iCarly fic: Gives Me The Butterflies
Gives Me The Butterflies | PG-13 | 3,000+
Sam/Freddie-ish.
“You used to be dapper,” Carly says. She pokes Freddie in the head, cautiously, like she’s afraid his hair will grow limbs and attack her. “I admired your sense of Yuppie fashion, does your mom know you look like this?”
A/N: Freddie goes to college and stuff happens. So, whatever, for people who don't watch iCarly, Sam is a tiny blonde who can beat the shit out of you with one hand and eat a piece of fried chicken at the same time (she's AWESOME), Carly (Miranda Cosgrove!) is sweet and sassy, Freddie is the tech producer who tapes their web show, and Spencer is Carly's eccentric artist older brother/guardian. This fic doesn't have much of a point, except Sam and Freddie are kind of trying to define themselves without Carly. Title comes from Soundgarden's Outshined.
Gives Me The Butterflies
Freshman year is a new beginning. The giant nametag on his door reads Fredward Benson - directly next to one that says Evan Lewis, already decorated with what looks like tiny dancing penises. Freddie thinks this is going to be a good year, so long as his roommate doesn’t want to beat him up.
They call him Fred during orientation. It sticks.
*
Evan is a huge, tall and huge guy - huge! - who wears a beret and a trench coat and black boots that lace up his calves. He’s okay. He showers regularly, but that doesn’t seem to help the permanent stench that hangs around him, and he’s a music theory major or something, but not a band geek, so Freddie ends up knowing more than he ever wanted to about grunge and nineties alternative rock.
His mind echoes the entirety of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in his sleep. He dreams about the Gin Blossoms and Nirvana and doesn’t even think it’s weird that they peaked just about the time he’d been born.
*
Carly ends up out east. She sends Freddie video updates of her life from her darkened closet, since she’s apparently rooming with a gorilla. She whispers, face close to the camera, eyes comically wide with fright.
It makes Freddie smile - Carly’s life has never been perfect, but it’s always been charmed. It’s nice to know she’s just as lost as he is, sometimes.
*
Freddie doesn’t hear from Sam at all. This, he decides, is awesome.
*
With the combined powers of Evan and the guy across the hall, Sanji, plus the absence of Sam and his mom, Freddie gains about ten pounds in his first two months of school - the Side Cafe conveniently stays open ‘til ten most nights, and Evan’s a big fan of mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers. Sanji is maybe eighty pounds soaking wet, and he constantly eats donuts.
Freddie doesn’t have that kind of metabolism, apparently, and he doesn’t have Evan’s immense size that lets him get away with packing on a few extra pounds and still look badass.
Freddie’s been missing his mom since September - it’s crazy, his mom’s insane and sends him a new first aid kit every two weeks and organic oatmeal craisin cookies and recipes for whole wheat waffles and fruit parfaits and he very pointedly never mentions how many chicken patties with cheese he eats per week - but suddenly he really misses Sam, too.
*
He never realized before how vital Sam had been to his health, what with all the verbal and physical abuse that makes up their relationship.
He starts running.
He really hates running. His feet and legs and lungs hurt, and he realizes there’s a better, if not ideal solution.
*
“What the heck are you wearing, Fredward?” are the first words out of Sam’s mouth.
“Good to see you, too,” Freddie says. He mostly means it, even though he’d panicked the second after he’d sent Sam the text. The text that had been an innocuous hey, and, you should visit, even though they’d barely exchanged emails over the past month and a half.
Sam reaches across the table and fingers his flannel. “You suddenly become a lumberjack?”
Freddie has assimilated. Evan and Sanji and Sanji’s roommate, Brian, have made it okay to wear sweats and flannel shirts over hoodies and backwards baseball caps and Freddie’s under no illusions that it’s cool, but he was never very cool anyway.
He bats away Sam’s hand and grins. “Did you watch Carly’s latest vid?” Carly apparently still has no idea what to do with her roommate, and has started stocking her closet with pudding cups and plastic spoons.
Sam steals all of Freddie’s fries and says, “It’s pathetic, I thought I taught her better than that,” with her mouth full.
*
“Pearl Jam is for pussies,” Evan says, then snaps his mouth shut when he spots Sam.
“This your roommate, dork?” Sam asks. She kicks her heels up onto his bed, bag of funions resting on her stomach.
Evan’s forehead furrows. “Is that a girl, Fred?”
Sanji, cork-screw curls barely contained by a bandana, says, “Huh?”
“So this has been awesome,” Sam says, slipping down off the bed and getting to her feet, “but I gotta jet. See you, Freddie.”
