Always grateful for the alerts and favs, but I extend a nod and knowing wink to those who read and review. For chapter nine, thank you:

dannysamlover, Moviepal, TheWrtrInMe, affanoffanfic, Mike2101, jhuikmn08, Samantha Nicole Trewyn, GeekQuality, Chicagobears, Seddiefan040911, Dwyn Arthur, Julefor and Pigwiz.

Yes, I saw iOAR. After I picked my jaw off the carpet I set my gigantic intellect into motion (people who know me are hugely amused at that statement), and now, as a story teller am trying to tell a deeper tale about our heroes. I can honestly say, "Thank you Dan."

Disclaimer: Dan Schneider owns iCarly, but Joss Whedon is DA MAN! Stop reading this now, and go see _The Avengers_!

Chapter 10: Brilliant Disguises

Everything went back to the way it was before Sam and Freddie dated—sort of. Everyone acted like the dating never happened and certainly no one spoke of it. The two behaved themselves and generally operated like friends in the conventional sense. It was business as usual, people looked a little older and there was still laughter but something was missing. It was like biting a brilliant yellow lemon wedge and tasting only water.

Freddie ran the camera and watched as they finished a segment with a shirtless Gibby. Shirtless Gibby returned in response to fan outcry on the iCarly site. Gibby rolled his eyes and submitted to a skit of putting various things on his bare back and having him dance while guessing what had been applied.

Eyes gazing into the viewfinder Freddie studied both girls. The brunette was rail thin, pretty, bubbly, he had known her since childhood. She had never been truly romantically interested in him and today that felt very easy and good. Somehow that made her attractive.

The blonde drew his eyes like metal to a magnet. She was curvy and he felt like he was looking at her from his hips. While he had known her about as long as the brunette he had learned about her in ways that now made him ache. She was filled with good but none of it was easy.

He exhaled heavily.

After the trip to get Gibby something had changed in Freddie. It started as a nugget, a tiny almost nothing, like that grain of sand in an oyster that becomes a pearl. As much as he liked Sam, as much as he probably loved her, he doubted whatever they had between them was going anywhere. The thought was painful, but even though he remembered their couple time with profound warmth, he finally was able to look at his fear that her "love" expressed as they stepped out of the elevator was just a polite way of saying, "Dude, thanks, but you and I just don't have the ingredients to make a meal." He smiled that Sam might think it just that way. Whatever it was they had, Sam and Freddie was a lot of work.

Freddie had started to reconcile himself to being some kind of transitional step for Sam. His rationale, because Freddie was all about being rational, was that Sam had to date a dull, normal guy so she could file off her rougher, abnormal parts in order to move on to the right guy, or maybe she had to prove she couldn't be with a normal guy, the theory was still knitting itself together in his brain.

His brain.

His brain, the source of his power, that component that he depended on to get through life had changed. Maybe it was the hormones that coursed through him, maybe it was the relentless confusion that was his daily companion since The Kiss, but he was aware he was becoming someone else, and he was not sure he recognized that man, or even liked him very much. He had thoughts that scared him, thoughts about his friends, thoughts about girls, and sometimes he could not align those feelings and thoughts with the man he wanted to be. There was another Freddie now, a darker, heated persona that didn't think so much as feel. Call him Lower Freddie. Higher Freddie, the brain, had to ride herd on Lower Freddie.

He watched the stick-drawing-brunette smile at him and the world through his viewfinder. Did he feel something again for Carly? Sure. She was his friend and strangely it seemed like maybe he had a chance there. It was—safe, he could imagine asking her out and not minding the rejection. She really did care about him, he knew that. Probably like she cared about Spencer. She had rejected him most of his life and he was cool with it. He almost welcomed it at this point. He knew how to chase Carly. He was failing badly at getting over Sam. His only success was that he was pretty sure no one could tell how he felt.

He looked over at Sam. The thought of asking her out sent a shiver through him. Sam would surely reject him though maybe not cruelly. She had changed in how she treated him. She had become nicer. They worked together to get T-Bo past his mom's inspection. They'd worked together in the past but not without destroying stuff (think Mr. Galini's computer). The thought of her turning him away, even kindly, stopped the breath in his chest.

Sam was his friend like Carly, but he didn't ache when he looked at Carly. When he looked at Sam his eyes hungered and Lower Freddie uncoiled, the sensation scaring him as deeply as that shadow in his closet when he was four.

Freddie was pretending. He hid what he felt because he was no longer sure what he felt, for Sam, for Carly, for girls, for his whole life. When they went to Hollywood he hid behind a facial appliance. That disguise was nothing compared to one he wore now.

As Carly and Sam finished another bouncing, effervescent exit from the show Sam snuck a glance at Freddie. Her disguise was coming together nicely. She had talked to Freddie like Dr. Dick had told her to, and they found a kind of bland peace. She had regret about how she treated him when they were both prisoners, but her life had many, many regrets and she had gotten used to toting those around. Her friends were used to her behavior and never questioned how she moved ahead, eating, sleeping and seeking self-gratification in an effort to numb herself against the grim realities of her origins and her likely end. Certainly no one was looking at the lock-in kiss and what it meant for her because that was so long ago in an Internet paced world. And maybe it was painful in some way as the truth sometimes is.

