The Way They Are 3/3
Fandom: iCarly
Title: The Way They Are
Author: author_abz
Characters/Relationship(s): Sam/Spencer, (understated, sort of)Carly/Freddie. a la canon.
Rating/Warnings: T/PG13; innuendo, meddlesome kids, kissing, more innuendo
Disclaimer: I can't claim iCarly for my own. Yet. Sadly.
Word Count: 2,436/9,554; Chapter 3/3
Author's Note: So, this fic, in my head, is otherwise known as "Canon!fic" Because I wanted to create a fic that was canonically realistic, and I also really wanted to do a Carly-centric fic. So this is important. Really important. I have been working on this fic for over a year, so its entirity was developed before Noah Munk/Gibby was a main cast member (ah, my foresight, it is amazing), before the "little crush," and ... other season four occurences. And... did I mention this is basically canon?
Summary: Carly can't stand not knowing what's going on with Sam and Spencer, and the more she investigates, the more she freaks out (while Sam and Spencer have virtually no reaction whatsoever).
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Carly, Sam, Freddie, and Spencer don’t mention either conversation at all for the next couple of days. Carly wants to, but every time she raises her eyebrows, her brother and best friend just keep on smiling and she remembers it won’t help anything to push, so she restrains herself. Most of the time she has to move into the next room, muttering to herself about everything being ridiculous and obvious, and that you do in fact have to respect restraining orders. A few times, in the studio or in between classes at school, she feels like Sam’s baiting her, relaying the most recent or a particularly exciting adventure from hanging out with Spencer. Sometimes she’ll just stop and turn to Carly, smirking or with her eyebrows up, knowing it would be the perfect spot for a so-called love interjection, but Carly bites her tongue. After a week of nothing, Sam stops baiting Carly, and she feels like she’s gone back in time, even Freddie telling her to just drop the issue.
A week later, Carly manages to wrap her head around adjusting to the very suggestive friendship her best friend and brother have, and she giggles thinking up responses to several of their already recurring behaviors. Contemplating double entendres, she almost runs into Principal Franklin in the hallway between third and fourth period. “Carly,” he starts, raising his eyebrows at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Going to class?”
“I thought you were going to the bathroom?” Sam’s bored voice appears behind Carly, “S’up, Franklin?”
“I already went, and we should get to class, right Principal Franklin?”
His face is unaffected by their best friend banter. “I thought Ms. Briggs told you… we got a call about an hour and a half ago - Spencer’s been admitted to the ER. They didn’t tell us what happened, but …” his voice falters a second,” I thought you already knew. I thought you were already there.”
Carly doesn’t feel like she has insides anymore, but she hears herself ask, “What’s the quickest way to get there?” because her brain left with the rest of her insides and she doesn’t remember. He tells her, and reassures her, and grasps her hand, and it makes her feel better, him telling her not to worry about anything.
When she starts to move away, Carly realizes that Sam’s still standing behind her, and before she can move another inch Sam grabs onto her forearm. “I’m coming with you.” Her grip is vice-like, but her voice scares Carly, trembling, thin, and forced. Her breathing is restricted, and Carly pulls her in for a hug.
“He’ll be okay.” Carly whispers, and Sam does a sort of half nod and half head-shake into her shoulder before pulling her out the door, wiping her eyes as they go.
---
“He’s going to be okay.” The doctor tells both Carly and Sam in his room two hours later after they finally find his room and a doctor, and then the right doctor.
“See, I’m going to be okay.” Spencer echoes brightly.
“He has three stitches, but he should be completely healed in a few weeks.”
“See! Only three stitches!” He’s practically bouncing, trying to make them both smile, but Sam’s arms are crossed and her face stern, while Carly’s turning her full attention to the doctor, who smiles.
“Just make sure he gets some rest.”
“I will, doctor, thank you.” As he leaves, Carly turns back to Spencer’s bed. “Well?”
Spencer doesn’t even attempt to look sheepish, smiling at his sister sitting at the feet of his bed, Sam at his arm. “I was working, and I fell off a ladder.” He points to each of them. “This is not my fault.”
Carly can’t help but smile at her brother. “You fell off the ladder, that means it is your fault for scaring us.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I will never slip completely by accident painting a sculpture again. Happy?”
