Around eleven, Sam and Freddie said their goodbyes and headed out the door. Of course, no one besides Freddie knew about Sam sleeping over. Just in case anyone watching, Sam pretended to leave, walking past Freddie's apartment towards the stairs, but circling back to his door. Sam went right in, and through to Freddie's room passing out on his bed, while he went to take a shower. It felt strange, knowing she was spending the night for the first time with a guy, just the two of them. But strange in an exciting way. Laying there thinking, she realized that she hadn't brought any of her things with her. That was something both of them had overlooked in the moment. Not wanting to sleep in jeans, she got up from his bed and opened the dresser, rifling through, until she found her favorite shirt of his. It was a burgundy, long sleeved collared one, that was obviously huge on her, but that's what made it so comfortable. She pulled off the blue and white striped shirt she was currently wearing, and slipped into Freddie's. Looking through more piles of clothes, she selected a pair of grey sweat pants. After pulling them on, and realizing it as impossible to walk in them, she looked around to his desk in the corner, and spotted some scissors to cut them in to shorts. She knew they could just be rolled up, but this way she'd be killing two birds with one stone. Being able to walk, and annoy Freddie, just with a few swipes from a pair of scissors. Next, she needed to do something about the smudged mascara on her face, that Carly always made her put on, claiming it made her eyes 'pop'. She could go wash her face in the bathroom by the living room, but what fun would that be when she could freak out her boyfriend? Grinning, she rolled off the bed and made her way over to Freddie's bathroom door. She stood in front of it for a few moments, her hand resting on the knob. Then, with no warning, she barged in yelling "Freddie, I'm coming in here!"

She heard him give a little yelp, and then turn off the water. He stuck his head out, pulling the curtain up around him. "Sam!"

"Calm down, I'm just washing my face," She said, tying her hair back.

"Are you wearing my clothes?" He narrowed his eyes. "You cut my pants? Oh come on, that's like the fourth pair."

"I'd say I'm sorry but…I'm not." He rolled his eyes. "Now if you will excuse me, I'd like to rub some soap on my face."

He sighed. "There are other sinks, you know."

"But this ones so soft," She said, jokingly stroking the sink.

"Sam."

"Fredward."

"I'm serious."

"I'm serious." She mocked him, putting her hands on her hips.

"No, I'm serious!"

"I was serious first."

He started to become frustrated. "I was serious first!"

"Uh, no ma'am, I believe that would be me—"

"Okay, I'm trying to take a shower here!"

She laughed. "No way. I thought you were belly dancing."

His upper lip curled up in amusement. "Can I please get back to it?"

"Go right ahead."

"Thank you." He pulled the curtain closed and turned the water back on.

She smiled to herself, and splashed water in her face from the running faucet. This was going to be fun.

Back in Freddie's room, after he had showered and Sam had 'de-makeuped' herself, they both sat cross-legged on the bed. Since their bathroom experience, they had already had a staring contest, a hold your breath contest, thumb war, and arm wrestling match. Sam won all of them with her 'inhuman powers' as Freddie called them.

At what seemed like their first silence of the day, Freddie filled it with a question.

"There's something I've been wondering for a while now." He looked at her. "When did you start liking me?"

She sighed heavily and fell back onto the bed, but kept her legs crossed. "Well." She began, "It definitely didn't happen overnight. I mean, when we first met I despised you in every way possible." Freddie smiled at this, reminiscing, and then he too lay down next to her on his back. Sam continued. "But I guess it always bothered me a little how you were so in love with Carly." Freddie turned his head and looked at her. "At first, I just assumed it was because you were so pathetic and it annoyed you so much to see you pine over, day after day, night after—"

"Okay, I get it!" Freddie said, interrupting her. Sam opened her mouth, probably to yell at him for his outburst, but he spoke first. "And I was never in love with Carly. Infatuated, yeah. But I was obsessed with her before I even talked to her. That's not real love. I mean, I love her now as a best friend, but nothing more. She's like my sister."

Sam turned to look at him. "Well, whatever you were, you were obnoxious." Freddie nodded to himself, averting his gaze back to ceiling, as did she. "Anyway," She continued, "It just got old. Back then, liking you even a little went against everything I believed in."

Freddie interrupted once more. "So then' when in all of that utter disgust did you begin liking me?"

