tentative, but he pushed on with the topic of conversation.
Sam stared at the pigeon for a while longer, and in her silence Freddie began to fidget.
She finally turned to him, and nonchalantly raised one shoulder. "Dunno, this seems good."
He looked back at her in confusion. "What? Hanging out on my fire escape?"
She nodded. "Beats hanging out with my cat."
Freddie clutched at her knee and shot her a toothy grin. "I should probably get another chair."
She narrowed one eye and returned his grin with her own lopsided smile. "You should probably get two. I don't think this one is going to be around much longer." She paused for a moment before adding with a point of her finger "and I expect to be fed."
He laughed and continued to hold her gaze, his smile reflected in every feature of his face. After a minute, she grew slightly uncomfortable and looked away. Her eyes became fixed on the pigeon again, and she watched it for some unknown span of time before Freddie finally interrupted the quiet.
"Well, we still have a month of school left. I have a load of finals to study for."
She ended her staring contest with the pigeon, declaring herself the winner, and scooted her chair forward another few inches in order to be able to drape her legs over Freddie's lap. "Sucks for you."
He seemed to ignore her as he wrapped his arms around her legs, trying a little too hard to seem casual in the movement. "And of course there's prom." He glanced up at her as he said it, some unreadable meaning tainting his expression and tone.
She smiled widely and nudged at his stomach with the toe of her sneaker. "That reminds me Freddork - Carly told me Jessica Ferguson asked you. I think that girl must be experiencing problems of the mental variety, because she is way too hot for a total nub like you." She smiled as she said it but Freddie looked down awkwardly.
"I haven't said yes."
Sam removed her legs and abandoned her stake on the chair to quickly and gracelessly plop down beside him on the wide ledge. She punched his leg. "Why not? You better not wait too long or she is going to remember to take her medication."
When he didn't reply, she nudged him over gently and rearranged herself so she leaned against the opposite wall from him and her legs were once again sprawled across his lap.
He again settled his arms over her bare calves. They sat in silence for a few moments, Sam desperately trying to understand the situation.
She crossed her arms over her chest. "What's the deal Fredward?" Her questioning tone expressed the extent of her confusion and frustration.
He looked up at her and wrinkled his nose as he bit the inside of his lip. "Carly told me you didn't have a date to the prom, and it wouldn't be the same if we weren't all three there, so I thought maybe you and I…" He trailed off and looked straight at her, his lips quirking up slightly at each side as he waggled his eyebrows playfully, trying to portray some casual confidence.
Sam smirked and reached forward to ruffle his hair. "Don't you worry your pretty little head about me. You can only ride the iCarly fame train so long and you'll never have the chance to go out with someone like Jessica Ferguson again – trust me." She shrugged. "Besides, Shane asked me yesterday after school."
Freddie's expression shifted to surprise. "Elevator shaft Shane?"
She let out a snort. "Yeah. I was shocked too, but his bones healed, and I guess some boys just can't get enough of little ole me." She half sang the last part of her statement and bobbed her shoulders up and down in her signature dance move, trying to keep things playful, but he just nodded slowly and didn't acknowledge her attempt at humor so she stopped and again concentrated on some fascinating invisible object in the distance.
"You seem to be dating a lot of different guys lately." She shot him a look and lifted her brow, almost daring him to continue. "Kevin, Cameron, Shane---" He trailed off, looking to her for some sort of reply.
"I can't believe you just included Kevin on that list."
He shrugged. "You went on a date with him." She shook her head and rolled her eyes but waited to see where he was going with this. "So---what's the deal?"
"Is it so weird for me to date?"
He shrugged again. "No---it's just lately it's been weirder than usual."
She examined him, seeking out all of the double meanings in his words before returning his shrug with one of her own. "I don't know. I have all these men in my life yet somehow I keep spending all my time with you." She meant it to be an insult, or at least she thought she meant it as an insult, but the brief change in his expression confirmed that Freddie was taking it as anything but. She looked down and mumbled "you nub" for good measure before turning back to the railing and silently wishing the pigeon would return for a rematch to provide her with a proper distraction.
After a few minutes of silence, Sam was undecided on whether or not they qualified as awkward or not, she lazily lifted her arms above her head and sighed. She gripped the ledge and leaned her head back against the brick. "I'm hungry."
Freddie looked up and smiled. "Shocker."
She kicked him lightly and then swung her legs over to the ground. She brushed off her shorts and stood up, turning to look down at him expectedly.
"Coming?"
"Where?"
"You're making me dinner." She cocked an eyebrow and shot him a challenging look.
He fixed his eyes on hers and finally shook his head slowly. "You're impossible."
"That's what my permanent record says." She reached down to offer him a hand and he graciously accepted it.
In true Sam fashion, she pulled him up roughly, hoping to startle him. He stumbled into her and gripped her waist to steady himself. She somehow found her hand clutching the front of his t-shirt.
He huffed and looked at her sarcastically. "Thanks."
She was too aware of how their noses were only an inch apart, and his hands were still wrapped around either side of her waist. They had been in similar precarious positions far too often over the past few months and she wasn't sure yet how she felt about it. It's Freddie - this should feel weird she reminded herself harshly.
She rested a cheek against her own shoulder as she half shrugged and looked up at him through her bangs in what she hoped was nonchalance. "Don't blame your clumsiness on me. I tried to get you to take mother-son ballet classes."
"Right." He spoke sarcastically but his face was reflecting some other quality and his eyes remained locked with hers. The time to let go of each other and play off the incident had long past. She lifted her head and smirked as she automatically leaned in closer to him, letting her cheek briefly graze his as she spoke.
"Save me a dance at prom, dork?"
She moved her face back a few inches so she could see his eyes. He was flushed but he quickly nodded and she laughed. She squirmed out of his hold around her waist but kept her clutch on his t-shirt so she could drag him towards the window. "Come on. I'm in the mood for pork chops."
*
A/N 2: So there you have it. I'm not exactly sure why, but I really love this chapter. I think because I can picture the entire thing in my head so clearly. Also, I think this chapter really solidifies how I picture their friendship in this story, if that makes sense. Please make sure to note that larger spans of time are lapsing between the chapters. The next chapter is over a month after this one, and it's a doozy - loaded with Seddie.
Oh and caalan - Sam does fall back on purpose in Chapter 5. It is never intended to look like an accident. It is an insane and impulsive and definitely deliberate act to avoid the "Freddie situation" (as I imagine she calls it in her head), but when he pulls her back up, she is again face to face with the "Freddie situation", and well, you know what happens then...
and SquishyCool -the Spencer/hottub remark was maybe a minor poke at Spam shippers, but all in good fun. I'll read a good Spam fic with the best of them. The way it came up is I was thinking of things that came along with turning 18 and being a 'legal' adult, and I immediately thought "well, Sam could legally be with Spencer", then my brain went off on a tangent, imagining an absurd love triangle between Sam and Spencer and Freddie, and then I reigned myself in and condensed the entire imaginary flirtation to one line about seduction in a hottub full of pudding.
Thanks again everyone! I look forward to reading your comments.