Title: iRarely Ever Mean It

Author: sundroptea

Rating: M this time for realz guys- the petting isn't too graphic but I certainly use a swear.

Disclaimer: Not mine, because I'm not stupid enough to make Carly kiss Freddie, or try to ruin something that he seems to have inadvertently built. I'm talking to you, Dan Schnieder.

Author's Note: Sorry it's been awhile. I never stopped working on it, but I got slumped after the series finale. I'm back in my groove with it now, and I hope you're still reading!

She swipes at her eyes with the palm of her hand quickly, because crying in front of Freddie has been an unavoidable evil but crying in front of two boys in one day is her mother. She pulls herself together so fast, she can almost hear the neurons snapping like rubber bands in her mind.

"Sam, is everything alright?"

Derek is there and he looks concerned. He is staring at her like he is drinking in her features and while that's something she always imagined when she snatched trashy romance novels from her mom's dresser, she never expected it in real fucking time. He is reaching for her, hands stretched to cup her elbows, because leather jacket aside, he's kind of an effing gentleman, only-

He's reaching around Freddie (and, she admits, when she did read those paperback pulp fictions, the boy who she imagined was shorter, stockier, and had a propensity for striped apparel ((and is she ever mother truckin' through with lying today- she can't even lie to herself-))) to do it and she makes the worst mistake that she could. She looks at Freddie. Her face is wet, and snotty, and from the corner of her eye she sees Derek looking like he's upset about why. Freddie, he's staring at her too- utterly consumed, the novels would call it, struck and riveted- only it's with that same look of half- bemusement/ half-horror that she remembers from the night of the lock in. Like he just can't place who she is, or what she's doing there, but that he wishes she weren't-

It isn't a sob, because she doesn't let her lungs expand.

She has seen her mother in enough post-relationship meltdowns to realize that there's nothing she can do to make her eyes less red, or less swollen, but she can clear her throat and level her voice like a mo-fo champ so she does.

"Hey!" It's lame and she accepts that, because she says it to the boy who is rapidly shifting from concerned and confused to pissed off and not happy. She doesn't think that Derek's uncharacteristic mood swing is a product of her deficient conversational skills as much as it is a factor of Freddie still having her boxed in with his body and his (reflexive, she tells herself) unwillingness to let Derek pass. She shoves at Freddie. "What're you doing here?"

"I got a weird call from you, a guy's voice comes on the line and then it keeps going straight to voice mail? I got worried, and I knew that you had just finished up the show. I made a wild guess where you'd be."

"Good guess! Only we're in the middle of a conversation," Freddie begins, seeming to recover from the stupor he'd been stewing in. He's starting to turn to him and she takes that as an opportunity.

She's moving, and quickly, and she doesn't know if it's to diffuse the situation or if it's to make it worse. At this point she doesn't know what form 'worse' would take but she's had just about all she can take of 'bad enough.' She dodges Freddie, grabs Derek's arm and steers him away, but it's like she's moving through water because she's all wrung out and her legs feel like jelly. It's probably part of the reason why Derek is able to shift her when he swings around. The other part might have something to do with Freddie, since he's got her by the wrist again. Oh bad. Ugly bad.

"Sam, was it this guy on the phone earlier?" he says, and Sam wants to facepalm herself into a coma. She's getting an inkling of what 'worse' is going to look like. If she came away from her brief tenure at Chili-My-Bowl with anything it was that she hated pissing contests. That restroom was a mess and you can only bleach your skin so much before it's not even skin anymore. She doesn't need to be caught in one on the street.

"It doesn't matter, Derek. Let's just get out of here, ok?" Freddie glares at her, and gives her wrist a shake like she's a terrier of some sort that needs discipline. She curls her fist. "Let go, Freddie."

They both look down at where his fingers are overlapping themselves across her skin. His thumb moves slowly, gently, across her pulse, and it's like he can't help himself from doing it any more than she can stop the shudder that ripples through her body. He notices, because the expression on his face changes from the one he uses when he's confused to the one he uses when he's made up his mind.

Her heart flips over and she can't help that either.

"It's only ten-thirty."

"Do… you want to break up at midnight?"

"That works!" "Okay!"

A question: Is it lying if you're pretending, too?

Not that long before that, all things considered…

This touching thing (at least, non-fist-to-sternum-or-nasal-cartilage touching) is new, obviously. Which isn't to say it's bad. They're curled up on her couch (a worn, corduroy reject from Tasteland that her mom calls 'vintage' and she calls 'secondhand') and the rasp of the knap against the part of her back bared by her rucked up shirt keeps sending tiny shivers down her spine. She knows he can feel it because every time she does it his lips quirk up in a very smug smirk for one so nubbish.

