TURNING TABLES

Disclaimer: Still all Butch Hartman.

Rating: T for occasional language

Warnings and pairings: Major spoilers for Double Cross My Heart. DxS, SxG. But mostly DxS.

This is a companion fic to the chapters of His & Hers also entitled "Turning Tables." Once again, Tucker's perspective is really needed here.

Acknowledgments: The idea for the theory Tucker develops about Gregor comes from a discussion on the DannyPhantom LiveJournal community. It was a theory originally posed by Shinyhappygoth, and the idea fit so perfectly with everything that Gregor managed to pull off, that it stuck in my head and pretty much has been part of my personal fanon ever since.

And, as always, my two patient and very accommodating beta testers, Lunnaei and DragonDancer5150.

It's funny how the tables can turn on you. One second, you're ready to strangle both your best friends because she's jealous—again—that he's drooling—again—over the girl who dumped him months ago, and you're pretty sick of the whole stagnant routine. Then, a second later, he's the one who's totally jealous because now she's drooling over the new guy with the white hair and the Hungarian accent, and suddenly the routine isn't so routine anymore, and you just get to sit back and watch the fireworks.

Oh, and were there ever fireworks. From both of them. I wasn't sure which was more entertaining: getting to see Danny get a taste of what he'd put Sam through during the whole Valerie thing, or getting to see how Sam acted around a guy she liked who wasn't Danny. He was a Hungarian foreign exchange student named Gregor, and Sam was pretty much smitten from the moment Lancer introduced him to us. She actually giggled at one of his jokes—I don't think I've ever heard Sam giggle before.

And when she introduced herself, she started rambling like a 'tween meeting one of the Jonas Brothers. "Sam Manson. It's short for Samantha, but my friends call me Sam. You can call me Sam, too. Why am I still talking? I'm such a spaz!"

Gregor found it charming. Danny looked like he was gonna hurl in his soda cup.

Oh, yeah. This was gonna be good.

A ghost and the Guys in White cut short the fun, but Danny said he could take care of them on his own, so I joined Sam and Gregor as she showed him around. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He had lots of stories about Hungary, and even showed me how Euro-goths wore berets like mine, only backwards. Kinda hard to see that way, but it was nice to be on the cutting edge of something besides the latest PDA software for once.

School the next day was even better. Sam was glowing, and Danny was seething resentment. I tried convincing him Gregor wasn't a bad guy, hoping he'd realize what his real issue was. Maybe this would be the thing that finally got him to pull his head out of his butt and realize that he was totally in love with her.

Or, he could just pretend his instant dislike of Gregor had nothing whatsoever to do with her instant attraction to him. "Think about it. Gregor shows up, so do the Guys in White. He's got the whole white hair, white clothes thing... so do the Guys in White. And what's with the phony accent? And that 'Pfft!' thing?"

I blinked at him. "So, you're saying Gregor's a spy?"

"And... I'm saying that maybe I should keep an invisible eye on him and Sam."

This had "bad idea" written all over it. Having already been there done that with Sam, and having seen how it turned her into a crazy person, I didn't want to watch Danny go down that road. But, of course, he wouldn't listen, insisting it was "for her own good."

How ironic was it that I was the one who resembled the painting of an ancient pharaoh, when Danny Fenton was clearly the King of Denial? Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do but wait to see how badly this would blow up in Danny's face.

Pretty badly, as it turned out. The next day at school, he was all over her at lunch. "So, uh... do anything... fun last night?"

She shrugged, completely nonchalant. "I don't know. Just hung out."

"With Gregor?"

Stifling a groan, I leaned toward him with one last warning. "I wouldn't do that."

But Sam was already irritated. "Why is that any of your business?"

Instead of answering, he got up from his seat and went over to her, getting in her face. What was he thinking? Predictably, she backed away from him, even more annoyed. "What are you doing?"

Heading back toward his own seat, he affected an air of apathy. "I don't know. Just, uh, checking for pimples, dimples..." He gave her a meaningful look. "Spaghetti sauce."

