city lights and heartbeats
city lights and heartbeats
Fandom: iCarly
Pairing: Sam/Freddie
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-iGoodbye.
~~~~
Sam likes the city lights. She likes Seattle at night, when it’s dark, but still alive with lights and a crispness to the air that comes from a bit too much rain.
She likes the rain, because she likes the freedom it brings, and the quiet is assures on the streets.
As she rides along on her motorcycle, she notes that the sky is clear when Carly’s plane should take flight, as if Carly is supposed to leave, and there’s never really been a chance that this random occurrence wouldn’t happen.
Hours ago, things had been simpler. She’d been focused on the bike, and on hoping that Spencer got better for that dance Carly had wanted to go to-but now the dance is over, and Carly is gone.
Sam knows how much Carly needs her dad, how much she misses him sometimes. She and Carly have had more than a few impromptu sleepovers because Carly just needs her, just as much as she needs Carly.
Sam doesn’t know what’s going to happen now that Carly is gone.
Carly has her father, and all the cute boys of Italy to keep her company.
Sam’s not sure what she’s going to do.
She has Gibby, and occasionally her mother, and Spencer, and . . . Freddie.
Freddie, who she still loves, despite everything, even though she knows that it’s a longshot, even though she knows his feelings for Carly have experienced a resurgence lately.
She’d been reeling from him bringing up getting back together, but now she’s even more confused.
She doesn’t want to be the person Freddie only wants because Carly is gone, which why while she rides around Seattle, she ignores a call and two text messages from him.
She isn’t ready to be strong, she isn’t ready to put her armor back on, because it’s worn and full of holes from Carly’s departure.
She’s not sure how to create a new normalcy now that Carly’s gone-she’s used to spending time with Freddie and Gibby and Spencer without Carly, but now Carly's gone.
It’s different now, she thinks, as she hears thunder and feels the first drops of rain.
~~
“Hey,” Sam says breathlessly when she knocks on the Benson’s door and Freddie answers with a smile that warms her slightly, even though there’s a part of her that doesn’t want it to.
She will be strong.
“Hey,” Freddie says softly. “I’d ask if you want to come in, but you know how my mom is.” He frowns at how wet she looks, but then she shrugs out of her jacket and shows that she's perfectly dry underneath. He sighs, as if he knows she'll argue if he tries to tell her to take care of herself.
Sam fights a smile. Sometimes it's nice to know someone that well. “Yeah. Balcony?" she suggests.
Freddie’s own smile falters for a second before he smiles more broadly than before. “Sounds perfect.”
They sneak quietly out onto the balcony, closing the window behind them, staring at each other awkwardly before Freddie sits down and pats the place right beside him.
Sam sits, keeping a few inches between them because being near him makes her weak, and now is not the time for weakness. “Has this bench always been here?” she asks, just casually making conversation, she tells herself.
Freddie bites his lip and tries not to laugh. “Uh, I think it’s new.”
“Oh,” Sam says simply, placing her hands on either side of her on the wooden bench. It’s cold, although the rain has stopped. The bench is under an awning though, so at least it isn’t wet. You have to be grateful for the small things, she thinks.
She shivers, and stares down at the space between herself and Freddie, and is surprised to see Freddie get up and move away. “Where are you going?”
Freddie just smiles and shakes his head. “I’ll be right back, Sam.” She hates that smile, because it seems so knowing, like he's in a joke he won't share with the rest of the world.
Sam fidgets while he's gone, forcing herself to keep her hands firmly on either side of herself, because to put them in her lap or her pockets would show weakness. For a moment, she realizes that she's shown enough weakness with Freddie that it would hardly matter, but she doesn't move her hands.
“Here you go,” Freddie whispers, climbing through and shutting the window behind him again, and holding up a blanket triumphantly.
“You’re such a dweeb,” Sam says, the words coming easily to her, even though she’s grateful as she’s enveloped in the blanket. He makes a big show of tucking the blanket around her slightly, and she hates herself for loving him for it.
“I know,” Freddie agrees softly. “Always have been, always will be.”
He smiles at her, that same smile that gets her every time, and she stares down at the blanket.
“So, Carly’s gone,” Sam says conversationally, even though there’s a part of her that still wants to cry-but here there isn’t rain to mask the tears, and Freddie is looking at her. She can wait, she thinks.
