Chapter 11: Take Tomorrow (One Day at a Time)

March 5, 2022 (continued)

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own iCarly. So sue me! Wait, don't...

Note: There are some sexual situations and sexual discussion in this chapter, but nothing graphic. Fair warning.

"Your move, Freddie," I said, staring into his face.

I saw doubt on his face and realized I had made a mistake. This wasn't what he wanted.

Then he cupped my face in his hands and leaned down to kiss me. I put my right hand on his shoulder and moved into the kiss. My breasts pushed against his stomach. He moved one of his hands to my hair, letting his fingers run through it. I groaned into his mouth, and I felt his tongue push into me. He reached down with one of his hands and unbuttoned my jeans. I pushed first one shoe off, then the other, kicking them both away from me. With his lips still kissing mine he pushed my jeans down my hips and past my knees. He bent down and circled his arms around my thighs, lifting me up, smiling into my kiss. He put one of his feet between my legs and pushed the jeans the rest of the way. I broke the kiss and stepped back slightly.

"You're beautiful, Sam," he said.

"Such a flatterer. And it looks like I'm winning now, Benson." Still looking at me, he bent down and flicked his shoes off his feet. He unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them off. I saw him thinking about folding them, before deciding to just toss them aside. I laughed and stepped close to him again. We both now stood only in our underwear.

He leaned down and kissed me again, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into him. "Bedroom," he said, into my mouth. I gestured the direction with my hand, and he slowly started to shuffle me in that direction, with his lips still on mine. We reached the bed and he gently pushed me down onto it. Before I realized it he had removed my underwear. As I felt his hand run up my side, I thought of a Freddie who had slipped a note into my pocket without me noticing. Goosebumps formed on my skin as his hand moved up, over my stomach, slowly over one of my nipples, causing it to push back against his palm, and gently up the left side of my neck, letting one of his fingers rub softly against my earlobe. He bent down and placed kisses on my neck. He brought his lips close to my ear.

"Sam."

"What?"

"I'm a virgin."

"What?" I sat up, bumping against his shoulder. I looked at him and saw the crooked smile on his face, as his eyes flashed in amusement. "You son of a bitch!" Then I began what needed to be done and tried to kiss that smile away. I pushed him down until he was resting on his elbows, and I was above him, forcing my lips unto his, biting softly at his, feeling his hardness push at me through his underwear. I would have to do something about that. I did.

Afterward I lay, with my head on his chest, feeling his heart beat. His arms were linked around me. For the moment I was not thinking of tomorrow or the future. I just felt engulfed in the now, a pleasant burning. It wasn't the sex, which had been wonderful. It was just having Freddie here with me, wanting to be with me, me wanting to be with him, and no games. We didn't say anything about it. When we were at our best, we never had to use words to communicate. We just knew that right now we were...perfect.

I sighed.

What, Sam?"

"We should have been each other's first," I whispered.

He thought about it. "Why?"

"Because that's the way it should have been. You were my first kiss. My first serious boyfriend. You should have been my first."

He laughed. "You know, considering how my first time went, I'm kind of glad you didn't have to experience it. Was your first time that great?"

I thought. "No."

"What happened?" I looked at him.

"Freddie, I don't really think I want to talk to you about the first guy I slept with." He shrugged.

"You don't need to tell me who he was or anything. I don't want to waste the energy having to go beat him up. Just tell me what happened." He laughed again. That sounded like the old Freddie laughter, the kind I hadn't heard much since we were kids, except when we had done the iCarly anniversary show. And tonight. "Plus, if you tell me about your first, I'll tell you about mine, and then you'll have some really good blackmail material." I looked at him. He knew me too well; sometimes better than I knew myself, I thought.

"Okay, but it better be good." I thought. "Honestly, it wasn't that big a deal. I had been dating...this guy for a few months, and it was just one of those things that happened. It's just...well, you know how it supposed to hurt the girl when she loses her virginity?" He nodded. "Well, it didn't." He looked at me, held his finger and thumb a small distance apart, and gave me a questioning look. "No, not like that. He just finished...fast. Let's just say I wondered for a while whether I was technically no longer a virgin. But I figured depth won over endurance."

He burst out laughing. I swatted him lightly on the shoulder.

"Shut up, Benson. So what about you?"

"I don't know, Puckett. Mine is pretty good. I don't know if it's a fair trade for you to hear mine."