"Spaghetti—?" She stopped before she got anything else out, then gasped. "Were you spying on me?"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes at him. It was bad enough to spy on her, but to completely give it away? "I told you it was a bad idea to spy on her."

He glared at me, as if it were my fault. "Niiiice."

Sam looked ready to use one of his dad's nastier inventions against him. "You used your ghost powers to spy on me?" Rising to her feet, she balled her hands into fists. "You've really crossed the line!"

"Not you! I was spying on Gregor! He's so obviously working with the Guys in White!" Danny jumped to his feet, just as mad as she was. What exactly had happened last night that had him so irate?

"Oh, so that's it! The only way a boy could like me is if it was part of a plot to get you? Ha! Ego, much?"

I was beginning to think I was going to have to intervene to keep them from killing each other, but Gregor showed up and took care of it. "Hey, Sam, you want to—?"

"Whatever it is, yes!" And she about tore his arm off dragging him away.

Wincing, I looked up at Danny, who was still standing. "I think I can guess the answer, but how'd it go last night?"

He sat down again with a grunt. "Well, I got hit in the face with a rock, Gregor kissed Sam, and the Guys in White attacked again, so there's gotta be a connection between them and Gregor!"

Whoa. Did he just say what I thought he said? "Wait. Hold up. Gregor kissed Sam?" This was unexpected. I hadn't counted on them actually getting to first base so quickly—Sam never struck me as a kiss-on-the-first-date kind of girl. More like a try-anything-and-I'll-knock-you-into-next-week kind of girl. It left a thousand more questions swirling in my mind. Did she actually kiss him back? Was it like a peck good-night, or an actual make-out session?

If the look on Danny's face was any indication, it was more than a peck, with no protest from Sam. He was practically grinding his teeth down to the roots "Yeah, but apparently that's none of my business."

Well, duh. It was none of his business, and if he wanted to make it his business, he was gonna have to man up and admit how he felt about her. But he'd sooner chew off his arm, or tell his parents he was a ghost, than admit that, and if I tried to call him on it, he'd only deny it all the more vehemently. So I just watched as he took a moment to throttle his milk carton like it was Gregor's neck, then toss it over his shoulder before letting the anger drain away, leaving him looking so hang-dog and pitiful that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

That's when a plan began to form in my mind. While the jealousy thing was good for Danny, Sam locking lips with Gregor threw a serious monkey wrench into the works. The last thing I wanted for either of them was for Danny to finally get a clue only after Sam was already involved with someone else. Even someone as cool as Gregor. Hell, especially someone as cool as Gregor. Which meant it was time for me to do a little monkey-wrenching of my own.

Leaning toward Danny, I gave him a conspiratorial smile. "Tell you what. Since you get attacked every time you get close to Gregor, I'm gonna tag along with Gregor and Sam." I put my arm around his shoulders in brotherly camaraderie. "I'll be your mole."

This seemed to lift his spirits. "Really? To protect Sam?"

"That, and Gregor rocks!" I stood up, then added with significance: "Plus, you're my best friend, and I've gotta watch your back, too, right?"

Lucky for me, Gregor was a friendly, chatty kind of guy, and he was more than happy to fill me in on his and Sam's plans for the evening. When I saw Sam after school, I put my plan into action. "Hey, Sam! Gregor mentioned you guys were going to the Skulk and Lurk tonight. Mind if I tag along?"

She gave me a suspicious look. "Since when do you like going to the Skulk and Lurk?"

"I like the Skulk and Lurk. They have great graphic novels." That was true enough, though I never went there without Sam. I didn't exactly blend with Skulk and Lurk regulars. "And Gregor's really cool," I added. Also true. "So, can I come along?" Then, counting on the fact that Sam would rather eat a Double Nasty with bacon than admit to me that she had a crush on someone, I delivered the killing shot. "Or is this, like, a date or something?"

She seemed to weigh her options a moment before relenting and allowing me to tag along.

Operation No More Liplocks was a go.