Just a little patience, and everything’ll be okay. It’ll be like after they broke up, and they made the decision, and refused to talk about it, ignoring it as if it had never happened. Her chest clenches painfully at that thought, because she hadn’t enjoyed pretending it had never happened.
She misses him, even now.
“Yeah,” Freddie says finally. “I’m gonna miss her.”
“So am I,” Sam says with a sigh, relaxing slightly into the warmth of her blanket. “What do we do now?”
The words are loaded, because they can't be the same without Carly, who brought them together, who made them friends, who fought to make them try to be together in the first place.
Freddie is silent for a moment, and those ten seconds feel like an eternity. It draws her back to the time that Freddie kissed her in front of their entire audience, and she stiffens again at the thought.
“We miss her,” Freddie speaks finally. “We miss her, and we go on as we were. We go to school, we hang out, we somehow manage to videochat with her, even though the time zones are ridiculous. We focus on what happens next. And, well-“ he turns to her, and she keeps facing forward. “I want to talk about that phone call earlier.”
Sam turns to him finally, her face carefully blank. “What about it?” He'd managed to sneak up on her with that, talking about Carly and then making it about them.
Freddie breathes in deeply. “I’m still in love with you.”
Sam struggles desperately not to show emotion, not to feel anything. She fails, as she’s often failed lately. She’s grown too much to cut herself off completely, she’s not as angry, not as hard, not that version of Sam anymore.
“I thought we,” she steadies herself. “I thought we decided that it wasn’t going to work out. That I was too different, that you were too . . . normal.” She tries to hold eye contact but fails, and looks back down at the blanket around her. She feels Freddie’s hand reach under the blanket and settle on top of her own.
It’s strangely warm.
“I think we were wrong.”
Sam snorts. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah,” Freddie says softly, squeezing her hand. “I-I have to tell you something.”
“As if I could stop you.” She could, probably, and they both know it.
Freddie continues anyway. “Before Carly left, she kissed me. And not just on the cheek, she kissed me.” Freddie sighs. “And I-I don’t know. It was different from before. It was a good kiss, but it felt-it felt like a goodbye. Like she should have been kissing me on the cheek, because there wasn’t a spark.”
“She was leaving,” Sam points out. “Maybe that’s the point. She can’t exactly be with you if she’s gone, can she?” she says it too harshly, and she flinches slightly at her own tone.
“It wasn’t that,” Freddie says firmly. “Do you know what I did after she kissed me? I celebrated, a little. I mean not too much, because one of my best friends was leaving to Italy, but a little, because it meant, finally, that I was right.”
“Right about what?” She’s almost too afraid to ask.
“You. Me. Us. I just-“ Freddie runs his hand through his hair, as if he’s a little frustrated with his inability to put things into words. “Earlier today you called me, and I just-I’ve been thinking for months that when we broke up we made a mistake, and suddenly the words came right out of me, and I was testing the water, but of course that didn’t work.”
Sam wants to believe him desperately, but she needs him to prove this to her, because she’s spent the past several months watching him flip flop between being an asshole and looking at Carly,and so she says that. “You’ve spent the past few months acting like you want Carly. Why should I believe you?”
Freddie is quiet again, and Sam feels her heart sink.
“I’ve been really confused lately,” Freddie says softly. “Carly has always been easier. She’s the girl next door, literally. She’s beautiful and amazing. But she-she doesn’t drive me up the wall like you do. She doesn’t make me fight, she’s not the reason why I learned to fight back and stand up for myself. You changed me. You challenged me. You-you make me feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, like I have options, like nothing is set in stone. You make me falter. You make it hurt.”
“That sounds awful,” Sam says, wiping at a tear that’s falling from her eye when Freddie lifts his hand over her own, wiping it for her. It takes everything Sam has not to lean into the hand. Thankfully, he lets it fall down between him, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
Freddie notices and smiles before continuing. “It is, sometimes. But other times it’s amazing. Lately, I’ve realized that Carly, regardless of the fact that she’s never wanted me, just me, wouldn’t make me feel the way you do. She's like a sister to me. You’re-you’re not.”
Freddie leans forward and kisses her lips softly, before pulling away and staring right into her eyes, and Sam realizes that he sees her, truly, the way she’s always wanted him to, but believed he couldn’t.
She lets herself hope.