“Sure,” she answers, rolling her eyes and looking to her best friend for assistance or a comment or her reaction, but all she sees is Sam fiddling with Spencer’s blankets with one hand, the other on his arm.
Carly tries not to smile.
---
It takes just as long for Spencer’s stitches to dissolve as it takes for Sam to stop babying him, making him sit or lie down when he wants to get up to sculpt or cook. It’s a Saturday night when Carly walks into the apartment, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Spencer ducking in the kitchen. “It’s just me!” she shouts, throwing her coat and backpack onto the chair.
Spencer shakes his head a bit to himself as he straightens up. “So, how was homework with Freddie?”
“Oh, you know,” she steals a piece of pineapple he’s slicing, “Extremely productive, Freddie’s a genius and makes me feel stupid, the usual.”
He smiles at his sister. “You should tell him to tone down the nerd.”
She steals another piece of fruit. “No, I kind of like it.”
There’s a second where they share a knowing smile; Carly rolls her eyes and Spencer giggles, turning back to his chopping. “Please tell me Sam is not right behind you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not done with dinner yet, and I want to surprise her.”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah. To, y’know, say thanks for caring that I didn’t die…” Carly raises her eyebrows at him, and he keeps grasping at words, letting them out in waves. “Thanks for… taking care of me … and … being there for you - so you didn’t freak out … and I’m healed and can cook again.”
Carly smiles even broader and tells him, “No, I actually don’t know where Sam is - I haven’t seen her all day.”
“Been too busy with Freddie?” Spencer wiggles his eyebrows, going around to the three different pots he has on the stove.
“No, I texted her this morning and she never texted back.”
“So what’s she doing?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t text me back.”
“Wait,” Spencer straightens up and turns to her, “You have no idea where she is?”
“No.”
“Why not?!” he nearly shouts.
She can’t help but shout defensively, “Me? What about you?”
“What?”
“Why don’t you know what she’s doing? You text her more than I do! You call her more than I do, and she tells you more stuff!”
Spencer takes a deep breath, but doesn’t step back to his cooking. “She didn’t tell me what she was doing today, and I’m not gonna call her just so she can tell me to sit down and do nothing!”
Carly crosses her arms. “Don’t get mad at me! You’re the one making dinner, you should’ve made sure she would be here!”
He doesn’t seem to hear her. “Her mom’s not doing anything with her, is she? No, she would’ve texted me… but you never know, right? She can get out of whatever it is, that’s fine. Unless … wait, you don’t think she got arrested, do you?”
Spencer’s face is frozen in panic, but Carly still laughs. “I don’t think she got arrested.”
“But how do we know? She could be in jail right now!”
“Wouldn’t she call you?” she asks him, teasing, but his face falls and he answers, more to himself than his sister.
“She promised me I’d be her one phone call… but she promised not to get arrested anymore too…”
Carly cuts him off, “Spencer. I’m sure she’s just lazy and late.” He nods and shrugs in agreement, but his face remains impassive, and Carly’s sure he still thinks she got arrested and didn’t call him.
Less than five minutes later, Carly, sitting idly on a stool drinking peppy cola, hears the door open and close with, “Wow, it smells good in here!”
Carly turns around to see Sam walk in, and greets her, “Well I hope it doesn’t smell bad in here. So where’ve you been all day?”
Sam’s smile melts and she scowls, “I had to go to the doctor with my mom, and she made me get examined, my phone died in the parking lot, and to end the misery I took a nap.”
“So nothing drastic.”
“No. Just annoying.”
“Good. Spencer was freaking out.”
“I was not freaking out!” He pops out from behind the counter, his apron askew and a wooden spoon in one of his hands. “Sam! Perfect timing, dinner’s ready!”
She raises her eyebrows at him, taking the spoon out of his hand, “Dinner?”
He backs up. “To prove that I can make dinner without hurting myself!”
Carly watches them move around the kitchen, Sam tasting things, her disapproval melting away with every step, and every step making Spencer’s smile wider. She can’t help but roll her eyes.
---
When Spencer wakes up, it’s dark and his neck hurts. He moves his head around to alleviate his neck, and he sees that Sam is his pillow. He lays his head back down on top of hers in spite of the neck crick, and breathes deeply, noticing with every breath how uncomfortable he is with the weird positions his limbs are in. Except with every acknowledgement, he knows he doesn’t want to move, he knows that in place of actual comfort there’s a warm, happy ball sitting in his chest, and when he looks over at Sam it grows. His arms are around her, her head is on his shoulder, her face is calm, and without thinking about it, he kisses her on top of the head.