By the end of the weekend, I almost felt bad for working so hard to keep Sam and Gregor apart. For one thing, he really was an awesome dude. No matter how many times I jumped between them whenever he tried to get close to her, he kept laughing at my jokes, or switching my beret around Euro-goth style, or throwing his arm around my shoulders like we'd been best buds forever.

It really was nice to see Sam getting attention from someone she liked, too. And she did like him, that much I knew. I think she was conflicted about that, because of how she felt about Danny, but that was all the more reason for her to get a chance at something new. A couple of times, I nearly bagged my plan to try and keep some distance between her and Gregor—if I were gonna take anyone's side in the Danny/Sam non-relationship, it should be hers. After all, I'd never done anything to get between him and Valerie when he was waving that in Sam's face, although that was mostly because the whole Valerie-hating-Danny-Phantom thing was gonna make it implode all on its own anyway. And seeing as he hadn't given Sam any reason to think he liked her as more than a friend, she had every right to go out with anyone she pleased. Let's face it—she never would've even looked at Gregor or anyone else twice if he'd have just asked her out his own damn self.

The one thing that kept me staying the course, however, was the way she wouldn't let go of her anger over the whole spying thing. Whenever I'd start feeling bad and consider leaving her and Gregor alone, she'd make some random accusation into the sky, in case he might still be there, or throw out a snide reference about trust or boundaries. She didn't exactly have the high ground on that issue, and it wasn't right for her to make him miserable over it when she'd done the exact same thing to him. When Monday rolled around, she was still refusing to acknowledge Danny's presence, as if he'd committed some unspeakable crime. She even went so far as to sit on the opposite end of the cafeteria from him during lunch, forcing me to choose between them.

It was a tough choice. Danny looked... well, like he'd lost his best friend. I knew he could use some major cheering up. But he'd have even more to be bummed about if Sam and Gregor actually hooked up, so I sat with her instead and, when Gregor asked Sam if she wanted to check out the Amity Park Observatory with him that night, I made a point of inviting myself along.

A fact that did not go unnoticed by Sam. After lunch, she rounded on me. "What do you think you're doing? Did Danny put you up to this?"

I put on my best innocent face. "Put me up to what?"

"Hanging around me and Gregor all weekend, putting yourself between us whenever you could and, now, inviting yourself to the observatory with us tonight. Is this some sort of sick control thing with him? He got caught spying on us, so he got you to do it for him? I swear, if he put you up to this, he's gonna be all ghost by the time I get through with him..."

"Sam, hold up." I held up my hands in effort to put the brakes on her tirade. "It was my idea to hang out with you guys, okay?"

This didn't ease her suspicions. "Why? Because you think he's a spy, too? That he couldn't possibly be spending time with me just because he likes me?"

"No, I don't think he's a spy. I just think he's fun to hang with. And he definitely likes you." There was no question about that and, however much I didn't want them to get together, she deserved that much. But she didn't deserve to get a bye on the way she was treating Danny, and I wasn't about to give her one. "So, do you think maybe you can cut Danny a little bit of slack?"

She scowled at me. "Why should I? He spied on me, Tucker. He used his ghost powers to spy on me and Gregor that first night we went out."

"As opposed to, say, using a pair of high-powered binoculars?"

Her face got even darker. "That was totally different!"

"How is it different?"

It wasn't, and she knew it. After hemming and hawing a bit, she sputtered out a lame, "It just is."

I arched my eyebrow at her. "Mm hm."

Finally, she relented. "All right, I get it. People in glass houses, yadda yadda ya. But he shouldn't have done it, and he deserves to suffer a little for it, don't you think?"

"He's suffering a lot for it, Sam."

This gave her pause. "What's that supposed to mean?"

It means he's in love with you, and it's killing him to see you with someone else! What do you think it means? But the only thing being that blunt with Sam would accomplish would be to get her to dig in her heels even further. Or to buy myself a trip to the nurse's office.

Probably both.

So I tempered it a bit. "You haven't talked to him for three days. How would you have felt if, when Danny and Valerie were going out, you not only had to see him with someone else, but he'd stopped speaking to you, too?"

