Chapter 9: It Gets Hot

Disclaimer: I owned iCarly once, but then some shyster took advantage of my gambling addiction.

Day 4 - Afternoon

1

They slammed the door in my face, Freddie thought. He stood outside Carly's apartment a moment, pondering this. Actually, it wasn't so much that they slammed the door in his face; it was more like they had forgotten he was there. He had come up to Sam and Carly in the hall earlier, and he knew right away he had interrupted something. He was used to death rays emanating from Sam's eyes, but Carly usually didn't join in. She did this time, though. He tried talking to them, but whatever words they gave him trailed off. The entire trip home they were doing some type of communication with their eyes, completely ignoring him. He was getting a little upset. He was going to bring up Carly's stupid "no secrets" promise she had forced them to make, but he didn't think it would be wise to bring up something that reminded him so much of kissing Sam.

He waited a second longer to see if they would remember he was there and come apologize to him. Okay, for Carly to apologize to him. No, nobody came. Finally, he opened the door.

He didn't see Sam and Carly. He did see Spencer in the middle of the living room, working on what appeared to be a nine-foot-tall robot skeleton.

"Que pasa, Spencer? Where did Sam and Carly go?"

"Not sure. Carly dragged Sam upstairs." Spencer looked in the direction of the stairs. "I'm not sure you really want to get involved in whatever it is, Freddie. That way lies danger."

Freddie nodded. Now that he had a moment to think about it, he realized it would be safer for him to find out from Carly after whatever it was had calmed down.

"What are you working on, Spencer?"

"Fire robot!" Spencer exclaimed and grinned. Freddie took a step back. Maybe it would just be safer if I went upstairs and shoved my tongue down Sam's throat, called her Samantha, and told her she had to become a vegetarian, Freddie thought.

"You're making a sculpture with fire?"

"Yeah, see along these beams-all the holes? Fire will come out of each one of them. It will be like a Metal Burning Man!" Freddie looked. There had to be thousands of holes.

"You didn't think that, maybe, that would be a little dangerous?" Freddie tried to keep the fear out of his voice.

"What could go wrong? I'm going to light it. Stand back a little." Freddie stood back a lot.

Spencer held a lighter near the bottom of the sculpture. Freddie tensed. Spencer reached further in. He looked up.

"It won't light."

2

"What do you mean, you like Freddie?" Carly asked.

"Didn't you watch that film in health, Carls? I thought it was pretty clear."

"Not funny, Sam. I know that. But how do you like Freddie?"

"So you think I shouldn't like Freddie?"

"We talked about this already, Sam, and you seemed to indicate you didn't like him."

Sam shrugged.

"Sam, how long have you liked him?" Sam wouldn't look at Carly. "Sam, you didn't like him when he and I were dating, did you?" Sam didn't say anything. "Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry. If I had known..."

"It's not your fault, Carly. You're the kind of girl he likes, not me."

"That's not true! I mean, I don't know if he likes you, but I do know he doesn't like me that way...anymore. What we should..."

"No, Carly, I said no Carlyness."

"Why not, Sam?"

Sam looked at her. "What if he doesn't like me? I don't want to lose him as a friend."

Carly was her best friend and knew Sam better than anyone, but even she sometimes forgot under the tough girl exterior just how sensitive Sam really was. "Okay, Sam, if you don't want to do anything, I won't make you. But you did come to me about it, so you must have wanted something."

"I just need to talk to somebody about it, Carly, and obviously I couldn't talk to Fredweirdo." Carly smiled at that. Even after admitting she liked Freddie, Sam still called him names.

"But what prompted you bringing it up now?"

"Oh, he's all like 'we're friends, you're my friend, we don't really hate each other, blah blah' and then I jumped on him for calling me that. And I was straddling him-"

"You were what? You really did pay attention in health class."

"Not like that. I was just holding him down, and I realized how close we were together, and I thought about how close we were, and it reminded me...this is all your fault!"

"How is it my fault, Sam?"

"If you hadn't been, 'oh, you ruined Freddie's life' I never would have gone on the fire escape, and we never would have kissed, and I wouldn't feel like a stupid girl." Carly laughed. "It's not funny."

"I'm sorry that...you feel like a girl. Sam, Freddie's a good guy. If you two did get together, it would be a good thing."

"You can't say anything, Carls."

"I won't, Sam. Say, you don't think Freddie wrote that poem, do you?" Sam looked at her.

"Freddie? Write a poem? Did he ever write you a poem?"

Carly shook her head. "No. But, well, just look at it from the point-of-view of Freddie writing it. You have blue eyes. Some of that stuff could apply to you."

"Freddie's a tech-nerd, not a literature nerd."

"And yet he's tutoring you in poetry. And taking you on walks in the park. I think the boy may be dating you without you knowing it, Sam." Sam laughed it off. The thought of Freddie Benson...wooing her. Yeah, right.

Carly's phone vibrated. She looked at it. "Oh, I forgot Freddie was with us."

"What did he say?"

"He says Spencer is trying to set a sculpture on fire." She shrugged, attributing it to normal Spencer-fire dynamics.

"I don't think I can spend time with him tonight, Carly."

