Title: A Complicated History

Author: sundroptea

Disclaimer: I have been a Warpedo since All That. I have never owned any part of what has now officially become his empire. One day I hope to, oh yes, I do. But I also hope that I win the lottery tomorrow. I am chockfull o'hope. Not of ownership.

Author's Note: Things I have in common with my nine year old nephew? If your answer is a fiendish delight in shows that air on the afternoons on Nickelodeon, then you are a smart, smart little cookie. This isn't a one shot. It won't be cannon, because it's branching off from iOMG, though I must say, I did very much enjoy iLost my Mind and iDate Sam and Freddie. Frankly, I'm just happy to be writing again. It's been a complicated year. I feel much better with a keyboard in front of me, and that blood sweating from the forehead type of self hatred that only comes along with my creative process. Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you'll like this. It absolutely will not be a one shot.

So it starts like this:

Her fingers are slim and delicate for all they sting- they're so small her knuckles leave individual bruises along his arm when she punches him. It hurts- badly- but the patterns in her damage have always held a strange fascination for him.

Theirs is a complicated history.

She meets him for the first time in Kindergarten when she's a mid-year transfer and she's wearing a torn yellow ball gown and tinfoil boots. He's six and she's five, and that means nothing, because she doesn't take kindly to the raised eyebrow he gives her attire and shows him that by shoving him face down into the sand box, perching atop his back, and declaring him the biggest dork since… well, ever. He seethes and declares silent war on this misbegotten slip of a girl who has just sealed his fate as the class nerd for the next forever of his life. His mother asks him why, god, why is there sand in his jockey shorts and he just stomps to his chemical bath for sensitive skin and glares at his hypoallergenic rubber ducky until it quakes with fear.

She's staring at him, without actually looking at him. His mind is spiraling- sparking with the infinity before him. This was… This could… He can't seem to touch the entirety of what just happened- is happening, something insists, the something that is completely focused on the set of her narrow shoulders and the way she's so very still- it keeps slipping through his fingers when he tries to grasp it. He feels like maybe he's blacking out, like his consciousness is a needle skipping on a record, because he is only seeing moments, pieces. Over and over is the sense memory of her lips on his and he's flooded through with her. She tastes like chocolate, ham and cinnamon and they shouldn't come together like that. He shouldn't want more of it, certainly, he knows that.

He's eight and Stan Bullkowski has just thrown his tofu and fruitless grape jelly sandwich in the trash for the third day straight, laughing hysterically at the undersized 3rd grader when he doesn't even say a word in protest. He can feel the other kids staring like a physical weight on his shoulders, but it doesn't bother him. Not how they think it does, anyway. Who would mourn the loss of a tofu and fruitless grape jelly sandwich? He would thank Bullkowski, if he thought that the chiz-for-brains wouldn't take it as an insult and rearrange his face.

He's upset, and he gets that this is stupid and irrational, but he's upset because everyone thinks he should be upset. Why couldn't they see that Bullkowski meant nothing to him? Made no impact on his life, whatsoever? Freddie thanks his mother for her constant worry and fuss, because it's taught him from an early age to always look at the bigger picture. And what bigger picture would ever be painted that showed him giving half a flying fudge ball what Stanley "The Horns" Bullkowski thought about him, or organic non-grape based grape products?

His ears burn from anger, not humiliation and he hurries around the building not to hide from the other kids, but to make sure that he doesn't blow his top in front of everyone. He'd worked very hard to maintain an excellent rapport with the teaching staff and he didn't need anything going on his permanent record. He leans against the warm red bricks and tries to just relax and breathe evenly.

That changes however when he watches *her* saunter around the corner. He immediately tenses. He knows Stan Bullkowski could punch the volleyball off the tetherball pole, but Freddie can outsmart him, and he isn't worth the effort to fear. Samantha Puckett, however, is a very intelligent terror and he doesn't need an astrowedgie on an empty stomach. He watches warily as she strolls to a stop in front of him, so amazingly deceptive with her cherub cheeks and the purple bow in her hair. She spits next to his feet and he cringes (THE GERMS FREDWARD, THE GERMS) but doesn't move.

"You're so weird," she glares at him, like he's the one who followed her around the building and she's taking it as a personal attack. He doesn't know how to respond without getting punched and then pantsed so he just stares and says nothing.