"It's different." But there was uncertainty in her voice now.

I gave her a hard look. "It's only different because you didn't get caught."

I had her, and she knew it. Not that she'd admit it right away. She didn't exactly rush over to Danny to make up with him after our little chat. But when we were leaving school—her holding hands with Gregor—I saw her looking over her shoulder with so much guilt in her eyes, I would've thought she'd just clubbed a baby seal. When I followed her gaze, I saw Danny over by the front of the school, looking about as pathetic as, well, a clubbed baby seal.

I felt awful. Maybe focusing all my energy on keeping Sam and Gregor apart had been a mistake. Maybe what Danny really needed was his best friend.

Actually, what he needed was both his best friends. I think Sam knew it, too, because she still looked miserable when we met up at the observatory that night. I couldn't talk to her about it, though, because Gregor was velcroed to her side. I tried to distract him by getting him to check out the view in one of the telescopes, but the only view he was interested in was Sam. Pulling her aside, he called out to me. "I wish to have a word with Sam. In private."

Pretending to look through the telescope, I watched them out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't really tell what was going on, but Sam seemed to go from miserable to happy to agitated all within the space of a few seconds, and I figured maybe I should intervene before she either got too upset, or worse, too happy. Popping up beside Gregor, I motioned with my thumb back toward the telescope. "You two really have to see—"

Sam cut me off, speaking to Gregor as if I weren't there. "No, I don't agree. Tucker may be annoying, but he's one of my best friends." Crossing her arms, she gave him The Look. "He's part of the package."

Frowning, I turned from her to Gregor, trying to figure out what had just happened. Were they actually arguing about me? "Uh... am I interrupting something?" I waved my hand in Gregor's face, trying to get a reaction. "Gregor, dude? Hello!"

That was when he exploded. "Dude! Do you ever stop talking?"

I blinked. He'd said that in perfect, middle-American Guy Speak. No Hungarian accent, no reaching for the right words, no European humor. And he continued in much the same manner, shouting at me and waving his hands in irritation. "Do you even know how obnoxious you are, with your stupid jokes, and your lame-o technology? Idiot!"

That was when he remembered Sam. Faltering under her whithering glare, he tried to change tracks. "Uh, I mean..." He put his arm around my shoulders, dragging me toward him as I attempted to free myself from his grasp. "Is nothing," he tried, the accent back. "Uh..." One look at Sam and he knew it was a lost cause. "Oh, darn it."

She pounced on him. "Wait a minute. You were faking it? The accent, and liking Tucker, just to get on my good side?"

"Uh, I'm a guy. Hello! I mean, I really like you, but..." He indicated me with a wave of his hands. "Come on."

I gave Sam a look of disbelief, furious. Not at what he said about me—after a weekend of being in his face whenever he tried to get close to her, I'd been expecting him to blow up at me long before this. But to lie to her? To use a phony accent, to make up a bunch of stuff just to hit on her? For that, I wanted to strangle him.

I thought Sam might beat me to it, though. I don't think I'd ever seen her this mad, and that was saying something. Gregor, too, realized his number was up, and he sighed. "We're... through, aren't we?"

I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. "Oh, beyond."

And he had the gall to shrug, like it didn't matter. Like she didn't matter. "Oh, well." And when two girls from school walked by, he turned his attention to them. "Cheerleaders! Better adjust my pitch." Running after them, he shouted out, "Hey babes! You like football?"

In that moment, I would've given anything for Danny to have been spying on us. Because if I wanted to kill that lying dirtbag for what he'd done to Sam, Danny would want to annihilate him. And I could think of a million ways ghost powers would have come in really handy toward that end. I, on the other hand, could only offer Sam one thing. "Can I hit him for you?"

A shrieking sound behind us answered for her and, when we turned, we found ourselves directly in the line of fire of... I don't know what it was, but it was not good. We dove for cover in opposite directions, and the thing shot between us, headed toward Gregor and the two cheerleaders. They ducked for cover as well, and the thing blasted apart the deck railing behind them. As Sam and I scrambled to our feet, she answered my offer. "Thanks, but I think that's covered."