And he can't exactly hide that, because his lips are right on hers, all up in her chiz.

His hand skims up her side, and it's tender but not exactly gentle, and the 'tiny shiver' she gives is so violent she almost knocks him off from where he's pressing her down into the cushions. This time he doesn't smirk- he outright laughs.

"You seriously need to take it down a peg, Benson," she huffs, but she kind of thinks that maybe she's not at her most intimidating, what with his hand up the back of her blouse, and his saliva on her face. "It's like you think you're good at this or something."

Something else that's new is that look on his face, as he leans closer- as far as he's able when they're already sealed together, chest to knee. His head tilts and there's just this… whatever, this gleam in his eyes, that on anyone else she would call-

"I am clearly good at this," his head dips, and his lips sip at her throat, and oh, he's so bold now, this boy and it's either killing her or extending her life by a thousand years (she thinks she'll need that long to process all the *feels*. God it almost shames her that she's one of those butterfly-glitter-flower-fairy-daffodil girls now, but then he pulls her tighter and she can't bring herself to care). He sighs, and it matches his eyes, and she squirms and thinks-

"You don't think so?" He doesn't even pretend to not know the answer and she decides she's not quite daffodil enough to take that laying down. She arches her back when he slowly begins to drag her top to the side, following the seam of the vee with his mouth, his weight heavy, but not unwelcome above her. She flushes. Shit. The laying down that's not allowed is the metaphorical one, she bargains with herself.

"Please, nub. You're a three at best." She doesn't know if her nearly feral kiss softens the blow for him at all, but from the way he moans and almost collapses on her for a moment, she knows it doesn't soften anything else. Her grin is probably as savage as her kiss had been. "I've seen better lips on a Gibby."

Indignation floods his features. He catches her hands in his, and keeps her down using his hips, and gives her wrists a little shake.

"You take that back!"

Now she is laughing, and it's unsympathetic.

"I'm serious!" she protests, but she thinks he knows she doesn't mean it from the way her jean clad legs lock together behind his back. "I was talking with Tasha the other day-"

"Bullshit! You've hated that poor girl since the incident where Gibby planned to kill me!" He's giving her a look she privately calls his "Whatchu-talkin'-bout-Sammy" face. It does not stop her snickering, even through the novelty of seeing it closer than ever before. Still pinned, she raises her head and drags her smirk down his jaw. Now he shivers. He drops his head with a moan, and reapplies the lips in question with renewed vigor to her throat.

"No one gets away with making my friends fight," she says airily, and if it comes out slightly breathless, she is not going to choose to notice. Not, of course, that it does.

"Sam!" His outrage is real, but she can read him like a walking, squishable copy of Boogie Bear 6: A Bigger, Bearier Boogie. He can't hide his laughter from her. "You coached him! You booked the venue! You literally made your friends fight."

"Tomato, tomahto, nub."

He blows a raspberry by her ear, but he's too heavy for her to buck off. He can't quite force his voice to sound as annoyed as he seems to want it to sound. "It still doesn't explain why you can't stand her. Gibby loves her and she's really nice..."

He suddenly rears back and he looks... what do old people call it? Thunderstruck? Whatever, he looks like he's just played 'slap five' with his doodle and an electric socket, and she can't figure out what his damage is. She has anecdotal evidence going back almost eight years that suggests it's unlikely that this is the moment where she has pushed him too far. If it turns out that he's allergic to her spit, and that his mother was right all this time about interpersonal contact, she'd giving up meat and reforming her ways. If it turns out that he thinks just because they're... whatever... good... feelings buddies... that they have to have all the same friends then-

"Ooooh." He stares down at her with wide eyes, and for some reason she is beginning to detest the expression on his face. "OH."

"What?" she shifts, but that only brings more attention to the fact that he's still got his grabbers under her shirt. He buries his face in the hollow between her chin and her shoulder and starts sniggering like a drunk hyena and it tickles her nipples and she never thought that she would think that phrase, ever, and so she shoves him, a little more forcefully this time, and it does the trick. He rocks back onto his knees, still between her legs and begins sliding his hands across her stomach in what she assumes is meant to be a soothing fashion. It's just wasted effort however, because he's still laughing and she still doesn't get the joke.