"I could make it worth your while," I said seductively, letting my hand wander down his body and touching his most sensitive of areas. "Or," I said, "I could make you pay." I squeezed him, not hard enough to cause any pain. He laughed and swatted my hand away.

"Okay, I'll tell." He was silent, and then he burst out laughing. "You know, it's funny now, but I really didn't find anything humorous about it then. So...it was my first year in college. And I spent most of my time in the library, partly because I was studying until all hours of the morning. Partly because my roommate had established some 'sock on the door' policy without informing me that he would be flying the sock quite so often. Anyway, it was near the end of the year, and I had already decided I was going to move out. I had already been doing some work and making pretty good money for a college kid who didn't have any free time, so I figured it would be easier if I just got my own apartment close to the university. Truth was, I sort of hated the guy." I laughed. I couldn't really picture Freddie getting a real hate-on for anybody. This was the same guy who let Nevel buy into his business. Freddie winked at me. "But I kind of liked his sister."

"Dude."

"She was a couple of years older than him, wasn't in college, but she would come visit him every once a while, mainly as an excuse to have access to the beach. We had talked a few times, nothing much, since I tried to avoid him as much as I could. The good thing about her visiting is that she would crash with us, effectively cock-blocking him. He was friends with the RA, so he didn't get into any trouble for her being there. But that weekend he apparently had a chance at a 'major score', and he didn't want to lose it. Luckily for him, his RA buddy was out of town and had left his key with my roommate. That guy wasn't that smart."

Freddie lightly ran his fingers through my hair as he told his story. I thought I knew where this story was heading.

"So my roommate lets his sister crash in the RA's room. He didn't let me know that he would be occupied, though, so I came back to see the sock on the door. I thought about going in anyway-I was pretty pissed. But then his sister opened the door to the RA's room and invited me in."

Yep, I definitely knew where this was going. So far it seemed like a fair deal to me.

"I go in, and she says, 'you don't like my brother, do you?' I figure I have only a week left with him, so what the hell, and I told her that, no, I most definitely did not like her brother. She shrugged and said, 'me, too'. And then she started sucking on my face. It kind of happened before I really realized it. This is great, I thought: virginity's gone; she's kind of hot; plus, I get to take a swat at my roommate. Maybe not the noblest of sexual encounters, I guess. There was just one problem."

"What's that, Freddie?"

"She was loud. I mean really loud. I would like to claim it was all because of my prowess, but apparently she had been this vocal before, because it wasn't too long before her brother was hammering on the door, threatening to kick the ass of the son-of-a-bitch who was banging his sister. I jumped up quickly and fell into the closet as I was trying to put my pants on. I hustled out the window and down the fire escape, carrying my shoes, shirt, and underwear." He stopped.

"Okay, that was slightly humorous, Freddie, but.." He held his finger up.

"Not done. Okay, I am running through the campus, trying to dress as I go, hoping no cop sees me. I finally get all my clothes on and look around to see that my roommate hasn't come after me. I go to this 24-hour restaurant and order a coffee. I probably spent about an hour drinking that coffee, trying to think what I would need to do if she told her brother I was the guy she was with. Finally the coffee starts to hit me. So I went to the bathroom. And I look down, and I have the rubber still on." I burst out laughing.

"So, wait, you didn't?"

"No, kind of hard to do when you're leaping into a closet."

"Hmmm, I don't know if that counts as losing your virginity, Benson. If you couldn't complete the deal."

"Well, we took care of that the next night in a different location, Depth Girl." He brushed his thumb down the length of my cheek. I smiled at him.

"Okay, well, I guess I could make it worth your while." And I moved up to kiss him.

I woke up eight hours later to see Freddie looking at me from the other pillow.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey yourself." I scooted closer to him and he wrapped his arms around me.

"I guess we need to talk," he said. I looked at him.

"You're not married, are you?" I asked.

"No, you're the one with secret marriages, Sam." Okay, I walked into that one.

"So what do you want to talk about, Benson?" I should have known where this was going, but, honestly, I was just enjoying being in his arms.

"Well, I thought we should talk about us. About this? What it means. If it means anything."

"You're such a girl sometimes, Freddie-kins."

"What does that say about you, Sam?" he said and smiled. "Can we be serious? Did this mean something that we should talk about?" I looked at him.

"Yes," I said softly.

"Okay." He might not have expected that answer, because he now looked as nervous as I felt. "You know I love you, Sam." I started to say something, and he waved me off. "I'm not looking for you to say anything. I just need you to know that. But...I don't think I'm ready to be with you. I mean, permanently. I mean...okay, I'm doing this all wrong."

