A/N: Anybody who actually fences, sorry if I messed stuff up. I had my friend give me a crash course and asked her a bunch of questions, but if I used the wrong terms or messed stuff up, well, Freddie fences innately, maybe he never bothered to learn the right terminology? Haha, well, anyway, thanks for reading, and please leave me a review if you enjoy this or have anything to say about it! Bonus points to anybody who points out the various clever things I tried to include. (Perhaps not to such great success this time. This chapter was hard to write!)
Disclaimer: iCarly isn't mine, alas!
Act II
"Freddie, are you coming to our knitting class or not?" Mrs. Benson tried to lure him from the Shay's living room with a wiggle of two girthy knitting needles and a raised pair of eyebrows.
Freddie waved her off. "No Mom, I gotta do the show later. I told you, I don't want to make my own cardigans." Sam's gasp of laughter came from the top of the stairs.
After Mrs. Benson shut the door, Carly stepped over Sam's body as she lay on the top step, leaning against the glass of the window. "I'll be setting up the fruit. Bring me a snack!"
"Sure, Carly!" He made his way over to the kitchen, avoiding the half deboned ham hock on the counter. Sam had headed straight for the meat after coming back from rehearsals, evidently ravenous. "You okay, Sam?"
A sigh came from the stairwell. "Yeah, I suppose. Can you believe Rubin?"
"I'm sorry you have so many scenes with him, but you have to admit, he makes a pretty good Benvolio." Freddie set about making three big glasses of chocolate milk.
"Maybe he should talk Shakespearean all the time!"
"Yeah, the iambic pentameter really works for him. I never thought I'd be able to understand him. He should always be scripted." There was something deeply ironic about Rubin playing Benvolio, the only character in the play with a modicum of sense. The spoon clinked musically as he mixed up the chocolate milk. "Gibby's taking his role a little bit too much to heart, too."
There was a grumbling noise. "If that weirdo says one more thing about your mother I might have to punch him in the face."
"Sam, he's not talking about my mom, he's talking about Romeo's mom. He's being Method about it." He laughed, remembering Gibby as Tybalt earlier in the day, shouting something about "slatterns" over lunch.
"Whatever. I just wish I got to be the one killing him, instead of the other way around." She slapped an arm over her face.
"It doesn't work that way." Freddie thought for a moment, thinking back to the day's blocking rehearsal.
Two weeks into rehearsals and it seemed like Mrs. Prince had given him an entire class to which to teach rudimentary fencing. Sam was okay, but it was obvious that she was frustrated at not being as good as Freddie at something physical. Gibby, Rubin, and the smattering of other drama club regulars who had weapons and footwork to hash out for the play, were having more fun swinging swords around, playing Galaxy Wars, than actually paying attention to the choreography Freddie was working out for them.
"I know, I know, my death is a vital the turning point of the play, blah blah blah. Whatever, I just wanna whack someone over the head with a sword, you know?"
Freddie began climbing up the stairs with his tray of chocolate milk. "Hey, what if you helped me out with something?"
Sam scoffed. "What're you offering?"
"If you help me get the guys to actually pay attention so they don't poke an eye out by showtime, I'll teach you fencing for real." He stood even to her face about five steps below her. She rolled her head over to look at him.
"With a real sword?" She raised an eyebrow quizzically.
"I know it's probably a really bad idea to give you an actual saber, but, yeah." Freddie quirked a smile. "You'll fit into my old stuff that I grew out of last year."
Sam motioned to kick him in the shins, but she couldn't reach. "You promise?"
"We can start next week. Only if you make the guys pay attention to me, though." Freddie stepped nervously over her waist, hoisting himself past the step she occupied.
She reached out and grabbed his ankle, nearly making him spill the drinks. "It's a deal," she said, shaking his ankle up and down.
***
"Juliet!" Carly called from the rafters.
Wendy's red hair flung out and hit Freddie smack in the face. She was crouching at the edge of an unpainted platform while Freddie clung below her. "Anon, good nurse!" she spoke in Carly's direction. "Sweet Montague, be true. Stay but a little, I will come again."
Then there was a horrible pause. Mrs. Prince coughed. Freddie felt like everyone in the entire company was staring at the back of his head. This was even worse than Act I. Wendy leaned in, her eyes closed.