The bag of funions tips over onto his pillow and Freddie grimaces.
Sam wipes her greasy hands on her pants and elbows her way past Evan and Sanji. Sanji yelps and Sam mutters, “Like to like,” before giving Freddie a mocking salute.
*
It takes less than a minute for Sam to come back, sweeping wordlessly over to the funions, arching a speaking brow at Freddie before grabbing it and disappearing out the door again.
*
“Remember when you had that girl in here?” Evan says later. He’s flipping through his mix tapes, cases clacking against each other.
Freddie looks up from his Geology textbook, watches as Evan fiddles with his boombox. He presses play, then closes his eyes and leans back against the wall next to his desk, fingers tapping idly on his knees.
“Thought you said Pearl Jam was for pussies,” Freddie says. It sounds awkward in his mouth, but Evan doesn’t call him on it.
“Temple of the Dog’s a whole ‘nother beast, my friend,” Evan says, eyes still closed. “But Vedder’s still a douche.”
*
Freddie gets the feeling Evan doesn’t meet a lot of girls. He keeps bringing up Sam.
Sanji’s the one who asks if she’s ever going to visit again, though, and then Evan says, “Yeah,” and, “She’s hot,” and Freddie scrunches his face up and says, “What, what?” because Sam Puckett is not hot.
Sam is scary. All of Freddie’s parts are afraid of Sam.
Sanji nods his head and Evan makes some crude gestures that Freddie guesses are about Sam’s breasts and Freddie is horrified. “Uh, no,” Freddie says.
Evan says, “No what?”
“No, I am never bringing Sam over here again.”
*
Freddie is exactly one hour and twenty-three minutes away from the Bushwell apartment; his mom timed it from the moment they stepped out of their door, all the way up the elevator to his floor in the dorm.
He figures it takes Sam a little longer, especially since she rides the bus.
They meet at the Village and Freddie takes her to the Side Cafe and then to the little candy nook next door. He uses his food flex card to buy her licorice whips and reeces pieces.
They sit in the Quad and Sam’s cheeks are pink from the wind and halfway through a story about how she broke some shoplifter’s arm and stuffed his face in a trashcan - Sam makes mall security sound exciting, actually, it’s kind of the perfect job for her - her cell rings.
She tugs it out of her pocket, makes a face, then presses ignore.
Five minutes later, Freddie’s phone buzzes. It’s Carly, a text, and it reads: is Sam with you?
Freddie doesn’t know what’s going on, but Sam’s watching him, expressionless. “So you’re avoiding Carly?” he asks. He doesn’t hit reply, just curls his fingers around the cell.
Sam shrugs and pours a handful of reeces into her mouth.
*
Sam doesn’t talk about her feelings. If she has a problem with you, she’ll just punch you or twist your nipple or kick you in the balls. And then she gets over it.
She’s being pretty weird and passive about Carly, though.
*
“Sam’s being weird,” Carly says, voice low.
“Are you in your closet?”
“Gorilla’s got a guy over. I figured it’d be best if I pretended I was somewhere else. It’s totally okay, though, I’ve got a light in here now, so I can avoid failing all my classes.”
“Okay.” Freddie’s smiling.
Evan’s got huge headphones on, but he arches an eyebrow at him and mouths, Sam?
Freddie shakes his head and wonders when his happy face ever could have gotten associated with Sam.
“Focus, Freddie,” Carly says. She gets a little shrill, then hushes herself on a mild, “Darn it,” and, “Help me with Sam. You’re seeing her, you can tell me if she’s being weird. She’s being weird, isn’t she?”
“Not really,” Freddie says. He doesn’t know why he says it. She is being weird, but only about Carly, and Freddie doesn’t know if he should mention that or not. In the end, he just says, “I think she misses you.”
Carly sighs. “Yeah. Me, too.”
*
Freddie meets Josh in his American history lecture. Josh asks to borrow a pen and then his notes and then they end up studying together each week, along with these two noisy girls from the back of the class and a big guy, Darren, who doesn’t really talk, but always has all the right answers.
They meet in the student union on Wednesdays.
The last Wednesday before their final, Josh says, “You haven’t gotten the full college experience until you crash a frat party, dude. Five dollars a cup and they don’t care if you’re wearing carpenter jeans.”
Freddie makes a face. “Isn’t the campus dry?” he says.
Josh punches his shoulder. “The trick is to get out before the cops bust it up.”
*
Freddie doesn’t really drink and it’s loud and crowded and nothing like any movie ever told him it would be. There’s barely enough room to move, everyone’s sloppy drunk or getting there fast, and Freddie catches Evan’s eye over Sanji’s head and gestures towards where he’s pretty sure the door is.