"Are you saying you want to be with me, but you have to work on some other stuff first?" He nodded. "That makes sense, Freddie. I probably need to work on some stuff, too." I wanted to run, but I didn't. Maybe that's growth.

"You, Sam? You got your shit together than most of the people I know." I smiled. He cursed again. I really was a bad influence.

"Maybe. Maybe I just have one area I need to get straight on." He nodded.

"Do you hate me, Sam? For sending you that package. I almost didn't, you know. I keep interfering in your life."

"No." I thought about it. "Okay, at the time, yeah, I did hate you a little. Freddie, keeps throwing himself in front of trucks to save the girl, but I didn't need to be saved. But...maybe I did need to move past. No, I don't hate you. Let's just agree that right now I'm as opposite hate as I can admit." He gave me that crooked smile, and I hit him with a Benson Roll. He laughed. "So where does that leave us?"

"Do we each go our own way? For now? Until our collective shit is together?"

"Maybe. How long will it take you?"

"This project I'm working on might take two or three months. Maybe longer. Can we handle that?"

"Freddie, we've handled longer," I said. Two or three months. I didn't know. He moved away from me and sat up, and I noticed that at some point he had put his boxers on.

"What's with the underwear, Freddie?"

"Oh, I had to grab something out of the car. So what now, goodbye?" He smiled goofily and gave his hand a little shake, reminding me of the first time I saw him in the hallway outside Carly's apartment.

"I don't think that's how we're gonna say goodbye, Freddie," I said and began yanking off his boxers.

He left three hours later. And I stopped him with kisses as he started to go out the door. And he stopped me with kisses on the porch. It felt like we were trying to make up for all the time we missed since high school.

"I left you something on your table," he said, after we finally broke apart.

"It's not another package, is it?" I asked.

"No." He caressed my cheek. "I'm going to miss you, Sam." I almost told him, then don't go, but I couldn't. I needed to make sure we didn't screw it up this time, so I wanted his undivided attention when it happened. He got in his car and drove away. I watched him leave, seeing him looking in his rearview mirror.

I looked at the table and saw a bouquet of roses. Well, that was a little cliche. Until I came a little bit and saw the roses were brown. Not flowers, but bacon. Well, for Sam Puckett, maybe that was cliche.

A/N: Despite some of the contention among some reviewers over some chapters, I had no problem posting the next chapter and the next, etc. But although I felt I needed to post these chapters, because I was going to have a busy two weeks, I didn't post this chapter...even though it was, to the best of my comprehension, done. And yet I held back. Something was wrong. And it was. In the original version of the chapter Freddie left Sam a letter, and they didn't have an actual conversation. Generally what Freddie said to Sam is some of the same information he shared in the letter, but it still felt wrong to me. By leaving the letter rather than talking to her, he was still running away, being too passive for my liking. So I had to change it.

Thank you for reviews from Julefor, distraught07, Purple550, TheWrtrInMe, xXBrittanyXx, afanoffanfic, manic221, mekaylawrotethis, Flutter360, Icarlya, ccQTccQT, and Elise Suzanne, and Dani96.

Distraughta, as much as I appreciate flattery, I hope you understand now why this chapter did not go up right away.

Julefor, Sam likes a bold Freddie, too!

TheWrtrInMe, thank you so much for the compliments. Also, as I've told Julefor, I have no problem with criticism. I have been using this fanfiction experience as a way to immerse myself back in writing, so that when I start writing my own material I will have suffered some battle wounds (including revision and editing, which I have been bad at in the past). Right now I am only reading iCarly fanfiction (for some reason, no others appeal to me), but if you are writing one, I will be glad to read it (I don't want to find myself critical of something because I don't like the show or book it comes from).

I have decided to write an epilogue. I have to point out that if you read the thirteenth chapter and do not read the epilogue you will not miss anything, necessarily. The circumstances Sam and Freddie are in at the end of the thirteenth chapter will be what they are in the epilogue, except there will be a time jump, just to see them in the future. I just have to admit that, especially since reading John Irving's The World According to Garp, I love the epilogue that tells you what happens to the characters, and this one will be sort of like that. Plus, for those of you who asked (one person, I believe) I will compile all the Puckett rules included in the story, although they will not be the full Puckett rules-just the ones I used. I will also use the opportunity to discuss some other aspects of the story. Again, you're more than welcome to skip those.