"You're standing here, scowling at me, instead of going out there and kicking some chiz! What's with that, Benson?" She pushes his shoulder roughly, and if he weren't already pressed against the wall, he'd be stumbling. His previously tenuous hold on his temper snaps and he brings up his fists as a reflex. "I don't have to explain myself to you, Puckett!"

She doesn't look scared but the way her eyebrow shoots up suggests that she might just be a tiny bit impressed. His mind reels. "Well, that's something. You do have a spine somewhere in there. Not much of one, mind you…"

He glares at her defiantly but it's all bluster because he couldn't tell you for the life of him what he's really feeling right now. He expects injury as a given, by this point, and just wants it to be over with so he can get himself back under control before the bell rings and he has to learn again. He braces for it, but keeps his eyes on her, because if she's going to hit him, he wants to see it coming.

She feints a punch to his jaw and he flinches involuntarily, closing his eyes, wondering if his mother will take him to the emergency room at County or Washington General when she sees the bruise. Instead, he feels something soft, misshapen and lumpy thump against his forehead and bounce off. Her back is turned and she's already half-way around the corner, her curls whipping golden through the air behind her, when he realizes it's half of a ham and cheese sandwich and one square of a Hershey bar in a plastic baggie.

"So, uh… Sorry," she grunts, and he can feel his heart stutter as his mind races. Is she sorry she kissed him? Sorry for surprising him? Is she sorry, like, "Oops, that was sudden!" sorry or sorry like, "I regret this so hard right now, and probably I'm going to punch you to prove it!" sorry? He knows he's been quiet a moment too long when her eyes dart up to his face and he sees something in the set of her mouth that reminds him of a leaf curling inward on itself. He can't let that happen, he knows. Speak, nub! SPEAK!

"It's… it's cool."

It's the world's best rejoinder. He is a stud. His prowess is without compare amongst his peers, and he's so goddamn good at talking to girls that he will be given multiple promotional deals to teach others his sexual ways.

This is what he tells himself, because what blood he has in his head is in his cheeks and he doesn't have a mouth where the rest of it is. He flushes redder, because he's the nub she's always told him he was, and he's still thinking about her mouth, only now it's other places and he needs to stop. He really does.

She's incredibly still. Generally, it takes duct tape or processed meat product to get her to stop moving long enough to focus. Now, she's in front of him, watching him like he's about to hit her.

She's fifteen and her hair is tangled.

She's beating the stuffing out of a girl who seems to be part cement mixer, part moose, but all he can think about is her hair being tangled and how long it had taken him and Carly to brush it out and straighten it.

"Ow! What are you two doing back there, and how is this- OW DAMMIT BENSON- going to help get Pete to notice me?"

Freddie wisely said nothing, just ducked his head a bit to dodge the cushion she threw behind her. He focused on separating the yellow-gold strands of her hair evenly, and running the circle brushes through them so that they shone.

"Maybe if you paid a little more attention to your hygiene and a little less attention to the half yearly sale schedule at Meats-B-Here you wouldn't feel like people overlook how pretty you are," Carly had quipped, clamping down with the straightening iron determinedly, ignoring the alarmed swearing when she pulled it what Sam considered a little too close to her exposed shoulders.

Sam had looked affronted. "You think that my respect for and admiration of the barbequed arts means I'm not girly?"

Freddie noticed her grip tighten on the pillow she had been trying to strangle the puff out of. He decided to intervene. He handed the next section over to Carly carefully. "No more than doing your hair makes me less manly."

Her snort was cut short after a warning look from Carly. It had taken fifteen minutes and both of them threatening to tell his mother he's been eating un-pre-smashed crackers before he'd finally caved in and agreed to help.

"Alright, Fredimal, then if it's not the meat-love, what's my problem?"

Her tone had tried to be flip, but the question landed heavily. Carly interjected before he could think of a response.

"The only problem you have is that you're too prone to violence. And dirt."

Sam tried to turn and glare at her, but a tug from Freddie's combs, and the ominous clacking from Carly snapping the straightener together kept her still.

"Self-defense-"

"Only applies when someone attacks you first," Carly finished for her, taking the last bit of hair from Freddie, and started the final passes of the iron. "Parole Officer Jim has told you that a million times."

Freddie leaned against the vanity and watched as Sam fidgeted, irritably.

"So I pre-empted a few of the stupider steps in the dance! Parole Officer Jim is just shortsighted." Her shoulders hunched.