Sam and Freddie missed each other. Neither did anything about it, however. After the talk that dark and stormy night they brought Gibby back, they both settled into a kind of cloaked groove that neither liked but neither fought. To look at them you would never know they had swapped spit and flirted with trading hands.

Sam watched as Freddie counted them out when they finished streaming iCarly:

"And we are clear," he said, checking the console display of his PearBook.

Sam was normally not afraid of much, but for a while now Freddie filled her with fear. First had been the terror of the attraction to him, then the lock-in and all it meant, then the fear of being crazy, then the fear that she was attracted to someone with whom she couldn't get along, then the fear that they didn't work as a couple, then the fear that he was dating someone else. It was kind of numbing that the nub king could inspire such relentless anxiety in her. She looked at him across the room, packing up his cables and the fear of what she was about to do inflated her like a balloon. She dialed her inner Puckett up to eleven and approached him.

Sam generated an intense kinetic wave in front of her as she rushed up, "Benson, do you have $250.00?"

He felt the force of her and the effect it had on his heart rate, he had gotten very good at hiding it, "Sure, in my college fund," he answered calmly, winding up a black cable, slyly taking in her curves, furtively absorbing the girlness of her. He felt a slight shame and Lower Freddie smiled.

"Can you get it?" she asked brightly.

He continued winding cable as he explained, "Sam, by saying 'in my college fund' I was subtly telling you, the money is off limits."

She rolled her eyes, "That's dumb. Why have money that you can't use?" The fear of the ask was gone and she felt the frustration she always felt with him. How did he rile her up like this? Nothing had changed, they were just hiding it again. Or she was.

"I can use it when I go to college," he said it pleasantly as if he were explaining something simple, like red means stop, green means go. She felt her irritation growing.

"What if you die before you get to college?" she asked, daring to cross brains with him. That was the same, she had no fear of his mind. She would always bet on her gut reaction and vulpine shrewdness over his calm reasoning.

"Then I have a better funeral and a minor casket upgrade," he said it with his Freddie smirk face, the so very kissable smirk face. She laughed at his words, and the realization that she missed laughing with him spilled inside her like some scalding liquid. When they dated they laughed a lot when they weren't fighting or kissing.

Freddie really liked to make her laugh. Her white toothed smile was hypnotic, even the slight flaws in her young features sank hooks into him. But her laugh was addictive, like some candy he couldn't get his fill of. When she laughed and seemed pleased by his actions he understood how desperate people could become when they needed some fix, when he made her laugh he felt good about everything. He shook that off.

And each of them hid on their own side of this strange divide, pretending that things were just as they had been before The Kiss.

"So can you get the money?" she said to him.

He made a face, seeing the seriousness of her question he stopped packing the cables and focused on her. "What are you looking to buy?" he asked.

She felt oddly aroused with those brown eyes on her and she blinked to clear her head. "Tickets to Richard Avalon."

Freddie squeezed the black cable involuntarily, "Richard Avalon?" As the contempt filled his voice he realized this kind of reaction was not part of his friendly demeanor with post-Freddie Sam.

"Yeah," she felt the anger rising. She hated to justify herself, especially to Freddie and that text book right-and-wrong brain of his. But anger with him was something she had to control. She saw him twitching on Nora's floor as she shocked him. She didn't want to hurt him again, but she honestly wasn't sure how to stop, so powerful was the need to react to him.

Freddie continued in a mocking tone, "Richard Avalon, the guy who says things like, 'I'm seeing a toilet,' and someone in the audience gets all excited, and says, 'Incredible, I used a toilet once!' Then he tells them that their dead mother loved them and they should be happy? THAT Richard Avalon?"

Sam's eyes narrowed to lethal slits. It was like he got her, he understood her, and didn't like what he saw. She let her breath out through her nose and she heard a slight, shrill whistle.

"Dude, he talks to dead people."

"So? I can too, watch this," He turned and shouted to his left, "Hey! George Washington, thanks for being the father of our country and starting America!" Carly and Gibby both looked up from the props they were packing, exchanged questioning glances then returned to cleaning up after the black currant jelly they had smeared on his back. To his credit he had guessed correctly what it was.

Sam felt her anger simmer, like those heat waves curling up off a hot highway, when they dated she had insisted he watch ViewTube video of mysterious fins that might be mermaids. He had been skeptical of her interests. What did she miss about this nerdy-nubby-geek?

"Sam, Avalon is a rip-off artist, a fake who preys on sad or grieving people who want to hear something good." And inside, Freddie wanted to go see Richard Avalon. Freddie wanted to hear something good. Freddie wanted to believe in Something Bigger than this life he was living. He hid it well, but most of all he really wanted to kiss this blond girl who had dismissed him. He wanted her to ache for him the way he ached for her.