"He's tutoring you, Sam."

"So tell him you're helping me." Carly looked at her.

"Okay, I will. But only for tonight. And only if you promise to let me actually help you with your homework. I don't need Freddie griping at me."

"Fine. What are you going to tell him?'

"What always works with guys," Carly said, smiling.

3

As soon as Freddie saw her coming downstairs, he began pantomiming to her. She looked in the direction he was pointing, and she saw that Spencer really was trying to set the sculpture on fire.

"Spencer!" His head shot up.

"What?"

"There's a new barista at the coffee shop. She's really cute."

"Getting coffee," Spencer said, and dashed at the door.

"Thank you," Freddie said. "He actually has gas running through the sculpture. I'm gonna ask my mom if we can move."

"I'll stop him, Freddie, don't worry."

"Good. So what's going on? Sam and I need to do our tutoring."

"Sam can't do tutoring tonight, Freddie."

"But I have to. Principal Franklin said..."

"Sam's having issues. Woman issues."

"Oh," Freddie said, flummoxed. He wasn't sure how to proceed.

"I just don't think you want to be with her when she's in that type of mood. I mean, you know how Sam usually is."

"Yeah," Freddie said, distractedly. He didn't want to admit how much he was looking forward to spending time with Sam. He didn't notice Carly trying to pry into his soul with her eyes.

"So I thought I would take over tutoring just for tonight. So if you want to just tell me what she needs to do."

"Yeah," Freddie repeated, and pulled out the schedule he had created for Sam. He wrote what they were going to work for tonight on a separate piece of paper, while Carly looked over the schedule. It was extremely detailed. She knew Freddie was detail-oriented, but it seemed he had put a lot of time and effort into planning Sam's tutoring.

"So," Carly said, after he had handed her the lesson plan, "I never knew you were a poetry guy, Freddie." She meant to keep her promise to Sam, but that didn't mean she couldn't mosey close to that line where the promise lay.

"What? No, not really."

"I mean, you seem to know a lot about it, and Sam was talking about your little trip to the park."

"Oh, well, I just read this book about how to view literature like an English professor. It helped when it came to tutoring." Now he did notice Carly seemed to be prying with her eyes. She actually looked a little deranged. "Are you okay, Carly?"

"Me? Fine. How are you?"

"Fine. thanks for asking," he said, confused.

"Hey, remember in eight grade we had to write poems in English?"

"Yeah," he said. He felt danger warnings go off in his head. But there was no way Carly could know about the poem. RIght?

"What did you write about?"

"A tree." Carly looked disappointed.

She thought she could ask one more question without stamping all over her promise to Sam. "You never wrote any poetry after that, did you?"

He laughed. "That tree poem was pretty bad, Carly. I don't know why anybody would continue writing poetry after that."

Carly was about to say something when Spencer came in.

"We need to take you to the optometrist, Carly. That was a guy."

Carly thought about it. "Was he cute?"

Spencer looked at her. "Yeah, but I still don't think it was worth me going down there. Although he does make a good cup of java."

"Well, since I'm not tutoring Sam today, I'm gonna catch up on some of my own homework," Freddie said. He didn't want to talk to Carly about poetry any longer. He left.

"Spencer," Carly said. "Do you think Freddie is a good liar?"

"Freddie? Lie? I don't really think of those two things together." Neither did Carly, but she was still bothered about his response to the poetry question. Somehow she had to figure out the answer without breaking her promise to Sam.

"By the way, Spencer, you are not lighting that thing on fire."

"But, Carly, it would be so awesome."

"Spencer, do you remember when you set my bedroom on fire? On my birthday?"

"Fine, I won't light it," he said, pouting.

Carly looked at him, and her eyes widened.

"Spencer."

"Yeah."

"Your coffee's on fire." He looked down and saw that his cup of coffee indeed had flames rising from it. He ran to the kitchen and poured the coffee in the sink, and turned the faucet on over the cup.

"How does that even happen?"

A/N: I'm really trying to not have Carly stick her nose in Sam and Freddie's business, and yet somehow it seems like she might anyway, whether I want it or not.

Thank you for reviews from jackpotdante, Flutter360, PurpleJerk, Moviepal, WahooPunchPurple, kiyokoseddie, PurpleJerkWarrior, Geekquality, and ShooshYeah35.

PurpleJerk: I don't know that Gibby will get with Carly. I never actually planned to have them have much interaction, but once Spencer brought up the flirting issue, it just seemed to happen naturally. Much like Carly staying out of people's business, this might happen whether I plan it or not. I'm not one who really sees Gibby and Carly as a serious relationship, and yet I did have them get together in another story (although that relationship didn't last long). Maybe I have an illness.

Moviepal: I don't know how sexy I can have them get, since I have this as a K+ rating. Sam's motor is running. I guess most of the revving up will be under the hood. I'm gonna stop now before I get too punny.

WahooPunchPurple: Wishes are granted. Actually, I originally planned on just having the robot sculpture not being able to be lit, just to torture people, but it must be a Shay family trait to force their stories a way different than I planned to go.

PurpleJerkWarrior: I pretty much tazered four classrooms of students. What's more lighthearted than that?