Carly fluffed Sam's hair one last time, and spun the chair around so she could look in the mirror. "Ta-da! Girl!Sam makes her triumphant appearance!"

Freddie felt something weird rumble through his stomach. If his mother was right about the un-pre-smashed crackers giving him ulcers he would never hear the end of it. Sam's mouth opened… closed.

"It's… different," she managed. Her head turned slightly to study it from the side. Her hair was longer straight, he'd thought.

"You don't like it!" Carly's lips turned down and she reached for the wet towel to wrap Sam's head up again. Freddie found he couldn't hide a smile, but then Sam's hand shot out and stopped Carly.

"It's not that, it's just- What're you smirking at, nub?"

"Nothing!" He shook his head in denial. She got up from the chair and was practically nose to nose with him. He wondered when that stopped being scary. He could look past the terror and threat of immediate injury to notice other things. Like how tight the skin around her eyes looked this close. Almost as if she were nervous. Funny.

"Sam!"

"Seriously, chizbreath, what's so funny?" she glared and her hands were fists.

"Sam, nothing! There was nothing funny!"

"He didn't do anything! Your hair looks great! Remember Parole Officer Jim!" Carly yelped, as she tried to diffuse things.

"He's going to say something I need to punch him for eventually. Why not speed things up?" she menaced.

"Fine! Fine, okay? I was thinking that the straight hair makes you look kind of tame! That's it! It's not bad. It's just, I'm used to your curls bouncing everywhere, and I-"

"Tame?" she breathed. He'd recognized *just* how poorly he phrased that *way* too late. "TAME?"

He shook his head, and his arms shot out to… do something. He would have grabbed her wrists, but she would destroy Carly's vanity if she flipped him over now, and for all Spencer was a giant four year old, he got surprisingly grown up and twitchy about replacing furniture. Instead, his hands had just hovered awkwardly in the air on either side of her, palms up defensively. She poked a vicious finger into his chest, and he was discomfited by how different it looked with pale pink polish daintily coating it. He'd just gotten so used to being assaulted by electric lime green digits, or purple and black, bruised looking splatters of color against his shirt, or skin if she aimed for the arm.

"Not tame, like… however you're taking it! Tame like…"

Carly interjected, "Let's stay away from the concept of tame entirely, shall we? My carpet is so entirely blood free right now, and I'm super happy with that continuing to be the case!"

"I just… I don't think there was anything wrong with the way you looked before! I know it's just probably because I'm used to it, but I think the curls are more you! And I like them! But hey, this is nice too! Just… different. Flatter, but different!"

He'd winced a little because she was still in his breathing square, which didn't bode well for him. He waited patiently, knowing that sudden movements were unlikely to help his cause, prepared for the punch he was sure was coming. Instead long blonde straight strands of hair whipped him in the face as she thrust the brushes back into his hands and turned around.

"No one asked you for your opinion, chizhead. Just keep brushing. Mama wants her hair to *gleam.*"

His jaw had dropped open, not believing his luck as she'd dropped back into the chair. The slight hunch of her shoulders made him decide to push it.

"Well, you technically did ask me-"

"Shut up, Benson!" they'd chorused, and it was all suddenly friendly squabbles again.

He wants to break the silence, but in that way that great cats go still before they rip their prey apart, he can sense that one wrong move here will finish him. He imagines Sam's hand reaching out, her fingers claws that gleam in the reflected half light of the courtyard. In his mind she aims straight for his heart, hooking it, then running with it into the darkness while he lies gasping out his last breaths. She always did know just where to strike to cause the most damage.

They're sixteen, and it's becoming obvious that life isn't staying still, but it also isn't changing in the ways he expected it to.

He's sitting in the park across the street from Bushwell, and his bad leg is propped up along half a bench, and he's just thankful for the sun splashing across his face, because if his mother had her way, he'd be enjoying twelfth period at the home school she's been campaigning for since the taco truck tossed his guacamole.

He lets his mind float freely, not thinking about anything, not dwelling on anything, and certainly not berating himself for letting the girl of his dreams slip through his fingers. Well, maybe a little of that last bit.

He can't sort out his emotions. He gets nauseous when he tries to focus on any one in particular. He remembers clearly how elated he was, walking through the school with Carly (Carly *Shay*) on his arm, just the way he'd always pictured it. Or, almost the way he'd pictured it. He berated himself for waffling. Him and Carly together was perfect. It was the dream! It was the goal! And he hadn't even had to make anything look like an accident, let alone involve her first husband!