Sam has her arms crossed, scowling at him, pressed up close against his side.
*
Evan and Freddie and Sanji and Sam barely get out before the cops show up, before everyone scatters and the narrow streets are filled with laughter and singing and blinking lights - the cops don’t seem to really try to arrest anybody, they just make sure the party’s shut down.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Freddork,” Sam says, swinging an arm around his neck and dragging him down into a headlock.
He half-heartedly pushes at her arm and says, “You’re not a girl,” and he stumbles a little when she abruptly lets him go.
She kicks him in the shin and stalks off down the sidewalk towards the dorms.
Sanji gives him a look, then scurries after her, jogging to catch up.
“What?” Freddie calls after them.
Sanji ignores him.
Sam flips him the bird over her shoulder.
*
It’s weird having mostly guy friends. His floor is coed by wing, but the girls don’t really venture down their hallway. Freddie doesn’t blame them. It kind of smells.
Freddie starts wearing boxers and flip-flops around his room, and then the laundry room down the hall, and then he’s wearing them in the common lounge, under a bathrobe. He’s growing his hair out. He’s formed an opinion on Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, he can pluck out Nothing Else Matters on Sanji’s acoustic guitar.
Evan breaks out the Melvins and says, “Listen, listen,” and, “You’re from Seattle, dude, this is, like, your birthright,” and then he puts on Smashing Pumpkins again and says, “There’s grunge, and then there’s this.”
Freddie sprawls out on his bed, hands resting on his stomach, and hums Tonight, Tonight under his breath.
*
Freddie knows he basically got into the college’s multimedia program because of iCarly. It was pretty much the perfect example of his work - technical web genius for a semi-famous webcast, wowing watchers with corny jokes for four years strong.
And he misses it, but not the way he thought he would.
*
“Thanksgiving’s a big deal,” Carly says.
Freddie says, “I know.”
“It’s a big, big deal,” Carly says. “Big, Freddie.”
“I think I got that,” Freddie says. He doesn’t roll his eyes, even though he wants to, even though she can’t see. She’d probably know, though. Carly can always sense those things.
Carly sighs. “Just-”
“She’ll be there,” Freddie says. Sam will be there if Freddie has to drag her over by her hair and sit on her himself.
*
“There’s something on your face,” Sam says, looking at Freddie with narrowed eyes. “Hold still.”
“Hey, what-”
Sam whacks Freddie with her sandwich.
“Ow,” Freddie says, palming his cheek, more from reflex than anything. It barely stung. “It’s called a beard, Sam.”
“It’s called Shave Right Now Or I’m Going To Beat You With My Other Sandwich.” She points to the plate that technically holds Freddie’s sandwich, but is probably just going to end up as Sam’s second lunch. “You’re lucky I’m letting you get away with the unwashed bum hair. Actually, on second thought, gimme some scissors.”
Freddie ducks away from Sam and says, “Fine, fine, I’ll shave, geez.”
*
“You used to be dapper,” Carly says. She pokes Freddie in the head, cautiously, like she’s afraid his hair will grow limbs and attack her. “I admired your sense of Yuppie fashion, does your mom know you look like this?”
“Har, har,” Freddie says, frowning.
“I let you go to college by yourself and this is what happens?” Carly shakes her head, a bemused curve to her mouth. “Seriously, has your mom seen you?”
Freddie’s mom had cried. But then she’d hugged him and made him eat three apples and went out and bought him hypoallergenic shampoo that Freddie’s pretty sure is supposed to be for dogs.
*
Spencer says, “Pipe cleaners.”
Freddie cocks his head. “What?”
Spencer frames Freddie’s head with his hands. “Pipe cleaners, colored glue, I think we have some felt somewhere. Carly!” he yells over his shoulder, still looking at Freddie.
“Yeah, Spence?” Carly’s grinning, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“I need googly eyes,” Spencer says. “And a picture of a monkey.”
*
Freddie’s mom brings a Jell-O mold with pineapple slices in it for Thanksgiving dinner at the Shay’s.
Sam sits next to Freddie with a mutinous scowl, arms crossed, staring down at the table. Freddie digs his nails into her thigh until she turns a death glare on him and he lets go with a startled noise, throat suddenly dry.
Carly says, “So, um,” and glances awkwardly around the table.
Freddie presses his lips together and says, “Screw this,” and he vaguely registers his mom’s appalled gasp as he grabs Sam’s arm and drags her to her feet.
