AN: Happy Monday! This is one of my favourite chapters that I've ever written basically ever aha and I'm so happy with how it turned out. So, here we go with lock-in 2.0. Have a lovely week, yall.

Chapter Three

The long-awaited lock-in had finally arrived, but that wasn't the only thing that had arrived. Spencer told the gang as they left the house that a storm was due to hit Seattle, a storm named Erica, and that according to his new psychic girlfriend, the power was going to go out and many homes were going to be flooded, so they had to stay safe while they were out. Carly assured him that they'd be in the school all night, not really paying much attention to his girlfriend's words.

"Let's go," Carly said cheerfully, climbing into Freddie's car. Sam got into the passenger seat, having called shotgun. "Are you guys excited?" She'd soon accepted the fact that Sam and Freddie were going to be working together and she just hoped to god that they wouldn't bite each other's heads off by the end of the evening. Although, they had been getting along better lately – she was yet to know about the two's impromptu movie night the evening before. "Gibby said he'll meet us there."

"How is the mermaid?" Sam asked. "Haven't seen him round much."

"He's still scared of you after the wedgie you gave him last month," Carly deadpanned. Sam grinned at the memory and patted herself on the back. "You ripped his anti-bacterial underwear!"

"Is he secretly Fredweird's brother or something? Who, other than Mrs B, would make their kid suffer anti-bacterial underwear?" Sam scoffed, to which the other two teenagers in the car rolled their eyes. "So, what's the plan? We eat, and then do our projects, right? Meet at the vending machines at, say, eleven?"

Carly nodded her head. "Sounds good."

Sam looked at Freddie. "You remembered the snacks, right?"

He pointed to the seat beside Carly in the back, where a bag sat overflowing with bags of cheese puffs, freshly cooked sausage rolls and other delicacies that Mrs Benson would've had a heartache if she saw it all and knew Freddie had been storing it under his bed for a night. He'd stopped at the store after his date with Annabelle the night before. "Everything you could ever want." Sam grinned and called him a good boy, before Spencer took a left turning and the school came into sight.

"How's Melanie by the way?" Freddie asked Sam, as they entered the building. "Did she say how she's continuing her senior year? Carly said Mel told her that she's back because Franklin thought that having your sister around would make you focus more for your last few months here. She's sacrificing a lot to be here for you."

Sam scoffed. "Oh, yes, she's missing her all-girls prom. Sounds soooo disappointing."

"Sam, I just think you should be a bit nicer to her. She said she's flying back out to Vancouver for her graduation, but for now, she's going to be here and I think you should invite her to hang out with us. Imagine if you went to stay with her and she didn't make an effort with you – how would you feel?"

"I don't know whose side you're on, Fredweird, but I don't like it," Sam told him. "I'll make an effort, alright? But I refuse to set foot in the mall with her again – that is where I draw a line." She wasn't sure why she was agreeing to him, let alone why he was getting involved. "Anyway, let's go and find a spot before all the good ones are taken."

.

Dinner was boring. Sam had eaten half of the buffet and most of Freddie's food from his plate. Chicken pie and chips – something Mrs B would've protested about if she were to find out. He decided that he was telling her that they served a nut roast if she asked. Carly sat across the table from the two, grinning from ear to ear as she texted someone, her phone below table level.

"Who are you flirting with?" Sam asked.

Carly frowned, looking up briefly, before her phone "pinged" and she looked back down again. "What makes you think I'm flirting, hm?"

"Because you have that "I'm stealing your man" look in your eyes."

"Hm, alright," Carly said, not explaining anymore. She left the room shortly after, stating that she had to look for Gibby so she could begin with her painting of the ocean. She also had a dozen mini plastic bottles and fishing nets to make, after watching a new Tetflix show about ocean conspiracies and deciding that was what she wished to make her project on. Meanwhile, Freddie (and partly Sam) had decided to create an app which helped you to calculate your carbon footprint. It was a more tech related thing, which Freddie was good at, and Sam had agreed because it seemed like they'd win some kind of award. Nobody told her there was no award to ensure she didn't lose any sense of encouragement.

They sat down together in the empty senior common room – Sam having scared off the majority of groups who had tried to set up their project prep in the same room. Secretly, Sam wanted to be alone with Freddie; after the failed attempt yesterday, she decided that today was a priority in her "proving I don't like Freddie" project. A heavy cast of rain began to pound on the floor to ceiling windows, causing the two to look over and watch as a few things in the courtyard got blown around by the wind. The windows began to shake in their frames.

"God, it's raining cats and dogs out there."