And yet, even before the… he'll use intervention, because for once, he really thought that Sam might have had someone else's best interest at heart- even before the intervention, he couldn't deny that something had maybe felt slightly… off. Hollow? It took Sam and her ridiculous meat based wisdom to put it into context for him, and gods above did it chafe that she was the voice of reason in this scenario. The world had surely gone mad.

He's angry at himself, he knows that much. He took advantage of the situation, even if that's not what he thought he was doing at the time. And his mother drilled into his head from birth (possibly the womb? He knows she played safety instructions through headphones on her belly when she was pregnant.) "Always a gentleman, never in trouble with God or the law." It wasn't one of her pithiest codas, but it doesn't make it less applicable. Carly was feeling guilty, and vulnerable, and he'd just swooped right in like a giant, nerdy swooping thing. And all the time he'd thought she'd just seen the light. Seen his leg snap into three pieces and the overwhelming pathetic-ness that was his life , more like.

He is grumbling to himself, slouched over onto his arm ("Boys who sit up straight find their lives are great!") eyes closed, and wondering what he's going to do, now that the possibility of Carly has been ripped away and he's left only with the reality that it hadn't worked out. He's surprised by how nervous he's making him. He's a little ashamed at how much of his foundation is built around the basic tenant of "Freddie Love Carly! Freddie Love Carly Real Good!"

What's the future going to be like without the hope that someday, maybe…?

This is the spiral he's in when she walks up. He's clearly not at his most alert, and since his mother is at work, he's not expecting anyone to disturb his moping- musings! Musings, he means.

That, of course, is the first indication that he should have seen it coming. Expect Sam Puckett when you least expect Sam Puckett. Words to live by, and always more useful than any rhyme his mother has yet to couplet.

He yelps when she thumps down onto the bench behind him, jostling the slats enough that a spasm of pain wracks his leg. He whips his head around to look at her, but only to glare. He'd known it was her from the smell of Pig-B-Qued special sauce that wafted over him as his eyes teared up.

"Sorry, Fredinor," she says, and for some reason he believes her.

"Whatever." He adjusts his position so that he can look at her comfortably, but he keeps his gaze on the trees in the distance. "Here to gloat?"

Sam folds her hands behind her head, and avoids his eyes as well. For once, there's no malice on her face and none of the glee he anticipates. "Gloat?"

He crosses his arms. "So you're going to make me say it?"

Sam finally flicks her eyes at him. "I'm not going to make you do anything. Not at the moment, anyway." Her blue eyes are cool, and almost placid. He wonders what that expression she has on means. It fits ill over her features. On anyone else he'd call it sympathy, but that was impossible, right? He notes that he is still feeling sore on the subject of her being the messenger who delivered the note from Captain Truth. He tries not to take his bitterness out on her. His success rate is variable, over the years.

"Oh? You're not going to say 'I told you so'?" he snipes. It is not one of his successful moments.

Her eyebrow rises. "Do I need to?"

He acknowledges the hit.

"I was just so sure!" He bursts out, unable to help himself. He is mortified, because this is Sam and if you're going to display weakness around her, you might as well just bow down and offer her your neck like animals do in the jungle. "I thought that this was it, this was my reward for years of dogged persistence-"

"Persistence? That's a fun new word for stalking."

"We were going to be forever," he deflates, redefining pathetic in his opinion. Sam's lip curls and he's surprised, because there was that malice he'd been looking for earlier, but it's gone almost as soon as it appears. The strange look from earlier comes back. She looks almost rueful.

"Look, nub. No one meets the person they're gonna be with forever in high school. No one. Hell, there's almost no forever left in this world." It's as close to comforting as Sam Puckett will ever get on this subject.

"My mom did!" he counters, wondering why he's arguing this. He also wonders why she looks so out of sorts.

"And look how that turned out!" she zings, before going still, understanding that perhaps she just crossed a line. Freddie's dad's untimely passing was something no one in the trio spoke about, ever, in group or in part. It was just one of the rules. (Rules like: Sam hates Freddie. Freddie loves Carly. Spencer sets things on fire.) "Dude, I'm-"

"Isn't it better that she knew him? That she had him for a little while?" He isn't mad. It's sort of freeing, in that moment. So many rules were already broken today (a siren wailed furiously as a fire engine roared up to Bushwell Plaza's front entrance- not all of them apparently) what's one more? Sam's quiet is sullen, and her foot is tapping like she's ready to bolt.

