BTW, I should give another credit/shout-out: In the last chapter, I got the idea that Sam claimed a guest room at Spencer and Carly's as "her" room from "iGet in a Fight" by KamiNytha, a lovely Seddie story.

Now on with this one...

iThink They Kissed

"I have to talk to her about this!" Carly's voice was stressed. She felt as though she'd accidentally stepped into a rabbit hole, like Alice, and like Alice, ended up in a world that made no sense. If Sam and Freddie were kissing, something was not okay with her world and she needed to make it okay. She required her world make sense and Sam & Freddie were kinda crucial to that, or had been, up until today.

Carly had to understand why Sam had kissed Freddie; she wanted to hear her explain it in a way that made her life make sense again. Sam had only ever shown less interest in him "like that" than Carly had, and when she thought about things Sam might do to him starting with K – I, S-S-I-N-G were not the next letters that immediately came to mind.

And there was another reason why she felt like the stakes were so high, and that reason had a hold on her as tight as she'd once had on Shelby Marx.

Once she'd finally conceded to Freddie that she would not call Sam, he started to walk over to the camera. Part of her knew she shouldn't say this next, but another part that was more in control wanted to stun Freddie like she had been stunned.

Still she tried to fight it, biting off her words.

"But...but...but...you're in love with me. You've always been in love with me." She thought she might cry from frustration.

"Who said I...?" He started to ask, but stopped when he realized he didn't know how he wanted to finish that sentence. Who said I stopped being in love with you? Who said I loved...anybody else?

Carly jumped ahead anyway. "Well if you're gonna go around kissing my best friend-"

"CAR-ly…"

iQuit iCarly

He pulled her through the window, out of the sharp winds; into his hug, and just held her in it for a few seconds, feeling the warmth of her breath on his neck, and the near – pain of how tightly she was hanging on. Though he knew better than anybody Sam was no coward, he also knew she'd been very, very afraid.

In that moment nothing was more important to him than assuring her she was safe; so he whispered,

"I've got you. I've got you, baby."

But she must not've heard or believed it because when he started to let her down she shook her head, grasped him more tightly and said something that sounded like it might've been -

"Don't let go"

-but it was muffled and hard to hear.

"Sam...Sam...you're inside.," he said as soothingly as he could in her grip. "You're okay, baby."

Somewhere inside himself he registered that he was inexplicably calling her "baby" again, but now was not the time to go looking for explanations. Either she didn't mind, or...no, that couldn't be it, she must not've heard that either.

Lucky break for him, right?

Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next chapter...