“When we broke up,” Freddie starts. “I did a lot of thinking. And I thought it would be easier with someone like Carly. But easy isn’t what I want. I want you. We screwed up our relationship because we tried to be something we aren’t. We’re not going to stop fighting just because we’re together. That isn’t enough. We fight because we care. We shouldn’t fight all of the time, of course, but it’s okay to not agree, or to put each other off-balance. We just have to be us-I’m not as normal as I pretend to me, and you’re not as abnormal as you sometimes pretend to be. We can meet somewhere in the middle.”
It’s raw, and honest, and it makes Sam’s heart ache in her chest so painfully she can barely breathe.
“I don't know if I can do that,” she says softly, failing to force back all of her tears.
Freddie’s face falls and he looks like he’s ready to start crying. “I don’t want to be with you because you aren’t Carly. I want to be with you because you’re you. Because you make me better and worse, and you make me feel. You make me happy, and I want-I want to make you happy too,” his voice cracks at the end.
For a brief moment, Sam feels the world spin, and finally click into place, and for the first time in a while she lets herself believe.
Sam breathes in deeply, slowly. “Freddie, I-do you remember when I said when I’d figured out how I felt about you?”
“Yeah,” Freddie says with a nod.
“It was the first time you made me worry. I realized that somewhere along the line, I’d gotten attached to you, and not just because of Carly. Because even if you're a doofus, I care about you. I cared because it was you,” Sam closes her eyes tightly, thinking carefully. “It was because of you,” she breathes out, opening her eyes back up. “You and your camera equipment, and your excitement about nerdy things that no one cares about.”
“People care,” Freddie says lightly, faking offense.
“You care,” Sam says softly. “And I cared. I didn’t mean to. I just-it happened. I fought it for a long time, for a lot of reasons, but then I kissed you at school, and it just-it changed things.”
Freddie nods, and Sam sighs.
“I felt like I cared more than you did, even when we got together.”
“There were times I felt the same way,” Freddie says softly when Sam pauses. “Like you didn’t care to change, even a little. Like you couldn’t even try.”
Sam glares at him. “I tried, Freddie,” she says furiously. “It didn’t work, Freddie. We weren’t right for each other. Love isn’t enough.”
“It could be. And I was wrong. But this time we can make this work,” Freddie argues. “This time we can stop pretending that we need to be a traditional couple. We don’t have to fight tradition either. We can just be.”
"What does that even mean?" Sam asks almost angrily.
"It means that I need to tell you when something bothers me, and that I need to stop expecting you to change everything about yourself. That--that we can just hang out, like we've always done, but also be more. We don't have to be something we aren't. I just want to try."
“What if we can’t?”
“Then we try again,” Freddie says softly, taking both of Sam’s hands in his own, looking in her eyes, and saying it with complete confidence. “I’m done fighting us. I want to fight for us this time. Because I’m in love with you, and it’s ridiculously clichéd, and it feels like my heart is going to break out of my chest sometimes, and I don’t want to pretend that I don’t feel this way. “
Sam lets tears stream silently down her face, and she looks down at their hands before looking back up at Freddie.
“I’m in love with you,” Freddie says again, letting her hands go, and placing his own on either side of her head. “And if you were going to Italy, I might have followed you.”
“Might have?” Sam raises an eyebrow and smiles slightly.
Freddie smiles back. “I’m pretty sure my mom burned my passport after what happened in Japan.”
Sam laughs and Freddie kisses her, distracting her into kissing him back.
“I hate you,” Sam says finally when they pull apart to breathe, and Sam leans her forehead against Freddie’s and they just sit there.
Freddie smiles. “I hate you too,” and kisses her again, despite the cold, and the fact that his lips are chapped and burning, because there’s not a place in the world he’d rather be.
Even when Sam grabs his shirt and pulls him towards her almost painfully, there’s not a person he’d rather be with.
They eventually stop kissing long enough to curl back underneath the blanket Freddie brought outside, and Sam ends up curled against Freddie, falling asleep to the sounds of the city and Freddie’s heartbeat.
Freddie manages to stay awake a little longer, caressing Sam’s hair slightly, even though she might threaten to cut off his hand for doing it if she were awake.
Freddie simply holds Sam much in the way she holds his heart now and--though he doesn’t know it yet--always will.
Later, when the sun rises and his mother is ready to sound the alarm because he's missing from his bed, they wake up slowly and smile at each other before falling back asleep together to the sounds of the waking city below, and each other's heartbeats.