Sam stumbles against him, still glaring, and Freddie wraps a hand around the back of her neck and kisses her. It’s firm and chaste and Sam’s flailing, even as Freddie moves his grip from her arm to her waist.
And then she’s not flailing, and Freddie feels her palms on his chest and Freddie braces himself to be pushed violently away. When it doesn’t happen, he smiles against Sam’s mouth.
Then Sam’s fingers curl into his shirt and she pulls him closer, harder, and Freddie loses a few minutes to Sam’s tongue.
*
“Um,” Freddie says, dazed, when Sam finally lets him go. He blinks at her. She’s big-eyed for a split-second before her face hardens and she smirks, but her fingers don’t loosen and Freddie doesn’t move away.
Someone clears their throat.
Freddie shifts and sees his mom and Spencer and Carly, all staring at them with various expressions of surprise, amusement and weirdness. Freddie feels his cheeks heat.
“Um,” he says again.
And then Carly jumps to her feet, grabs Sam, and pulls her towards the stairs.
*
This was the plan. At least, if he’d had a solid plan, this would’ve been it. Get Carly and Sam talking, commiserating, being best friends again.
Of course, the second it happened he’d figured Sam would stomp on his foot and chase him into the bathroom with a turkey leg - and then she and Carly would talk about how Sam should reconsider trying to kill him. He never figured she’d kiss him back.
“Um,” Freddie says. He takes a deep breath, feels it all the way down in the pit of his stomach.
Spencer claps him on the shoulder. “Congrats, little dude.”
“On what?”
Spencer quirks his mouth up into a half-smile. “On still being alive?”
*
“Did you mean it?”
Freddie makes a face at his bedroom ceiling. “Huh? No, I. I didn’t really mean to do it.”
“But did you mean it?” Evan says again. There’s the familiar clacking in the background, like Evan’s sorting mix tapes or CDs as he talks.
Freddie says, “I don’t know.”
“Dude, this is Sam. I’d totally mean it,” Evan says, which is typical, because Evan kind of loves Sam, even though she’d crushed his Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack against his forehead for inadvertently touching her butt. At least, Freddie thinks it was an accident. Evan had grinned so big afterwards; it was kind of hard to tell for sure.
Freddie fidgets with the hem of his t-shirt. “I guess,” he says, slowly, and his heart pounds, like it’s swollen inside his chest.
Evan hmmms. He says, “Okay,” and there’s a click through the ear piece and he says, “Dookie, man, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this album,” just as Burnout starts, the tape noticeably warped and worn from multiple playings.
“Listen,” Evan says, and turns it up.
*
There’s no knock, his door just swings open and Carly marches in, then throws herself along the end of his bed.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Carly says, “but you got weird.”
Freddie shrugs. He’s not going to argue with her. He thinks it’s a combination of living with Evan and being away from his mom - of not having Carly around to impress, of being on his own, of not being a part of something that really wasn’t his, but helped shaped exactly who he was anyway.
The thing is, Sam didn’t really care who he was then - anything she did to him, any name she called him, that didn’t really stop them from hanging out - and she doesn’t really care who he is now. Freddie always thought that meant she was indifferent to him, that he was an okay stand-in for whenever she got lonely, but now he’s not so sure.
“Sam visits you a lot,” Carly says.
Freddie shrugs again.
Carly pokes him with her toe. “Sam’s my best friend,” she says meaningfully.
Freddie says, “So you’re talking again?”
Carly smiles a little. “Thanks to you.”
“My pleasure,” Freddie says, and, yeah, he really kind of means it.
*
Freddie still isn’t exactly sure why Carly and Sam had been fighting, but he figures it’s maybe as simple as Sam feeling like Carly had left her behind.
Freddie gets that. They don’t have the show anymore, and Sam’s never been very good at focusing on the bigger picture.
“You should be a cop,” Freddie says.
Sam shrugs. “Yeah, whatever,” she says, but there’s a gleam in her eyes. An I-could-legally-carry-a-weapon-other-than-a-sock-filled -with-butter gleam.
It’s an interesting gleam.
Freddie pushes his plate of onion rings across the table towards her, and Sam digs in like it’s not a big deal.
*
“We should move out,” Evan says. “Next year, dude, we should get a house. Me and you two and Sanji and Brian.”
Sam freezes, Freddie can feel it where she’s leaning back against his knees. She’s got a jar of pickles in her lap, and he watches her knuckles whiten around it, squeezing. But then she just shrugs and digs another pickle out with the tips of her fingers. She snaps into it with her teeth, then tips her head back and grins at Freddie, upside-down.