"Out with it, nub," she grinds out, crossing her arms in annoyance. This proves a mistake when, yes, his laughter stops, but his attention (not to mention his hands) immediately get drawn right back to her (admittedly impressive) rack. Boys!

"Benson!" she slaps at his hands, only for him to start laughing again and take her wrists. He is grinning and it is unrepentant, and in that moment she (melts) sort of wants to give in and grin back, even though she is super sorts of annoyed. Then she becomes SERIOUSLY SUPER sorts of annoyed at his next words and grinning is out of the question entirely.

"You were jealous!" He looks like the pig that swallowed the apple (or the Sam that swallowed the pig, for that matter). She, on the other hand, cannot be said to look anywhere near so happy, what with her mouth gaping open and her cheeks filling up with rage blood (again, Pucketts don't blush).

"You're crazy!" she tries to kick him off, but he uses his grip to pull her up so that she's sitting between his legs, with hers locked around his waist. He tugs her close, and resumes the lip to skin action, even though she's still spluttering and jerking around in his hold to try and hit him. "Seriously, you are six bags of loco nuts if you think for one SECOND-"

"It's cute!" he enthuses and knows it's the wrong thing if his flinch is anything to go by. He backtracks. "It's... well, ok. Can you blame me for being a little bit happy?"

"I can't blame you for a lot of things, Benson. Give me a try."

"It's just... you- jealous! Of me!" She kicks him in the back with her heel. "C'mon... Be nice."

"Does that sound like me?" she snarks, blowing a raspberry in his face. He squeezes her wrist a little tighter, in warning, when she actually manages to cuff his ear in her struggles, but turns it into a caress, running his thumb down her pulse and they both take a sharp breath in. She quiets down, almost involuntarily, and he does too, letting out a sigh she can feel fan across her cheek. (Her suspiciously red cheek, her brain reminds her with an unpleasant cackle.) He rests his forehead against hers, and she loves him, she loves him so much-

"Oh, Sam," he whispers, sliding his hands up to lace his fingers with hers, palm to palm in another kiss. She blinks at him, drowsy, almost, from the sheer immensity of her need for him. There must be something stuck in her eyes or on her face or maybe it's caught in her hair, a non-verbal question mark that he seems compelled to answer, because he keeps going with the words, when she was ready to call it pax and get back to the heavier petting. "It's just nice to know you care. I didn't think you ever could."

She rallies, because her face is hot enough that she accepts that she's got to rewrite the rule about blushing, and she is almost vibrating against him where he is cradling her and... And he can't know that she loves him, because that would be bad. This is history, his, hers and her mother's talking here, and she needs to pull it together. "You? Not thinking? Shock and awe!" It's not her best, but it's something.

"No, I mean it. You amaze me, and you keep doing it, and you're everything I never knew I had to have and I just, I-"

"Yeah, yeah, Benson," she interrupts on an eye roll, but it's mostly so that she doesn't have to look directly at him. "Everyone is special, and we are all rockstar space kittens in the land of hearts and rainbows so let's just can it with the mushy gushy-" He stops her with a finger on her lips.

He moves slowly, every touch infinitely gentle in a way that their embraces haven't been before. He keeps his hand curled around the slope of her jaw but moves his thumb, sensing that he won't need to quiet her at this moment. He takes her hand and presses it slowly, carefully to his cheek and now she couldn't look away from him if she tried. "Shh, for once. Let me- Just... Let me."

He strokes his fingers across the apple of her cheek and she takes a deep breath in because this is too much, she isn't ready for this - he's only going to hurt her but she just loves- "You are special, Samantha Puckett. You matter and you matter to me."

He draws her closer, and kisses her ever so lightly. It's more the idea of his lips against hers, than the actual impression of them. Would he? Could he really- She aches for him. She's dizzy from breathing in his air- their air- he's swaying against her, too- he must be as lightheaded as she is. "Sam, I-"

"Oh God, Freddie... Freddie, please, I need-" She must look like a constrictor vine, wrapped as tightly around him as she can be, and still trying to find a way to press closer. "Oh, I need-" He is kissing the life out of her and she is so fine with it, she would say prayers if it meant he would keep doing it and he is still so deliberately, disconcertingly tender it's almost brutal.

"Sam," he whispers, pulling away only far enough to see her eyes, to pin their stares together like he intends to sew them later. "I love you. I love you, and I will keep loving you, whether you care or not and-" He's cut off and if their embrace was brutal when he was directing it, it's savage when she takes over.