Fandom: iCarly
Pairing: Sam/Freddie
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-iGoodbye.
~~~~
Sam likes the city lights. She likes Seattle at night, when it’s dark, but still alive with lights and a crispness to the air that comes from a bit too much rain.
She likes the rain, because she likes the freedom it brings, and the quiet is assures on the streets.
As she rides along on her motorcycle, she notes that the sky is clear when Carly’s plane should take flight, as if Carly is supposed to leave, and there’s never really been a chance that this random occurrence wouldn’t happen.
Hours ago, things had been simpler. She’d been focused on the bike, and on hoping that Spencer got better for that dance Carly had wanted to go to-but now the dance is over, and Carly is gone.
Sam knows how much Carly needs her dad, how much she misses him sometimes. She and Carly have had more than a few impromptu sleepovers because Carly just needs her, just as much as she needs Carly.
Sam doesn’t know what’s going to happen now that Carly is gone.
Carly has her father, and all the cute boys of Italy to keep her company.
Sam’s not sure what she’s going to do.
She has Gibby, and occasionally her mother, and Spencer, and . . . Freddie.
Freddie, who she still loves, despite everything, even though she knows that it’s a longshot, even though she knows his feelings for Carly have experienced a resurgence lately.
She’d been reeling from him bringing up getting back together, but now she’s even more confused.
She doesn’t want to be the person Freddie only wants because Carly is gone, which why while she rides around Seattle, she ignores a call and two text messages from him.
She isn’t ready to be strong, she isn’t ready to put her armor back on, because it’s worn and full of holes from Carly’s departure.
She’s not sure how to create a new normalcy now that Carly’s gone-she’s used to spending time with Freddie and Gibby and Spencer without Carly, but now Carly's gone.
It’s different now, she thinks, as she hears thunder and feels the first drops of rain.
~~
“Hey,” Sam says breathlessly when she knocks on the Benson’s door and Freddie answers with a smile that warms her slightly, even though there’s a part of her that doesn’t want it to.
She will be strong.
“Hey,” Freddie says softly. “I’d ask if you want to come in, but you know how my mom is.” He frowns at how wet she looks, but then she shrugs out of her jacket and shows that she's perfectly dry underneath. He sighs, as if he knows she'll argue if he tries to tell her to take care of herself.
Sam fights a smile. Sometimes it's nice to know someone that well. “Yeah. Balcony?" she suggests.
Freddie’s own smile falters for a second before he smiles more broadly than before. “Sounds perfect.”
They sneak quietly out onto the balcony, closing the window behind them, staring at each other awkwardly before Freddie sits down and pats the place right beside him.
Sam sits, keeping a few inches between them because being near him makes her weak, and now is not the time for weakness. “Has this bench always been here?” she asks, just casually making conversation, she tells herself.
Freddie bites his lip and tries not to laugh. “Uh, I think it’s new.”
“Oh,” Sam says simply, placing her hands on either side of her on the wooden bench. It’s cold, although the rain has stopped. The bench is under an awning though, so at least it isn’t wet. You have to be grateful for the small things, she thinks.
She shivers, and stares down at the space between herself and Freddie, and is surprised to see Freddie get up and move away. “Where are you going?”
Freddie just smiles and shakes his head. “I’ll be right back, Sam.” She hates that smile, because it seems so knowing, like he's in a joke he won't share with the rest of the world.
Sam fidgets while he's gone, forcing herself to keep her hands firmly on either side of herself, because to put them in her lap or her pockets would show weakness. For a moment, she realizes that she's shown enough weakness with Freddie that it would hardly matter, but she doesn't move her hands.
“Here you go,” Freddie whispers, climbing through and shutting the window behind him again, and holding up a blanket triumphantly.
“You’re such a dweeb,” Sam says, the words coming easily to her, even though she’s grateful as she’s enveloped in the blanket. He makes a big show of tucking the blanket around her slightly, and she hates herself for loving him for it.
“I know,” Freddie agrees softly. “Always have been, always will be.”
He smiles at her, that same smile that gets her every time, and she stares down at the blanket.
“So, Carly’s gone,” Sam says conversationally, even though there’s a part of her that still wants to cry-but here there isn’t rain to mask the tears, and Freddie is looking at her. She can wait, she thinks.