Evan waggles his eyebrows while she’s not looking.
Sam/Freddie-ish.
“You used to be dapper,” Carly says. She pokes Freddie in the head, cautiously, like she’s afraid his hair will grow limbs and attack her. “I admired your sense of Yuppie fashion, does your mom know you look like this?”
A/N: Freddie goes to college and stuff happens. So, whatever, for people who don't watch iCarly, Sam is a tiny blonde who can beat the shit out of you with one hand and eat a piece of fried chicken at the same time (she's AWESOME), Carly (Miranda Cosgrove!) is sweet and sassy, Freddie is the tech producer who tapes their web show, and Spencer is Carly's eccentric artist older brother/guardian. This fic doesn't have much of a point, except Sam and Freddie are kind of trying to define themselves without Carly. Title comes from Soundgarden's Outshined.
Gives Me The Butterflies
Freshman year is a new beginning. The giant nametag on his door reads Fredward Benson - directly next to one that says Evan Lewis, already decorated with what looks like tiny dancing penises. Freddie thinks this is going to be a good year, so long as his roommate doesn’t want to beat him up.
They call him Fred during orientation. It sticks.
*
Evan is a huge, tall and huge guy - huge! - who wears a beret and a trench coat and black boots that lace up his calves. He’s okay. He showers regularly, but that doesn’t seem to help the permanent stench that hangs around him, and he’s a music theory major or something, but not a band geek, so Freddie ends up knowing more than he ever wanted to about grunge and nineties alternative rock.
His mind echoes the entirety of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness in his sleep. He dreams about the Gin Blossoms and Nirvana and doesn’t even think it’s weird that they peaked just about the time he’d been born.
*
Carly ends up out east. She sends Freddie video updates of her life from her darkened closet, since she’s apparently rooming with a gorilla. She whispers, face close to the camera, eyes comically wide with fright.
It makes Freddie smile - Carly’s life has never been perfect, but it’s always been charmed. It’s nice to know she’s just as lost as he is, sometimes.
*
Freddie doesn’t hear from Sam at all. This, he decides, is awesome.
*
With the combined powers of Evan and the guy across the hall, Sanji, plus the absence of Sam and his mom, Freddie gains about ten pounds in his first two months of school - the Side Cafe conveniently stays open ‘til ten most nights, and Evan’s a big fan of mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers. Sanji is maybe eighty pounds soaking wet, and he constantly eats donuts.
Freddie doesn’t have that kind of metabolism, apparently, and he doesn’t have Evan’s immense size that lets him get away with packing on a few extra pounds and still look badass.
Freddie’s been missing his mom since September - it’s crazy, his mom’s insane and sends him a new first aid kit every two weeks and organic oatmeal craisin cookies and recipes for whole wheat waffles and fruit parfaits and he very pointedly never mentions how many chicken patties with cheese he eats per week - but suddenly he really misses Sam, too.
*
He never realized before how vital Sam had been to his health, what with all the verbal and physical abuse that makes up their relationship.
He starts running.
He really hates running. His feet and legs and lungs hurt, and he realizes there’s a better, if not ideal solution.
*
“What the heck are you wearing, Fredward?” are the first words out of Sam’s mouth.
“Good to see you, too,” Freddie says. He mostly means it, even though he’d panicked the second after he’d sent Sam the text. The text that had been an innocuous hey, and, you should visit, even though they’d barely exchanged emails over the past month and a half.
Sam reaches across the table and fingers his flannel. “You suddenly become a lumberjack?”
Freddie has assimilated. Evan and Sanji and Sanji’s roommate, Brian, have made it okay to wear sweats and flannel shirts over hoodies and backwards baseball caps and Freddie’s under no illusions that it’s cool, but he was never very cool anyway.
He bats away Sam’s hand and grins. “Did you watch Carly’s latest vid?” Carly apparently still has no idea what to do with her roommate, and has started stocking her closet with pudding cups and plastic spoons.
Sam steals all of Freddie’s fries and says, “It’s pathetic, I thought I taught her better than that,” with her mouth full.
*
“Pearl Jam is for pussies,” Evan says, then snaps his mouth shut when he spots Sam.
“This your roommate, dork?” Sam asks. She kicks her heels up onto his bed, bag of funions resting on her stomach.
Evan’s forehead furrows. “Is that a girl, Fred?”
Sanji, cork-screw curls barely contained by a bandana, says, “Huh?”
“So this has been awesome,” Sam says, slipping down off the bed and getting to her feet, “but I gotta jet. See you, Freddie.”
The bag of funions tips over onto his pillow and Freddie grimaces.