"I don't see any," Sam said mockingly, smiling nonetheless. "Maybe Spencer's psycho girlfriend is correct."

"You mean psychic?"

"No, I meant what I said. She's a milk before cereal person."

Freddie chuckled and set up his Pear Pad on the tripod. "Okay, I need you to look into the lens."

"Wait, why?" Sam frowned, realising how all too familiar this was.

"The app guesses your dietary preferences by your appearance," Freddie explained. "Then you change it in the app. Where you shop and what you eat can influence your carbon footprint a lot, depending on how far it travelled and which animals are killed." Sam just shrugged, putting her bag of cheese puffs down and sitting down on the stool. In reality, Freddie was setting up his Mood Face app, which he had discontinued but not deleted. He didn't expect Sam to be so gullible in the first place, so he grinned and got on with it, allowing the app to scan her face.

Her mood came up at once.

In Love.

He scoffed aloud, more in shock than anything else, to which Sam frowned and jumped down from the stool.

"What was it?" she asked.

"Oh, uh, apparently you're vegan!" Freddie said, feigning surprise as he quickly clicked off the Mood Face app and onto the fake screen capture that he had made earlier that day in preparation for this. He turned the laptop screen around to show her the bright green writing saying "VEGAN." She laughed to herself and continued to eat her cheese puffs.

"I think it's broken."

Freddie laughed along with her, mentally freaking out at the results. Of course, the app had been correct before, but maybe it was a mistake this time. Sam hadn't been interested in anyone in that way for a long time, well, that Freddie knew about anyway. "Although…my mom would probably adopt you if you turned vegan."

"More reason not to," Sam grimaced, discarding the now empty bag of cheese puffs in the wastebin near the door. She then pulled out the packet of sausage rolls. "You know, when I was a kid, I used to hate the pastry. Mel would have the pastry and I'd eat the sausage. Then my mom's new boyfriend paid, like, thirty dollars for this huge sausage roll to be made for our Christmas dinner, so I had to eat the pastry. Mel hated it, so we switched, and she ate the sausage and I ate the pastry. Haven't eaten the two together since Mel moved out when I was five."

"My mom didn't let me eat pork growing up," Freddie told her. "The first Christmas dinner I remember, I had tofu, but my dad snuck out after my mom went to bed. He came back with these gorgeous flat chicken pastries, and we ate them on the fire escape."

"Is that why you always go to the fire escape?" Sam asked. Freddie gave her a look, confused. "When I told the world you hadn't kissed anyone, I found you on the fire escape – apparently, according to Carly, you'd be sitting out there after school for days. Do you sit out there when you're sad because you and your dad used to?"

"Ah, yeah, sometimes. This one time, some kid threw my bag in a lake, put rocks in it so it would sink, so my dad took me out to this arcade downstate. Must've spent hundreds of dollars in there. I've got to take you there sometime and win one of those plushies on display. I think I have around twenty-nine thousand tickets saved up."

Sam didn't want to admit that it was her who threw the bag in the lake – in her defence, she didn't know it was Freddie's. "That was me," she said bluntly, closing her eyes and preparing herself for him to either scream at her or break down.

He just looked at her, the corners of his lips tugging upwards into a smile. "I know. I've always known."

"Then why did you say—"

"I broke up with Annabelle."

Sam blinked. "Pardon?"

Freddie couldn't bring himself to laugh. He stepped out from behind his laptop and crossed the room, dropping down on the sofa. "Yeah. We didn't really, you know, click." He gestured this by holding his hands up and joining his fingers together, moving them apart and then back together and again and again. "She was too…normal? I don't know. I just, I realised during our date yesterday. We went to Pini's and she," he paused to chuckle, not sure how to say it without sounding weird, "she returned the dish and asked for the parmesan cheese to be scraped off. She said it was too bland for her."

Sam cackled, having to hold her side for support. She sat down beside him. "Are you being serious?" she asked between laughs, trying to take breaths to calm herself down. "She asked…she asked—"

"She asked for the cheese to be scraped off," Freddie repeated, chuckling lightly at her reaction.

"But Pini's is known for its international cheese, bro. Why would you decline the cheese? Was she dairy free?"

"No, no."

Sam shook her head in disbelief, one leg hanging off the sofa with the other pulled up to her chest. "Oh, wow, bro. I don't know what to say. A girl who doesn't like parmesan cheese doesn't deserve you – you're too good for her anyway, Fredbutt."