Just a little patience, and everything’ll be okay. It’ll be like after they broke up, and they made the decision, and refused to talk about it, ignoring it as if it had never happened. Her chest clenches painfully at that thought, because she hadn’t enjoyed pretending it had never happened.
She misses him, even now.
“Yeah,” Freddie says finally. “I’m gonna miss her.”
“So am I,” Sam says with a sigh, relaxing slightly into the warmth of her blanket. “What do we do now?”
The words are loaded, because they can't be the same without Carly, who brought them together, who made them friends, who fought to make them try to be together in the first place.
Freddie is silent for a moment, and those ten seconds feel like an eternity. It draws her back to the time that Freddie kissed her in front of their entire audience, and she stiffens again at the thought.
“We miss her,” Freddie speaks finally. “We miss her, and we go on as we were. We go to school, we hang out, we somehow manage to videochat with her, even though the time zones are ridiculous. We focus on what happens next. And, well-“ he turns to her, and she keeps facing forward. “I want to talk about that phone call earlier.”
Sam turns to him finally, her face carefully blank. “What about it?” He'd managed to sneak up on her with that, talking about Carly and then making it about them.
Freddie breathes in deeply. “I’m still in love with you.”
Sam struggles desperately not to show emotion, not to feel anything. She fails, as she’s often failed lately. She’s grown too much to cut herself off completely, she’s not as angry, not as hard, not that version of Sam anymore.
“I thought we,” she steadies herself. “I thought we decided that it wasn’t going to work out. That I was too different, that you were too . . . normal.” She tries to hold eye contact but fails, and looks back down at the blanket around her. She feels Freddie’s hand reach under the blanket and settle on top of her own.
It’s strangely warm.
“I think we were wrong.”
Sam snorts. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah,” Freddie says softly, squeezing her hand. “I-I have to tell you something.”
“As if I could stop you.” She could, probably, and they both know it.
Freddie continues anyway. “Before Carly left, she kissed me. And not just on the cheek, she kissed me.” Freddie sighs. “And I-I don’t know. It was different from before. It was a good kiss, but it felt-it felt like a goodbye. Like she should have been kissing me on the cheek, because there wasn’t a spark.”
“She was leaving,” Sam points out. “Maybe that’s the point. She can’t exactly be with you if she’s gone, can she?” she says it too harshly, and she flinches slightly at her own tone.
“It wasn’t that,” Freddie says firmly. “Do you know what I did after she kissed me? I celebrated, a little. I mean not too much, because one of my best friends was leaving to Italy, but a little, because it meant, finally, that I was right.”
“Right about what?” She’s almost too afraid to ask.
“You. Me. Us. I just-“ Freddie runs his hand through his hair, as if he’s a little frustrated with his inability to put things into words. “Earlier today you called me, and I just-I’ve been thinking for months that when we broke up we made a mistake, and suddenly the words came right out of me, and I was testing the water, but of course that didn’t work.”
Sam wants to believe him desperately, but she needs him to prove this to her, because she’s spent the past several months watching him flip flop between being an asshole and looking at Carly,and so she says that. “You’ve spent the past few months acting like you want Carly. Why should I believe you?”
Freddie is quiet again, and Sam feels her heart sink.
“I’ve been really confused lately,” Freddie says softly. “Carly has always been easier. She’s the girl next door, literally. She’s beautiful and amazing. But she-she doesn’t drive me up the wall like you do. She doesn’t make me fight, she’s not the reason why I learned to fight back and stand up for myself. You changed me. You challenged me. You-you make me feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, like I have options, like nothing is set in stone. You make me falter. You make it hurt.”
“That sounds awful,” Sam says, wiping at a tear that’s falling from her eye when Freddie lifts his hand over her own, wiping it for her. It takes everything Sam has not to lean into the hand. Thankfully, he lets it fall down between him, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
Freddie notices and smiles before continuing. “It is, sometimes. But other times it’s amazing. Lately, I’ve realized that Carly, regardless of the fact that she’s never wanted me, just me, wouldn’t make me feel the way you do. She's like a sister to me. You’re-you’re not.”
Freddie leans forward and kisses her lips softly, before pulling away and staring right into her eyes, and Sam realizes that he sees her, truly, the way she’s always wanted him to, but believed he couldn’t.
She lets herself hope.