Sam wipes her greasy hands on her pants and elbows her way past Evan and Sanji. Sanji yelps and Sam mutters, “Like to like,” before giving Freddie a mocking salute.
*
It takes less than a minute for Sam to come back, sweeping wordlessly over to the funions, arching a speaking brow at Freddie before grabbing it and disappearing out the door again.
*
“Remember when you had that girl in here?” Evan says later. He’s flipping through his mix tapes, cases clacking against each other.
Freddie looks up from his Geology textbook, watches as Evan fiddles with his boombox. He presses play, then closes his eyes and leans back against the wall next to his desk, fingers tapping idly on his knees.
“Thought you said Pearl Jam was for pussies,” Freddie says. It sounds awkward in his mouth, but Evan doesn’t call him on it.
“Temple of the Dog’s a whole ‘nother beast, my friend,” Evan says, eyes still closed. “But Vedder’s still a douche.”
*
Freddie gets the feeling Evan doesn’t meet a lot of girls. He keeps bringing up Sam.
Sanji’s the one who asks if she’s ever going to visit again, though, and then Evan says, “Yeah,” and, “She’s hot,” and Freddie scrunches his face up and says, “What, what?” because Sam Puckett is not hot.
Sam is scary. All of Freddie’s parts are afraid of Sam.
Sanji nods his head and Evan makes some crude gestures that Freddie guesses are about Sam’s breasts and Freddie is horrified. “Uh, no,” Freddie says.
Evan says, “No what?”
“No, I am never bringing Sam over here again.”
*
Freddie is exactly one hour and twenty-three minutes away from the Bushwell apartment; his mom timed it from the moment they stepped out of their door, all the way up the elevator to his floor in the dorm.
He figures it takes Sam a little longer, especially since she rides the bus.
They meet at the Village and Freddie takes her to the Side Cafe and then to the little candy nook next door. He uses his food flex card to buy her licorice whips and reeces pieces.
They sit in the Quad and Sam’s cheeks are pink from the wind and halfway through a story about how she broke some shoplifter’s arm and stuffed his face in a trashcan - Sam makes mall security sound exciting, actually, it’s kind of the perfect job for her - her cell rings.
She tugs it out of her pocket, makes a face, then presses ignore.
Five minutes later, Freddie’s phone buzzes. It’s Carly, a text, and it reads: is Sam with you?
Freddie doesn’t know what’s going on, but Sam’s watching him, expressionless. “So you’re avoiding Carly?” he asks. He doesn’t hit reply, just curls his fingers around the cell.
Sam shrugs and pours a handful of reeces into her mouth.
*
Sam doesn’t talk about her feelings. If she has a problem with you, she’ll just punch you or twist your nipple or kick you in the balls. And then she gets over it.
She’s being pretty weird and passive about Carly, though.
*
“Sam’s being weird,” Carly says, voice low.
“Are you in your closet?”
“Gorilla’s got a guy over. I figured it’d be best if I pretended I was somewhere else. It’s totally okay, though, I’ve got a light in here now, so I can avoid failing all my classes.”
“Okay.” Freddie’s smiling.
Evan’s got huge headphones on, but he arches an eyebrow at him and mouths, Sam?
Freddie shakes his head and wonders when his happy face ever could have gotten associated with Sam.
“Focus, Freddie,” Carly says. She gets a little shrill, then hushes herself on a mild, “Darn it,” and, “Help me with Sam. You’re seeing her, you can tell me if she’s being weird. She’s being weird, isn’t she?”
“Not really,” Freddie says. He doesn’t know why he says it. She is being weird, but only about Carly, and Freddie doesn’t know if he should mention that or not. In the end, he just says, “I think she misses you.”
Carly sighs. “Yeah. Me, too.”
*
Freddie meets Josh in his American history lecture. Josh asks to borrow a pen and then his notes and then they end up studying together each week, along with these two noisy girls from the back of the class and a big guy, Darren, who doesn’t really talk, but always has all the right answers.
They meet in the student union on Wednesdays.
The last Wednesday before their final, Josh says, “You haven’t gotten the full college experience until you crash a frat party, dude. Five dollars a cup and they don’t care if you’re wearing carpenter jeans.”
Freddie makes a face. “Isn’t the campus dry?” he says.
Josh punches his shoulder. “The trick is to get out before the cops bust it up.”
*
Freddie doesn’t really drink and it’s loud and crowded and nothing like any movie ever told him it would be. There’s barely enough room to move, everyone’s sloppy drunk or getting there fast, and Freddie catches Evan’s eye over Sanji’s head and gestures towards where he’s pretty sure the door is.