She gave him The Look. The same cold stare when he suggested that some things were more important than ham. At one time she would have slapped him.

"So, how do I get the money if you won't give it to me?"

"Uh, get a job?"

"No, the show is Friday night, I'd have to sell drugs or do something illegal and that would make y-Carly real mad. I was thinking, you have Man Swab number one, right?"

Hi eyebrow jerked up, "I have ManSwordnumber one, yes," he corrected her with a glowing pride in his voice. His mind's eye summoned up the red and blue text announcing "ManSword! The blade that walks! The Living Saber, He Cuts! He Kisses! ManSword! The hero with an edge."

She was unable to suppress a smile at his serious tone, "You told me that was worth like $600.00 right?"

He looked at her as if she had just unzipped her neck and Spencer stepped out of a Sam costume, "Are you asking me to sell ManSword number one and give you the money?"

She resisted the urge to answer with, "you're not as dumb as you look," and simply said, "yes."

"Are you planning on paying me back?"

"Sure, I always plan to pay you back."

"I don't want a trampoline."

She crossed her arms and leveled her gaze at him, "Well? What's it gonna be boy?"

"I'm not selling one of the jewels of my comic collection so you can have some liar tell you you're dead grandmother J'Mam Maw is watching over you."

"J'Mam Maw is still alive."

"Then you have some time to get a job and earn the $250.00."

She stared at him even harder, trying to wear him down with those blue eyes. She had eyes like those beaches where you can see the sandy bottom through the blue water. Did she know the power her eyes had now?

The blue was powerful but he held his ground, his thinking a childish mix of, What would ManSword do? And a wounded, Sam doesn't love you that way—get off this train!

A grim silence expanded, a noiseless sucking thing that filled the strange gap between them. Each stood behind their masks in the quiet.

Finally she made an "oh well" face and turned away. Like the night of the lock-in he watched her walk away. It was incredible, but he'd just won an argument with Sam Puckett. He looked around the iCarly studio. Nothing had changed.

Nothing.

Everything went back to the way it was before Sam and Freddie dated—sort of.

Meanwhile, in another part of town...

In Seattle they call it the "Murder House." It sits at the top of a lonely, weathered mound called Whisper Hill. There the rain never stops and the sprawling mansion winds through groves of withered trees on blistered ground where the grass grows in brown clumps if it grows at all.

The gigantic estate was put together over years by different owners who tore wings out and constructed additions in a kind of architectural surgery ultimately making a monster of mortar and brick. Despite the great artists that have designed and renovated it, it is still an ugly property that defies every effort at beautification. The building is chaotic and random, like a toddler's art project, while the grounds are a mad assortment of exotic grasses, vines and blossoms that cannot cling to life, as if the earth was steeped in poison. It sits like a scab that refuses to heal, like something born unattractive that has grown quite comfortable with its own repulsive appearance.

It gained the name "Murder House," because over the hundred years since it was first stood up many people died in its rooms and on the property. Some deaths were natural, the end of the human clock, some accidental, a tumble down a magnificent cherry wood staircase to a hand carved granite floor, others self-inflicted as several broken hearted lovers dangled from oak rafters or welcomed the black tunnel in browning water cooling in exotic marble tubs. Some were peacefully slaughtered in their sleep, perhaps dead in their dreams at the moment of Conclusion. The blood sprays from the child murders have been soaped away and painted over, but the memories and rumors and legends soaked in that crimson splatter have settled in local minds and throb with the strange life that stories of death have. The tales are truths stretched like hot glass in new shapes that twist the light and distort the images that pass through. There was no woman who killed her entire family while they slept, but some stories were too pure to tell, hidden away by the wealthy, swept under expensive imported carpets that could not mask the smell of something very, very bad. The accounts go deep as weed roots, told on stoops to frighten pretty girls or repeated in hushed tones by children with flashlights under their faces.

The facts about Murder House are harder to come by. The names of the various owners and architects, the workers who built it or remodeled it, even the litany of dead whose lives tumbled away within are lost except to the grieving and pages of paper that yellow and grow brittle as they sit unread on dusty shelves or float in the digital eternity of computer storage. But even casual visitors have experienced fear and dread, enigmatic sights and cold touches without physical explanation. Something very strange continues to this day in Murder House.

If your life does not end in Murder House then it surely changes there; at least that is what is said.

Murder House sits in the cold Seattle rain, waiting for new blood to arrive.

Murder House is waiting on Sam and Freddie.

A/N I used the mermaids from Oceanmistsupporter's "Nursing Our Broken Seddie Hearts" without permission because this is FanFiction and I can do that.

Next chapter's working title is: "Freddie Versus the Pirate Troll." Not sure about when it will arrive. I will not let the ticking of the clock as we come to December 21st drive me but I will try to beat the Mayan Conclusion.

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