"What's the point if it isn't forever?" she asks. It's probably the most serious tone he's ever heard her use. He shifts so they're side by side. He's too close to her, but his leg hurts and he's finally comfortable. If she wants to move she can. She doesn't seem to, but her gaze is firmly locked on the blue parts of the sky above them so maybe she hasn't noticed.

"How will you know it's not forever if you don't try?" he counters, watching her play intricate threading games with her fingers. For the first time since he'd turned Carly away, he felt the gnaw of dismay and uncertainty in his stomach lessen. He doesn't question it, just happy there's a light in the distance somewhere. Maybe he won't always feel like his world is over. Maybe. He's willing to entertain the possibility.

As his burden eases hers seems to increase, if the agitated twitching of her limbs is anything to go by. Her lips quirk up into a smirk, nonetheless, and that sends his stomach into a new fit of dismay.

"How's that trying thing been working out for you, Fredly-Do-Right? You were sitting here alone on this bench thinking about how cool it is to have loved and lost, and all that chiz? Sorry to interrupt your happy time, nerd."

"Oh, Sam," he sighs, shaking his head. She jumps up, arms flung out, almost defensively.

"Well, it's true. God, why are we even talking about this? And why am I even talking to you? Just because Carly finally came to her senses it doesn't mean we're going to be besties to fill the voi-"

"Thank you", he interrupts. She gapes at him, sincerely caught off guard, for once. He smiles at her, and she immediately goes into lockdown mode, expecting a trick. It makes him grin wider.

"What for? What'd you do? What's this?" Her eyes dart back and forth as though expecting the police, or an attacking hoard or Miss Briggs. He reaches out and tugs a curl, abandoning caution and normalcy completely.

"For setting me straight. Me and Carly weren't in it for the right reasons, and I knew it, deep down, but I was too chicken to admit it. You kicked me in the pants, and it was the right thing to do. So thank you, Sam. You were a good friend."

Her cheeks are red, and he would think it was a blush, but Pucketts don't blush (another rule). She punches him, hard, in the leg, but it's his good leg, and he's grateful for that, and he thinks maybe he gets what she means by it.

She beats him to it, as usual.

"Welp. This was a mistake. See you around, nub." She doesn't bother with the door, and is half way over the wall when he finds his voice.

"Sam, wait!"

She pauses, perched precariously atop the cement divider, one trainer hanging down, crouched forward, every inch the picture of goodbye. She keeps her face turned away.

"Waiting is for losers. You wait." And then she's gone.

He wonders if he should lay down and twitch. He was right; she's fled away in the night and he feels like his chest is shred to ribbons. He rubs it absentmindedly, wondering what he should do. Experimentally, he tries to scale the wall as he'd seen her do. Halfway up, he's right back down with a thud and now Sam is a literal pain in his ass and he gets angry.

She always runs away.

They're almost sixteen, and he sees her out of the corner of his eye.

He's dancing with Carly and for once he feels like he's completely at peace. He's not struggling in that instant to force any feelings from her, content to just let the moment be, happy just to be friends with one normal, lovely person. He wonders if that means he's growing up, and then wonders if it's just the relief that comes from knowing that the girl he's with is not going to make anything he's attached to disappear- his phone, his eyebrows, his arm…

He has the errant thought that, "Hey at least I beat out Captain Interruptus for company. Score."

He only notices her once she's turned away, the neon from the Groovy part of 'Groovy Smoothie' reflecting luridly off her blonde hair. He waits for her to come back and she doesn't. She looks back though, once, and what he sees there makes him stumble. He lets go of Carly reflexively, and moves to go after Sam, and later he wonders where the hell that impulse came from. (He tries to ask his mother, obliquely, but she misinterprets it entirely and it leads to his sixth full body scan, and a warning from the doctor about radiation poisoning.)

She sees him move and then she's nothing more than dust and an afterimage. They don't talk about it, ever. She levels him with a look at iCarly rehearsal the next day, and when he opens his mouth she pelts him in the face with the handful of assorted change they're using for the "Gibby Bank" sketch. A quarter lands in his mouth and he swallows it reflexively. As he's coughing in horror and disgust, he knows she has every intention of pretending that the moment never happened, and that's another thing she always does.