Another roar behind us had us both flinching, anticipating another missile. This time, however, it was a jet—probably where the missile had come from. It hovered over us like a Harrier, so close that I could actually see the two people inside.

The Guys in White.

Holy crud, Danny was right.

Except... not exactly. Because they were getting ready to fire again—at Gregor.

Sam figured it out, too. "Gregor! Although I think you're the world's biggest jerk, run!"

Gregor still hadn't gotten up after the last blast, but Sam got his attention, and he managed to dive out of the way of whatever they were shooting at him—some sort of blue ray. What the heck? Why on Earth would the Guys in White go after Gregor? They were ghost hunters, not human hunters.

Sam figured it out first. "I think they think he's Danny Phantom!"

It clicked into place. The white hair, the black clothes, the way they'd shown up at the Nasty Burger and school and the mall. It was almost like they were looking for a human. Only, they'd picked the wrong human.

A human without ghost powers.

"Oh, man. He's toast! At least Danny can defend himself."

Sam was wide-eyed. "We've gotta do something!"

"But what?"

Gregor, who'd been running around the deck, screaming, took another dive and slid past us toward the door to the observatory and the relative safety of the big overhang above it. Although, it didn't turn out to be so safe after all—the jet fired two more missiles, which detonated on either side of a massive globe that was hanging above the door. The supports cracked, and the thing was clearly going to crush... "Gregor."

Without thinking, I sprinted for the door. Hurling myself at Gregor, I knocked him away from the door. He slid to a stop a few yards away, but my momentum flipped me over his head and onto my back near the deck railing.

As I sat up and tried to get my bearings under my beret, which had flipped around backwards Euro-goth-style in my fall, I saw Gregor gaping at me. "Dude! You saved my life!"

I turned my hat around the right way. "Yeah, but I despise you now."

It would've been a sweet moment, if not for the Guys in White, still firing at us from their jet. We both clambered to our feet and ran, dodging more of those blue rays, when all of a sudden, the firing stopped. Risking a glance over my shoulder, I saw the jet crash into the mountain behind the observatory.

I turned to Sam, mouthing Danny. She nodded in agreement—he'd obviously figured out what was going on and taken out the Guys in White.

Gregor, watching along with us, stared at where the jet had crashed. "This town is too crazy for me! I'm going back to Michigan!"

I raised my eyebrows. "Don't you mean Hungary, Gregor?"

"My name is Elliot!" he called back, then disappeared. And that, thankfully, was the last we saw of him.

But that night—after the police, and the firefighters, and the questions, and the phone calls to our parents—I couldn't stop thinking about our pal "Gregor." How the heck did a high school student from Michigan (if that was where he was really from) manage to convince not only a couple of fellow students, but the entire school administration that he was a Hungarian foreign exchange student? Didn't you need papers for that? ID? A passport and visa? How could he pull off something like that?

And why Sam? Yeah, she's kind of a hottie, and a hell of a lot of fun to hang with, but even before he walked in the door of the Nasty Burger, he already knew what to say and even how to look to get her attention. Who would go to that trouble, concocting such an elaborate ruse? Not even I'd go that far just to pick up a girl.

And then, a thought whispered to me: A girl with money. A lot of money.

I looked up at my ceiling, my lips pressed together into a thin line. I don't know who you really are, Elliot from Michigan. But tomorrow, I'm gonna do me some research. And, depending on what I find, I'm gonna be having a chat with a certain ghost boy. 'Cause nobody messes with our Sam.

I saw Sam at school the next morning before I saw Danny, but it was just as well. I hadn't been able to do any research on Gregor/Elliot/whatever yet, and I didn't want to get Danny riled up unless there was something to get riled up about. And I sure as hell wasn't gonna share my suspicions with Sam. She was upset enough about crushing on a phony without thinking he had an even darker motive for lying to her. Besides, whatever I found out about Elliot from Michigan and his motives, I was still convinced he'd actually liked her. If not at first, then by the end. Yeah, he was a good liar—had both me and Sam fooled, not to mention Lancer and the rest of the school—but I still could tell a crush when I saw one, and "Gregor" had definitely been totally into Sam.