"Thank you, aha," Freddie said, shocked that Sam was being nice to him. Although…she had been rather nice to him the past few days. Was she coming to a reality check that the gang would all be going their separate ways in a few months, so she was deciding to be nicer? Or did she have other intentions? "Hey, Sam?"

"Yes?" she asked, picking the pastry off the sausage. Old habits die hard.

"Can I have the pastry?"

She grinned, handing it over.

Lighting up the dim room, a bright flash of lightning made an appearance, followed by the loud rumbling and growling of thunder. Sam jumped at the noise. Freddie laughed at her reaction, so Sam huffed and shoved Freddie in the arm, making him laugh further. "Are you scared?" he teased.

"No," she huffed again. "Just made me jump."

"Mhm," Freddie grinned. He ate the rest of the pastry, while Sam had already started to peel the next sausage roll to pieces. Another round of lightning and thunder echoed around the school, as the rain grew harder, the pounding becoming hammering. Sam watched the window, wondering if it was going to burst and give way to the water. Through this, unknown to them, they had been moving closer to each other, their noses now touching. Freddie opened his mouth to speak, his breath fanning her face. "Sam, I've been trying to—"

The door opened, and an anxious brunette ran through the door. Carly quickly pushed the two apart and took a seat between them in the middle, hiding herself from the noise behind Sam's shoulder. The latter chuckled gently and patted her shoulder sympathetically, partly annoyed that Carly had ruined their moment. She wasn't oblivious to the fact Freddie had been trying to tell her something for the last god knows how many days.

"You good there?" Freddie asked their other best friend, who had now nestled herself between the two as if the thunder could hurt her. Another loud rumble and flash greeted them, making her shriek. "Hey, it's okay," he reassured her. "It'll be over soon."

It wasn't.

Storm Erica carried on for the next few hours. Mr Franklin had decided that evacuating the one hundred seniors wouldn't be a good idea, considering the few houses that had been flooded down the street as well as the main school hallway which had water as high as the bottom lockers. So, all the seniors were being told to stay with their stuff and sleeping bags in the underground locker rooms in the sports department. The iCarly gang, including Gibby, were lounging near a group of lockers, the rain hitting the small basement-like windows above them.

"What time is it, nub?" Sam asked.

Freddie checked his watch, as Sam's head returned to her usual place on his shoulder. He had Carly the other side of him, shaking and leaning against him. Gibby was trying to distract her by showing her pictures of his new kittens – turned out the two brothers he had bought from the indoor market downstate had actually been a male and a pregnant female. "Almost two am. They can't keep us here all night, can they?"

"We're not allowed to let anyone go in this weather," Franklin inputted as he walked past, overhearing the conversation. "Sorry, Freddie and Gibby, but you two have to return to the guys locker room. I'm under strict instructions from higher authority to ensure you kids get some sleep." Carly was almost gripping to Freddie while he was trying to get up; Sam knew how she felt but didn't plan to be as open as Carly was being about her own personal attachment to the boy. Gibby told Carly to be strong, and Franklin led the two out.

"Guess it's just you and me, kid," Sam said to Carly from their uncomfortable seating on the tiled flooring. "They can't expect us to sleep here, right? This floor is harder than any guy has ever been."

Carly snickered. "Good old Sam."

.

It must've gone ten am by the time everyone was allowed to leave. The storm hadn't stopped but the thunder and lightning had retired, and the rain had settled for a calmer downpour. Carly found the guys outside the locker room, looking miserable and like they'd hardly slept. In all honesty, who had slept? Sam bounced out the locker room, looking in a much better mood than anyone else.

"How can you be this happy?" Gibby grimaced. "We're all too sleep-deprived for this."

"Because I just ordered a chicken feast to be delivered to Carly's," Sam grinned, proud of herself. Carly rolled her eyes and made a note to self to text Spencer about this development, promising she'd pay him back later for Sam's investment in her stomach. "Can't wait to get out of this jailcell for some real food."

At around seven am, the school had found some disgusting cereal bars in the sports department's office, so they shared those around as a form of breakfast, hoping that the red weather warning on the entire state would be eased soon so they could get these kids something more substantial for breakfast.

"Well, this was a lock-in we won't forget for a while," Freddie stated, unlocking his car with the button on the remote attached to his keys. Sam got in the passenger seat, immediately switching on the radio, with Carly and Gibby in the back, along with Freddie's bags and tech stuff. His boot was full of different types of bug spray, a first aid kit with every type of bandage ever, a spare tyre, and basically anything else that could help in any situation involving Freddie and his car – Mrs B insisted that it was all necessary when he got his first car at seventeen.