"I care," she moans, and it's delirium. She wasn't supposed to let him know that! "Oh, fuck, Benson, I care and I have for- god, for so long, and I love you, iloveyouiloveyouilove-"

Her back slams down on to the couch again and she hears fabric tear and a clatter and she doesn't care if the house falls the hell down around them if it means she can get his skin to touch hers, until the jolt of being doused with a nearly full container of something sweet smelling, freezing and sticky breaks her out of it. Freddie gasps and arches at the impact of the impromptu ice shower, but that just drives him harder against her for a moment and she almost forgets from one second to the next that her mother is standing next to the couch with a bored expression and an empty Slurpee cup.

Pam clears her throat, and Freddie seems to suffer from a paralytic spasm- his limbs don't seem to know whether to move or freeze, but he scrambles backwards enough that her legs unwind and he falls to the floor. He looks horrified and it'd be funny if she weren't still picturing him taking her apart cunt first. She reflexively brushes at the slush dripping down her cleavage, and Freddie's eye slam shut as he starts babbling out broken apologies.

"Mom, what the hell?" she groans, still trying to switch gears, sitting up and shaking her head to try and clear it.

"Sorry, kids. I've got that couch booked tonight. Me and the new mister-"

"The urinal salesman?"

"No, he got arrested for bribing a sanitation worker. This guy is a professional plasma donar- he's the new new mister- anyway, we have some getting to know you gropes to get to and you're in my lucky spot."

That helps, actually, and both Sam and Freddie hop up with urgency. She tosses his jacket to him and both mutter something about showers, and antibacterial soap, and they practically sprint in opposite directions until at the last moment, as they pass each other, he reaches out and grabs her wrist. The both still for a moment and her heart flips over as his thumb moves slowly, gently across her pulse.

"I did call your name a few times," Pam grunts as she flips the cushion over, which breaks the spell again. "Just so you know."

The Aftermath of Good Intentions:

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Carly, ask me again. Maybe this next time will be the time that I want to talk about it."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Would you look at that? Still no."

"Sam!"

"I mean it, Carls. There is nothing about this situation that I want to think about, discuss or dissect in even the smallest way. It's over. It happened and it's over and it's done, and that's just how things go sometimes."

"You're crying."

"I'm allergic to this conversation."

"I just want to help you, Sam! That's all I want, is for you to be happy and you aren't happy and I want to fix it!"

"Look, Carly. Some things aren't fixable with a hug and some llamjun, ok? I'm not going to lie, this sucks chunks of skunk, but it's not the damn end of the world. I'm just mad that I let things get so out of hand."

"Out of hand?"

"Did anyone really think that this was going to work? I was just going to lay the mack, get him out of my system and then it got all involved and optimistic and I should have stuck with the original plan."

"That's no way to live your life, Sam-"

"This is not the speech I need at the moment, Carls. Really. I'll be fine, and I'll get up, and I'll even let you make me listen to two Christina Perry songs, but if you make even one move towards the Taylor Swift, so help me, Shay, there will be blood."

"Alright. I just want to you to know that I'm here if you need me. I, for one, think that you two were a little hasty in this whole thing, and that you were doing really well there for awhile, and you don't need to say it's over for ever if you don't want to and-"

"Ohmigod. Fine! Play Taylor- anything to make the facenoise stop! I'm fine, and really, this is all for the best! I mean it!"

This time:

She feels shaky, and she wonders if he can tell, and then wants to slap herself because it doesn't matter to him whether she is or isn't, and this is maybe the worst moment in her entire life. (Worse than when her dad left ((because she never met him))- worse than when that psycho he mom had dated broke in with a chainsaw ((she'd always wanted to know what it felt like to kneecap someone with a bat, so it was kind of a win))- worse than the day she'd kissed him the second first time ((because then they'd had their whole future together wholly in front of them instead of in shattered pieces behind))) She want to hate him- for using that moment against her, whether it was on purpose or not. She wants to rip him apart with her words, or her fists, and she doesn't know how else to do it except-

"Sam?" Derek asks, and the concern on his face smashes her in the guts again, because she knows it's genuine, and there aren't ten years of history shading it and clouding it and twisting it until she doesn't know which way is up anymore.

She wants to love Derek and she wants to hate Freddie and she wants to be happy but a girl can't have everything and she doesn't have anything so she might as well just bow to inevitable and-

"I'm sorry Derek. I really am," she wipes her eyes, trying to clear them. Something must be wrong with them, because at her words she thinks she sees Freddie sag with something that looked almost like relief, and that can't be right. "Let me just finish up with Freddie and we can go."