So, pushing aside my suspicions, I fell into step beside Sam in front of the school and slipped my arm around her shoulders. "How're you doing?"

"Other than feeling like the biggest idiot in the world, you mean?"

I winced in sympathy. "Hey, I was right there with you. He fooled us all."

She looked down, her expression turning even bleaker. "Not Danny."

Speaking of guys totally into Sam... "Pfft." I waved that away in an imitation of "Gregor's" shtick. "Danny's just as big an idiot as the rest of us. He just wanted to believe there was something wrong with Gregor."

"Right. Because he's overprotective and doesn't think I'm smart enough to pick my own dates. And guess what? He was right."

I made a derisive sound at the back of my throat. "Please. That is so not what his problem was."

"Okay, so what was his problem?"

I gave her a very definitive duh look, but before I could actually point out the obvious, Danny showed up, looking chagrined. "I am so sorry about last night. I can't believe those morons actually shot up the observatory looking for me."

Sam nodded. "Then it was you that took them out? We kinda figured, but..."

Then, Danny told us that the Guys in White had shown up at his house yesterday with my old PDA, the one Skulker had stolen and wired into his suit. That's why they'd been hanging so close and looking at humans—they'd hacked Skulker's suit. Danny rounded off his tale with another apology.

"Not your fault, dude," I told him.

Sam looked embarrassed. "Yeah, it's not your fault. And you did stop them before they could hurt anyone."

"Thankfully. Gregor's okay, too, then?" Danny looked around. "Where is he, anyway? I didn't see him at the observatory last night."

Sam's face turned to ice. "He's fine. Ran off when the shooting started."

"Good riddance," I added, matching her disgusted tone.

Danny looked between the two of us in confusion. "What's going on? Did I miss something? I thought you guys loved Gregor."

Sam grimaced. "Apparently, that's not his name."

"What?"

"He lied." I shook my head. "He's not from Hungary, he's from Michigan. And his name is really Elliot. The accent, the sucking up to me—it was all to impress Sam. So I guess you were right about him not being on the up and up, even if he wasn't a spy for the Guys in White." And whatever he was, I was gonna find out.

Danny sighed. "No, I wasn't. I was wrong." He turned to Sam. "And you were right. It wasn't any of my business in the first place. So, I'm sorry. I never should have betrayed your trust by spying on you and... your boyfriend." He spit the word out of his mouth like it was one of Sam's tofu soy melts.

Sam was obviously none too happy with the concept herself. "Ugh. He's not my boyfriend. I dumped him as soon as I figured out that you were right about him being a phony." She paused, the bleakness returning to her face. "Apparently, that is the only way a boy could like me."

No way I was gonna let her feel bad about herself because of that slimeball. "That's not true!"

"That's totally not true," Danny agreed. "There are a million reasons a boy could like you. I mean, you're smart, you're fun, you're cool, you're prett—" He stopped short, seeming to realize where he was going, and I glanced at Sam to see if she caught it. Judging by her blush, she did, and I nearly cheered while Danny started stumbling all over himself, just like Sam had when she'd first met Gregor. "Why am I still talking? I am such a spaz. Still friends?"

"The best," Sam replied in a pretty good imitation of Gregor's fake accent, linking arms with him. And that was that. Fences were mended, and everything was back to the way it was before—both of them pretending they weren't completely in love with each other, and me wanting to knock their heads together until they got a clue.

But... a funny thing happened later that day. The three of us were eating lunch outside when Valerie walked by. She waved at Danny, and he waved back, but before she was even out of sight, he was back to staring at Sam while working very hard to pretend he wasn't staring at Sam. So maybe seeing her with someone else had made a difference after all. It certainly got him over Valerie pretty quick.

It's funny how the tables can turn on you.