Sam has her arms crossed, scowling at him, pressed up close against his side.
*
Evan and Freddie and Sanji and Sam barely get out before the cops show up, before everyone scatters and the narrow streets are filled with laughter and singing and blinking lights - the cops don’t seem to really try to arrest anybody, they just make sure the party’s shut down.
“You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Freddork,” Sam says, swinging an arm around his neck and dragging him down into a headlock.
He half-heartedly pushes at her arm and says, “You’re not a girl,” and he stumbles a little when she abruptly lets him go.
She kicks him in the shin and stalks off down the sidewalk towards the dorms.
Sanji gives him a look, then scurries after her, jogging to catch up.
“What?” Freddie calls after them.
Sanji ignores him.
Sam flips him the bird over her shoulder.
*
It’s weird having mostly guy friends. His floor is coed by wing, but the girls don’t really venture down their hallway. Freddie doesn’t blame them. It kind of smells.
Freddie starts wearing boxers and flip-flops around his room, and then the laundry room down the hall, and then he’s wearing them in the common lounge, under a bathrobe. He’s growing his hair out. He’s formed an opinion on Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, he can pluck out Nothing Else Matters on Sanji’s acoustic guitar.
Evan breaks out the Melvins and says, “Listen, listen,” and, “You’re from Seattle, dude, this is, like, your birthright,” and then he puts on Smashing Pumpkins again and says, “There’s grunge, and then there’s this.”
Freddie sprawls out on his bed, hands resting on his stomach, and hums Tonight, Tonight under his breath.
*
Freddie knows he basically got into the college’s multimedia program because of iCarly. It was pretty much the perfect example of his work - technical web genius for a semi-famous webcast, wowing watchers with corny jokes for four years strong.
And he misses it, but not the way he thought he would.
*
“Thanksgiving’s a big deal,” Carly says.
Freddie says, “I know.”
“It’s a big, big deal,” Carly says. “Big, Freddie.”
“I think I got that,” Freddie says. He doesn’t roll his eyes, even though he wants to, even though she can’t see. She’d probably know, though. Carly can always sense those things.
Carly sighs. “Just-”
“She’ll be there,” Freddie says. Sam will be there if Freddie has to drag her over by her hair and sit on her himself.
*
“There’s something on your face,” Sam says, looking at Freddie with narrowed eyes. “Hold still.”
“Hey, what-”
Sam whacks Freddie with her sandwich.
“Ow,” Freddie says, palming his cheek, more from reflex than anything. It barely stung. “It’s called a beard, Sam.”
“It’s called Shave Right Now Or I’m Going To Beat You With My Other Sandwich.” She points to the plate that technically holds Freddie’s sandwich, but is probably just going to end up as Sam’s second lunch. “You’re lucky I’m letting you get away with the unwashed bum hair. Actually, on second thought, gimme some scissors.”
Freddie ducks away from Sam and says, “Fine, fine, I’ll shave, geez.”
*
“You used to be dapper,” Carly says. She pokes Freddie in the head, cautiously, like she’s afraid his hair will grow limbs and attack her. “I admired your sense of Yuppie fashion, does your mom know you look like this?”
“Har, har,” Freddie says, frowning.
“I let you go to college by yourself and this is what happens?” Carly shakes her head, a bemused curve to her mouth. “Seriously, has your mom seen you?”
Freddie’s mom had cried. But then she’d hugged him and made him eat three apples and went out and bought him hypoallergenic shampoo that Freddie’s pretty sure is supposed to be for dogs.
*
Spencer says, “Pipe cleaners.”
Freddie cocks his head. “What?”
Spencer frames Freddie’s head with his hands. “Pipe cleaners, colored glue, I think we have some felt somewhere. Carly!” he yells over his shoulder, still looking at Freddie.
“Yeah, Spence?” Carly’s grinning, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“I need googly eyes,” Spencer says. “And a picture of a monkey.”
*
Freddie’s mom brings a Jell-O mold with pineapple slices in it for Thanksgiving dinner at the Shay’s.
Sam sits next to Freddie with a mutinous scowl, arms crossed, staring down at the table. Freddie digs his nails into her thigh until she turns a death glare on him and he lets go with a startled noise, throat suddenly dry.
Carly says, “So, um,” and glances awkwardly around the table.
Freddie presses his lips together and says, “Screw this,” and he vaguely registers his mom’s appalled gasp as he grabs Sam’s arm and drags her to her feet.