"Well, maybe if you would shut up and let me finish, you'd find out!" He obeyed. "Anyway, yeah, went from enemies to 'frenemies', and slowly, you were able to compose yourself in front of Carly, so I was able to stand you more. By then, I guess I could call you somewhat of a friend, and then your voice got deeper, and stuff happened, and we kissed to get it over with, and I suppose that kiss wasn't all that terrible…but I was mostly relieved to have gotten it out of the way. After that, I felt like I needed to mess with you a little more than usual, just to make sure you knew the kiss didn't change anything between us. And everything pretty much went back to normal. But for some reason, I thought about the kiss a lot…I didn't know why at the time. The most logical reason was that it was my first kiss, and I guess that's not exactly an easy thing to forget. But…whatever. Things were back to normal. That is, until I accidently told Carly that we kissed when the dentist drugged me. I thought you had told her, and I don't know…I kind of liked a secret between us. I mean, if it wasn't important, we could have told anyone. But then she found out, and questioned us on every detail, and I was surprised that you even remembered how many seconds it lasted." She stopped to take a breath.

"Eight seconds," He said vaguely.

"But," She continued, "I never got to hear if you liked it or not, because Spencer interrupted, and….it got me thinking about what you thought, and I didn't even know what I thought, but I definitely wasn't going to say or do anything stupid. I just thought I was having some weird mind crisis or something. So I just ignored everything, until the night of that stupid girl's choice dance. I never told anyone this, but when you and Carly were dancing at the Groovy Smoothie, I walked in and saw you guys."

Freddie narrowed his eyes, barely even remembering that night.

"And it wasn't a friend dance, either." Sam went on, "It looked like she finally liked you back. And for some reason that made me feel really…alone. Seeing you slow dance with her like you always wanted. But as usual, I disregarded my feelings and assumed I was just in a bad mood because I didn't have anyone to go to the dance with. But after that night, nothing seemed different between you two."

Freddie sat up so he was kneeling over her. "That's because nothing happened that night. I hardly even remember any of it; it was all just one big, miserable blur. We both had terrible dates, and I guess we just wanted to have one dance with someone who didn't drive us crazy. But it was just as friends." He lay back down next to her.

"Well you weren't 'just friends' after you jumped in front of that taco truck. The sold amazing tacos, by the way."

"Yeah, I know. You were eating one when you guys came to see me in the hospital, and you gave me half."

"Really?"

He nodded.

"Was I…conscious?"

"I don't think you were sleep walking…I've seen you during that."

"Oh. I must have been delusional to give you my only source of food. Anyway, I don't think I need to remind you what happened when she went over to your place to see you."

Freddie frowned. The memory of the one week he and Carly were a couple was a bittersweet one. On one hand, he had finally gotten what he'd said he wanted for years. But he had also realized that Carly never would have kissed him if he hadn't jumped in front of that truck. And he also discovered that the life of Carly Shay's boyfriend wasn't as amazing as he though it would be. Sure, Carly was a great girlfriend, and she always treated him well, but they had always had so much fun just being friends. They seemed to lose that while they dated. Their relationship felt too forced.

"Carly's my best friend and I wanted her to be happy," Sam said. "But I know Carly. I knew she was just in awe that you were her little hero. I knew it the moment she ran out of your apartment and told me she kissed you. I hated the idea of you and her as a couple. It made me want to—"

"Puke up blood?" Freddie smirked, repeating her own words.

"Exactly. And I'm sure you recall our little 'foreign bacon' conversation. I didn't think you would listen to me, though. You finally had your dream girl, and me calling you bacon didn't seem like a good enough reason to dump her. But you did. And as soon as you weren't a couple anymore…I got like, really happy. It was weird. I thought about it for hours, and I think that's where I finally realized there was a slight chance that I could possibly like you. So…that's about when I started to think I was going insane. I still didn't let any feelings for you besides hate show, until we hired Brad. It was the perfect cover. I could hang with you all I wanted, but with Brad there, and everyone would think I had a thing for him. But I didn't know how obnoxious you would all be when you tried to set me up with him."

"Hey, Carly was the one who wanted to bring you guys to a barn, not me!"

"A barn?"

"Never mind."

"So anyway…I decided to back off the whole Brad thing, and besides, you were on to me when I started acting nice. And after your little geek machine read my mood, everyone was convinced that I was in love with the guy. And you wouldn't leave me alone. Carly told me to make a move…you gave me your little speech…and well, you were there."

Freddie smiled.

"And then I knew I was insane. Or so I thought."

"Wow," Freddie said. "I honestly had no idea you felt that way about me until you kissed me at the lock in. Either you're a really good actress, or I'm stupid."

"Both," Sam said, poking his face, "But yes, I've gotten pretty good at hiding things." There was a pause. "But…what about you?" She asked, glancing at him. "Did you only start liking me when I kissed you?"