They kissed. It was dry. Freddie nearly let go of his handhold, falling off the beginnings of the makeshift balcony.
"Way to go, Freddo my man!" Spencer called from stage left, where he was spraypainting a plywood cutout of an Italian city.
Freddie struggled to remember his lines. "O blessed, blessed night…I am afeard, being in night, all this is b-but a dream, too flattering-sweet to be substantial."
Wendy stood up, looking down at Freddie's bright red face. "Mrs. Prince, can we take five?"
Freddie smiled at her, and reached up to shake her ankle. "Thanks," he whispered.
"We'll try it again from the beginning of scene two in fifteen minutes. I need a latte!" Mrs. Prince got up, mumbling to herself and jingling her car keys.
Freddie hoisted himself up onto the platform to sit down next to Wendy, dangling his legs over the edge, fidgeting with nervousness.
Wendy jumped in, starting the conversation in a hushed, private tone. "So, we have to kiss in this, you know. We're kind of each others' love interest, I don't know that you knew that." She bumped him with her shoulder.
Freddie screwed up his face. "Yeah, I'd noticed that. Sorry. I just, you know, it's weird."
Wendy laughed. "Weird doesn't even begin to cover it, for me."
"Really? I figured you would be fine with it. I mean, I should be fine with it, you're really cute and it's not like you need to brush your teeth or anything, but you always seem to know stuff and I figured you would be more casual about it, you know, all you drama kids are, it's not like, bad or anything, exactly, I just – I'm rambling, sorry." Freddie deflated, looking away.
"Look, just do what I do. Think of somebody you really, really have the hots for, and pretend she's me." Wendy slapped him jovially on the back. "Just close your eyes and go, 'Carly Shay, I'm kissing Carly Shay, I'm kissing Caaarly Shaaay,' …or someone else, I don't know." Wendy blushed in response to the red hue blooming across Freddie's face.
Freddie looked at her from the side of his eyes, lids half shut. "It was never a secret, but does everybody know about it?"
"Yeah, they do." Wendy leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks for calling me really cute, by the way." She hopped up and went to talk to Carly.
"Whoo doggy, Freddie's gettin' some lovin'!" Sam called from below. She had half a blue velour doublet resting over her shoulders. "Like my new duds?" She struck a pose.
"Sexy," Freddie deadpanned.
"Just wait till they get you in a pair of tights. I won't be able to decide who to stare at more, you or me." Sam swished her sword, mumbling lines to herself. Spencer laughed from the left, again. Freddie fell onto his back and sighed. Tomorrow was their first fencing lesson; he'd be able to pay her back then.
***
"Your arm needs to be perpendicular to your body." He reached in and adjusted Sam's wrist. "That means even with the floor."
"I know what perpendicular means," Sam grumbled. "When am I gonna get to hold a sword?"
"Later. Much, much later. Now, watch my feet." Freddie put his mask back on, and showed Sam how to advance down the strip. "Do it with me!" Sam matched his movements, heel toe, heel toe.
Sam looked uncomfortable in Freddie's old fencing jacket, but her natural grace shown through. Wary though he was at the idea of giving her a real saber, it was quickly becoming apparent that she would be able to handle it. And he liked that she was actually doing as he said. Sometimes he felt like it was rare that she acknowledged his presence, let alone listened to him.
They fell into a surprisingly easy rhythm, running through the footwork for forty-five minutes or so after each rehearsal in the gym down the road from Ridgeway High. Some days Carly would hang out there, with Wendy and Gibby, running lines and sipping smoothies. Sam held up her part of the bargain. She yelled at the boys each time they got distracted during rehearsals; after five days of it, they began to pay attention to Freddie without her backup.
After a week of drills, Freddie put a real weapon into Sam's hand. She grinned.
"The very butcher of a silk button, a duelist, a duelist!" She quoted her lines from Act II. "A gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the immortal passado!" She lunged forward, startling Freddie. "The punto reverso! The hay!" Sam slashed her sword in a backhanded movement.
"Woah there, Mercutio, gotta put on your mask, first." Freddie picked it up from the floor and put it on Sam's head.
"You and your rules," came her voice through the mesh.
"Come on, bet you can't score a point against me." He stepped back, letting her eye him up and down. He wasn't about to go easy on her; she'd been fiddling with a stage prop long enough to have a small idea of what to do, and there was something about her that made him wary. Oh, yes, that whole beating him up every chance she got thing. That would do it.