Sam stumbles against him, still glaring, and Freddie wraps a hand around the back of her neck and kisses her. It’s firm and chaste and Sam’s flailing, even as Freddie moves his grip from her arm to her waist.
And then she’s not flailing, and Freddie feels her palms on his chest and Freddie braces himself to be pushed violently away. When it doesn’t happen, he smiles against Sam’s mouth.
Then Sam’s fingers curl into his shirt and she pulls him closer, harder, and Freddie loses a few minutes to Sam’s tongue.
*
“Um,” Freddie says, dazed, when Sam finally lets him go. He blinks at her. She’s big-eyed for a split-second before her face hardens and she smirks, but her fingers don’t loosen and Freddie doesn’t move away.
Someone clears their throat.
Freddie shifts and sees his mom and Spencer and Carly, all staring at them with various expressions of surprise, amusement and weirdness. Freddie feels his cheeks heat.
“Um,” he says again.
And then Carly jumps to her feet, grabs Sam, and pulls her towards the stairs.
*
This was the plan. At least, if he’d had a solid plan, this would’ve been it. Get Carly and Sam talking, commiserating, being best friends again.
Of course, the second it happened he’d figured Sam would stomp on his foot and chase him into the bathroom with a turkey leg - and then she and Carly would talk about how Sam should reconsider trying to kill him. He never figured she’d kiss him back.
“Um,” Freddie says. He takes a deep breath, feels it all the way down in the pit of his stomach.
Spencer claps him on the shoulder. “Congrats, little dude.”
“On what?”
Spencer quirks his mouth up into a half-smile. “On still being alive?”
*
“Did you mean it?”
Freddie makes a face at his bedroom ceiling. “Huh? No, I. I didn’t really mean to do it.”
“But did you mean it?” Evan says again. There’s the familiar clacking in the background, like Evan’s sorting mix tapes or CDs as he talks.
Freddie says, “I don’t know.”
“Dude, this is Sam. I’d totally mean it,” Evan says, which is typical, because Evan kind of loves Sam, even though she’d crushed his Grosse Pointe Blank soundtrack against his forehead for inadvertently touching her butt. At least, Freddie thinks it was an accident. Evan had grinned so big afterwards; it was kind of hard to tell for sure.
Freddie fidgets with the hem of his t-shirt. “I guess,” he says, slowly, and his heart pounds, like it’s swollen inside his chest.
Evan hmmms. He says, “Okay,” and there’s a click through the ear piece and he says, “Dookie, man, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this album,” just as Burnout starts, the tape noticeably warped and worn from multiple playings.
“Listen,” Evan says, and turns it up.
*
There’s no knock, his door just swings open and Carly marches in, then throws herself along the end of his bed.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Carly says, “but you got weird.”
Freddie shrugs. He’s not going to argue with her. He thinks it’s a combination of living with Evan and being away from his mom - of not having Carly around to impress, of being on his own, of not being a part of something that really wasn’t his, but helped shaped exactly who he was anyway.
The thing is, Sam didn’t really care who he was then - anything she did to him, any name she called him, that didn’t really stop them from hanging out - and she doesn’t really care who he is now. Freddie always thought that meant she was indifferent to him, that he was an okay stand-in for whenever she got lonely, but now he’s not so sure.
“Sam visits you a lot,” Carly says.
Freddie shrugs again.
Carly pokes him with her toe. “Sam’s my best friend,” she says meaningfully.
Freddie says, “So you’re talking again?”
Carly smiles a little. “Thanks to you.”
“My pleasure,” Freddie says, and, yeah, he really kind of means it.
*
Freddie still isn’t exactly sure why Carly and Sam had been fighting, but he figures it’s maybe as simple as Sam feeling like Carly had left her behind.
Freddie gets that. They don’t have the show anymore, and Sam’s never been very good at focusing on the bigger picture.
“You should be a cop,” Freddie says.
Sam shrugs. “Yeah, whatever,” she says, but there’s a gleam in her eyes. An I-could-legally-carry-a-weapon-other-than-a-sock-filled -with-butter gleam.
It’s an interesting gleam.
Freddie pushes his plate of onion rings across the table towards her, and Sam digs in like it’s not a big deal.
*
“We should move out,” Evan says. “Next year, dude, we should get a house. Me and you two and Sanji and Brian.”
Sam freezes, Freddie can feel it where she’s leaning back against his knees. She’s got a jar of pickles in her lap, and he watches her knuckles whiten around it, squeezing. But then she just shrugs and digs another pickle out with the tips of her fingers. She snaps into it with her teeth, then tips her head back and grins at Freddie, upside-down.
Evan waggles his eyebrows while she’s not looking.