Sam adjusts her position, and Spencer’s glad that their intertwined legs are now separate, hers on top of his, because it’s more comfortable that way. She settles down and he kisses the top of her head again, smiling.
“Hmm?” Sam mumbles, her eyes still closed.
“Are you awake?” he whispers.
“No.”
A minute passes in silence, and he can feel that she’s awake. Without moving or looking at her he says, “I think they were right.”
He feels Sam sigh, “We don’t have to tell them, do we?”
She looks up at him and Spencer smiles. “It can wait,” he says, kissing her gently. She kisses him back, and there’s nothing new screaming at him, nothing scary or unfamiliar, and he’s not sure they haven’t always done this. “Hey.”
“You want to go to bed?”
“I’m so tired.”
“And uncomfortable.”
“C’mon.” He stands up and pulls her off the couch, walking slowly over to his bedroom.
“Spence, wait,” she stops halfway, pulling on his arm. “I love you.”
He stoops to kiss her briefly. “I love you, too.”
---
The next morning Carly doesn’t see Spencer at all before she rushes off to school, and she barely makes it on time for homeroom. She doesn’t see Sam until lunchtime, but she doesn’t share two of her morning classes with her either, so Carly reasons it away, and in the confusion of a surprise quiz she’s too distracted to notice, anyway. If you don’t count Principal Franklin’s accidental intercom announcement when he’s on the phone with his wife on speakerphone, or Ms. Briggs yelling at her class until three different people started crying, Carly would say it was a normal day at school.
A normal day at school followed by a normal walk back to Bushwell Plaza, past their unnatural normally annoying doorman, talking to Sam and Freddie about normal, after-school subjects. And normally, Carly walks in with her friends and throws her stuff on the couch or chair or floor, says ‘hi’ to Spencer building something in the middle of the room, and her friends follow her to the kitchen for snacks or upstairs. But that’s not what happens.
Carly leads her two friends into her apartment and sees Spencer in the kitchen with an apron on. All three of them walk over to where Spencer is, completely absorbed in his mixing. The room smells like chocolate cake and possibly peanut butter cookies, and something else delicious she can’t think of immediately. Sam reaches Spencer first and greets him, saying “Hi,” and kissing him.
“Hi.” He looks up for a second to recognize that all three of them are there before turning back to the mixing bowl in his hand.
“What are you fixing?” Sam asks, standing so close to Spencer and the mix she might be trying to take over for him.
Spencer opens his mouth to respond, but Freddie, who stopped short of the kitchen by the barstools when he saw them kiss, interjects, “Um HI.”
“Hi Freddie,” Spencer answers nonchalantly.
“No, I meant, ‘um hi - what is going on here?’”
Carly, who lost her momentum at the end of the couch rushes forward now to echo Freddie. “Yeah! What ‘s going on with the kissing and acting normal? You told me you weren’t in love with each other. You told me that you didn’t even like each other that way!”
“Um,” Spencer scrunches up his face for a long second before answering as Sam plucks a chocolate chip out of the bowl in front of him. “We were wrong?”
“You were right; we’re in love and stuff.” Sam adds nonchalantly, dipping her finger into Spencer’s bowl before he yanks it away and starts stirring again.
Carly has to take some deep breaths before she can say anything, and Freddie can only stand next to her with his hand on his forehead like he has a headache from trying to solve a math problem with a variable missing. Sam and Spencer are turned around once Carly finds her voice. “Of course I was right!” Audibly groaning, the couple turn back to face her. “But why are you all… nothing about it? This is a big deal! It’s a big deal to be in love and stuff! Make a big deal!”
Sam rolls her eyes. “Carly…”
But Spencer cuts her off, “It’s not a big deal, a big deal is that Grandad called today and he’s going to be here tomorrow and he told me things need to be perfect, and the only way I know how to be perfect is to make cookies, and cake, and please, please help me.”
Carly rolls her eyes, grabbing another apron to help, and Sam’s at her arm. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”
“Okay.” Carly replies just as quietly. But as she organizes the kitchen, she realizes that she already knows it all, and that it’s always been a big thing. She’s really just happy that she was right, and that her best friend and her brother are in love - even if it is with each other.
FIN