Freddie let out a breath. "No. Well…I don't know. It's hard to say when it happened. For most of middle school I associated you with the devil, as you found endless delight in torturing me. With little mercy, I may add."

Sam grinned.
"I didn't even want to hang out with Carly when you were around, but she insisted that you treated everyone like that, and it would get better. I believed her. And it did get better. It took about three years, but eventually we got to be really close. You stopped hurting for no reason at all, and only did it when you were provoked. Or you were just bored. Or mad. Or just felt like punching something. Okay, you still hurt me regularly. But I was used to being a target in these situations. I never dreamed that you would be my first kiss, but you were. And in the moment it actually felt kind of…right. Natural. Which was weird…because it's not normal for a person to like the girl who probably thought up ways to kill you in her spare time."

Sam shook her head. "I never wanted to kill you. Maybe put you in a coma for a few weeks, but never kill you. Then who would I mess with?"

"Uh, let's see, everyone else you like to beat up?"

"You were always special," She said softly. "Sure, I liked roughing up anyone who got in my way, but I loved it when it was you."

"Oh, I'm so honored. What was so special about me?"

"Well, for one you were the only one who ever tried to fight back. That was always quite a comedy show to witness."

"Hey. I let you win because I couldn't beat up a girl."

"Uh, yeah right," Sam laughed.

"Yeah…I was afraid of you."

"You always got so mad. Yelled, protested. I think that's why we started arguing so much. It was fun. I actually woke up every day, excited to get in a fight with you. Not that I faked being mad at you or anything. You were one obnoxious little nub. Also, I could torture you more than anyone because I knew that I could never lose you as a friend, or enemy, because of iCarly. As long as we still had the web show I'd be forced to spend time with you no matter how much we hated each other. So I pushed it to the limit. And the one time I actually think I went too far…we ended up kissing. Which like I said, wasn't all that terrible."

"Like you had anything to compare it to."

"What did I tell you about interrupting?" She grabbed the first thing she could find, a dictionary with a bookmark in it, sitting on his bedside table, and smacked him right on top of the head. "Ow!" He exclaimed, feeling the spot she had attacked. "Why would you hit me with a dictionary?"

"Why would you read a dictionary? For fun?"

"I like learning new words!"

"What an awful thing to do with your free time!"

"I don't…it's usually late at night."

"You know what I do really late at night? Sleep!"

"Well, why don't you do that right now?"

"Fine! Maybe I will!"

"Good!"

"Gooder!" she flipped over so her back was facing him, but didn't shut her eyes. Instead, she whispered, "Your mattress molds to my body perfectly."

"Yeah, it's one of those memory foam ones," He said dully.

She didn't know why, but this made her laugh, and soon she couldn't stop. She rolled back over, facing Freddie, her eyes wet from her laughter. He pressed his tongue against his teeth to keep from smiling. His head still hurt a lot. But he didn't do a very good job, because in a matter of seconds he was laughing along with her. He had a sudden urge to kiss her, so he pressed his mouth up against hers. She moved her head to the right to deepen the kiss, but didn't get very far, as she burst out laughing once more, spitting all over his face. "What now?" He asked, quite amused.

"Nothing," She said. "Okay I'll be serious now." She leaned in towards him, turning her head to the right again, and just before their lips met, she exploded with giggles. "What is it?" He asked, throwing his hands up.

"I did it again," She gasped.

"Did what?"

"I went in for the kill," She said in a funny voice. At this, he too burst out laughing. Just a couple of weeks ago, they had a conversation on how it's called 'going in for the kill' when you move your head to the right while kissing. They both found it hilarious.

"Hey," She said suddenly sitting up. "Do you have any food?"

"Yes, we have fat free pasta."

"I'm going to go eat it."

He followed her out of the room and into the kitchen, flipping on the light switch as he passed it. She got a fork and the container of pasta out of the fridge and pulled the lid off. "I'm so hungry," She moaned. Freddie rolled his eyes and smiled. She took a huge forkful and shoved it in her mouth, chewed for a few seconds and then spit it all out on the floor. "I hate it." She looked at him, her face pinched up. Freddie stared at her, then sighed. "I didn't even have my annual ham that I have every day!" She said, looking quite distressed.

"Annual means yearly."

"I know. I was just testing you."

"Of course you were."

"I'm hungry."

"I'm aware."

Thank you for reading

p.s.-Reviewing inspires me to add more chapters! School's starting soon, so i'll be extra busy, but hopefully i'll have a new chapter up later this week!