“When we broke up,” Freddie starts. “I did a lot of thinking. And I thought it would be easier with someone like Carly. But easy isn’t what I want. I want you. We screwed up our relationship because we tried to be something we aren’t. We’re not going to stop fighting just because we’re together. That isn’t enough. We fight because we care. We shouldn’t fight all of the time, of course, but it’s okay to not agree, or to put each other off-balance. We just have to be us-I’m not as normal as I pretend to me, and you’re not as abnormal as you sometimes pretend to be. We can meet somewhere in the middle.”
It’s raw, and honest, and it makes Sam’s heart ache in her chest so painfully she can barely breathe.
“I don't know if I can do that,” she says softly, failing to force back all of her tears.
Freddie’s face falls and he looks like he’s ready to start crying. “I don’t want to be with you because you aren’t Carly. I want to be with you because you’re you. Because you make me better and worse, and you make me feel. You make me happy, and I want-I want to make you happy too,” his voice cracks at the end.
For a brief moment, Sam feels the world spin, and finally click into place, and for the first time in a while she lets herself believe.
Sam breathes in deeply, slowly. “Freddie, I-do you remember when I said when I’d figured out how I felt about you?”
“Yeah,” Freddie says with a nod.
“It was the first time you made me worry. I realized that somewhere along the line, I’d gotten attached to you, and not just because of Carly. Because even if you're a doofus, I care about you. I cared because it was you,” Sam closes her eyes tightly, thinking carefully. “It was because of you,” she breathes out, opening her eyes back up. “You and your camera equipment, and your excitement about nerdy things that no one cares about.”
“People care,” Freddie says lightly, faking offense.
“You care,” Sam says softly. “And I cared. I didn’t mean to. I just-it happened. I fought it for a long time, for a lot of reasons, but then I kissed you at school, and it just-it changed things.”
Freddie nods, and Sam sighs.
“I felt like I cared more than you did, even when we got together.”
“There were times I felt the same way,” Freddie says softly when Sam pauses. “Like you didn’t care to change, even a little. Like you couldn’t even try.”
Sam glares at him. “I tried, Freddie,” she says furiously. “It didn’t work, Freddie. We weren’t right for each other. Love isn’t enough.”
“It could be. And I was wrong. But this time we can make this work,” Freddie argues. “This time we can stop pretending that we need to be a traditional couple. We don’t have to fight tradition either. We can just be.”
"What does that even mean?" Sam asks almost angrily.
"It means that I need to tell you when something bothers me, and that I need to stop expecting you to change everything about yourself. That--that we can just hang out, like we've always done, but also be more. We don't have to be something we aren't. I just want to try."
“What if we can’t?”
“Then we try again,” Freddie says softly, taking both of Sam’s hands in his own, looking in her eyes, and saying it with complete confidence. “I’m done fighting us. I want to fight for us this time. Because I’m in love with you, and it’s ridiculously clichéd, and it feels like my heart is going to break out of my chest sometimes, and I don’t want to pretend that I don’t feel this way. “
Sam lets tears stream silently down her face, and she looks down at their hands before looking back up at Freddie.
“I’m in love with you,” Freddie says again, letting her hands go, and placing his own on either side of her head. “And if you were going to Italy, I might have followed you.”
“Might have?” Sam raises an eyebrow and smiles slightly.
Freddie smiles back. “I’m pretty sure my mom burned my passport after what happened in Japan.”
Sam laughs and Freddie kisses her, distracting her into kissing him back.
“I hate you,” Sam says finally when they pull apart to breathe, and Sam leans her forehead against Freddie’s and they just sit there.
Freddie smiles. “I hate you too,” and kisses her again, despite the cold, and the fact that his lips are chapped and burning, because there’s not a place in the world he’d rather be.
Even when Sam grabs his shirt and pulls him towards her almost painfully, there’s not a person he’d rather be with.
They eventually stop kissing long enough to curl back underneath the blanket Freddie brought outside, and Sam ends up curled against Freddie, falling asleep to the sounds of the city and Freddie’s heartbeat.
Freddie manages to stay awake a little longer, caressing Sam’s hair slightly, even though she might threaten to cut off his hand for doing it if she were awake.
Freddie simply holds Sam much in the way she holds his heart now and--though he doesn’t know it yet--always will.
Later, when the sun rises and his mother is ready to sound the alarm because he's missing from his bed, they wake up slowly and smile at each other before falling back asleep together to the sounds of the waking city below, and each other's heartbeats.