Her wrist twitched, and she engaged. Freddie deflected her blade easily, and whacked her on the head.
"Ow! What'd you do that for?"
"You're learning!" he laughed. "How do you manage to memorize your lines so fast, anyway?"
Another attempt, and he didn't bother responding as he deflected her advance.
"I'm a professional web comedian. I just remember them, I don't know. AUGH OW!" Freddie had smacked her on top of her mask again. "Why are you being such a jerk?"
"You're leaning forward. If you stand upright, your body is easier to defend and you have better balance."
"Well how am I supposed to be upright if I'm going forward and WILL YOU STOP DOING THAT?"
Freddie laughed, held up his free hand, and took off his mask. His face was red with laughter. Sam took off her mask and held her saber to the side. She looked like she was about to rip his head off. Freddie gulped and hastily put his mask back on after catching his breath. "At least I'm not going easy on you."
They continued sparring, but Sam started spouting her lines. She eventually managed to convey that it was as though the physical movements helped her link up the dialogue in her mind. Their routine adjusted so that, instead of just learning to lunge and strike, they ran lines at the same time.
Three days later, Carly and Wendy leaned against the bleacher seats, talking about biology class and giggling while a battle raged in front of them on the strip.
"O single-soled jest, solely singular for the singleness!" Freddie stepped back as Sam came forward.
"Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faints." She laughed mockingly and tried, unsuccessfully, to score a touch on Freddie's chest.
He sidestepped easily enough. "Swits and spurs, swits and spurs; or I'll cry a match."
Sam called for a pause. They'd been at it long enough. "Nay," she panted, "if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?"
They took off their masks. Freddie cocked an eyebrow. She was getting good, but not that good. "Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there for the goose." God, Shakespeare liked to talk about whores an awful lot.
Sam growled, running a hand through her hair as she undid her ponytail. "I will bite thee by the ear for that jest."
"Nay, good goose, bite not!" Freddie leaned in and handed her two headache pills and a bottle of water they had kept next to Carly. Sam rubbed her neck.
"Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting, it is a most," she took an enormous gulp of water, "sharp sauce."
They sat down next to Wendy and Carly on the bleachers. "And is it not, then, well served in to a sweet goose?" On the word sweet, Sam shoved her sweaty gloves into Freddie's lap, making him cringe.
"Tomorrow, I'll get that point," Sam declared, out of character.
Carly scooted away from the two of them. "You guys stink!" she declared frankly. Wendy laughed, patting Carly's arm.
"I'll protect you. Boys are totally gross." She sprayed something that smelled like lavender and sugar cubes into the air in front of them.
Sam growled. Freddie smacked his own face. "Not this again."
"I'm a girl! I like girly things! Lipgloss! Kittens! Flowers!" She tore off Freddie's musty old fencing jacket, the unzesty layering of years old funk with new sweat arcing over the mat.
Carly leaned into Wendy's shoulder, looked at her like she had a secret, and looked back at Sam. "…Panties?" she suggested.
"ARGH! MY HEAD HURTS!" Sam stalked off, her saber clanging to the ground.
"Nice one," Freddie sniggered.
"You need to wash, too. Ugh, I think Wendy and I need some more alone time. See you later, okay?" Carly gathered her books and walked out after Sam.
Wendy sighed, stretched, and stood up. "Gotta go keep Carly company! I'm sure you understand." She raised her eyebrow suggestively in Freddie's direction. "She told me Spencer's got the crypt all painted and ready for rehearsals tomorrow. Can't wait till we get to die in each other's arms." She leaned in and patted him gently on the cheek.
Freddie laughed weakly and cleaned up Sam's detritus. At least Wendy hadn't demanded that they practice kissing outside of rehearsals, or anything as hackneyed as all that. But he was pretty sure she had a crush on him. She was so touchy feely! And she spent a lot of time with Carly, probably as a way to get closer to him. Freddie had had admirers before, and they had always weirded him out. This was different though. Wendy treated him like she knew his secrets, and at the same time like she had some of her own. He was still trying to work out how to handle it.
"Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast," He shoved everything into his gym bag, and hoisted it over his shoulder. "Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!" It was definitely time for a shower. Sparring with Sam always left him feeling unclean.