Thanks to TwilightWakerofTime for beta reading this!

"Tucker!" Sam screeched in his ear, filled with rage. "What the hell were you thinking? Rushing in like that? You were completely alone!" She grunted as she smashed her hand against the desk, and he could hear her mutter a curse that would definitely get his mouth washed out with soap if his mother heard him say it.

Tucker waited for a few seconds before responding, "Sam… it's just a game."

"We're gonna lose because of you! If you had waited ten seconds, I could have spawned in and helped!"

Tucker took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose. "You know what, let's be done playing for now. I think you're too angry to play right now."

"I'm not angry!" Sam shouted. At that moment, Tucker could hear something crash against the ground on the other side of the headset. It sounded like a mug. Tucker was willing to bet it was a mug.

Did he have a basis for that? No. But it sounded mug-like, and that's what he was gonna go with.

"Shit, fuck, damn it…" Sam cursed in quick succession.

"Sure you're not mad?" Tucker asked, leaning back in his chair as the results screen began to show. He had to fight the urge to scoff as the other team spammed 'gg ez' over and over.

"No! I'm not…" Sam began, her voice just as vehement as her curses, but she couldn't finish the sentence. There was a moment of silence before she exhaled into the mic and then said, "Not at you, at least."

Tucker nodded. He knew that. He knew that playing a competitive game with Sam was a bad idea right now, but she needed the outlet.

He reported one of the spammers after they started cursing out someone on his team and clicked away. The main menu came up, but he didn't close out. Not yet, at least. Maybe he could calm Sam down, and they could get back to playing.

"Danny should be playing with us. We need someone not completely brain dead on our team…"

Tucker hesitated and focused on her profile icon as he wondered if she included him in that list of people. Tucker tabbed over and increased Sam's volume now that she was no longer shouting. He decided that knowledge was sometimes a curse. "Yeah, having three good players is definitely better than two," he said neutrally.

There was a shuffling on the other side of the mic, the sound of fabric rustling along with a creaking of wood. He could easily picture her curling up in her massive chair. "Why would it have to be her?"

Tucker didn't answer. There was no safe path out of this conversation. He was tempted to queue them up instead of responding, but that probably wouldn't help things.

"Tucker… you're one of my best friends… you know that, right?" Sam began, hesitant.

He did not like where this was going.

"Yeah, I know, Sam, you're one of mine too," he responded. He chewed on his lip and waited to see where she was going with this.

"You're also Danny's… Can… can you tell me why he picked her… over me?"

Yeah, he didn't like where this went at all.

"Sam… listen, you are one of my best friends, but I'm not gonna go against the bro code."

"Tucker! Please! I just… I just need to know. If there's a chance… for us…" Tucker groaned and ran his hand down his face. Sam took that as a sign he was weakening, so she continued on. "I just want to know. Everyone calls us lovebirds… called us lovebirds, and even Lancer was trying to cheer me up today. I just… did I screw this up? Should I have asked him out? I thought… I just… it…"

"Sam," Tucker interrupted. He shouldn't have, but he didn't like seeing her floundering like this. She went dead quiet on her side. Damn it, he didn't want to do this. He didn't want to explain this. He… "Sam, look, I shouldn't say this. I really don't want to…" He sighed and exited the game. There wasn't gonna be any playing after this.

He shouldn't be doing this. Danny told him this in confidence, and Sam didn't deserve to be told over a fucking voice call of all things.

But there was no way he was man enough to say this in person.

"I'm sorry," he said simply as he warred inside himself.

"For what?"

"For telling you this…" Tucker leaned forward and exhaled slowly as he rested his head in his hands, elbows on either side of his keyboard. The lights on it glittered in neon colors as they waited for more inputs. "Danny… doesn't feel that way about you…" He hesitated again. He could leave it at that. But Sam wouldn't get the answer to the question she wanted, so he added one more word. "Anymore."

Sam sucked in a breath. "Anymore? He used to?"

Tucker nodded, though she couldn't see it. "Yeah, freshman year? He would have loved it. He thought about asking you out a couple of times, but he thought you weren't into him."

"Are you joking? What? Why?"

"That, I couldn't tell you. Everyone could see it…"

There was silence. The only sound Tucker could hear right now was the whine of his tinnitus ringing. (Too many shots fired from the ecto guns without hearing protection. It was definitely not the byproduct of listening to too much nightcore at the loudest volumes, nope.)

And then Sam asked the dooming question. "What happened?"

Tucker took a deep breath before sighing again. "The accident…" Tucker continued over Sam's attempt to respond. "He told me dying in the portal was the most painful thing that ever happened to him. Like… his sense of how much pain he's in is irrevocably messed up now. Like… one-time Skulker shot a missile at him while he was human. The missile sent shrapnel everywhere and got Danny, right? Well, he didn't realize it 'till like… a few days later, after everything had all healed up. Danny went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife and cut it out of his leg."

"What the fuck?"

"Yeah! Imagine how I felt walking in there and seeing that! It was awful! Still better than going to a hospital, though."

There was a moment of silence. Tucker looked back over at her profile icon. The ectoplasm green skull stared back at him, and part of him hoped that Sam was getting pulled away so he didn't have to continue this conversation.

More for Sam's sake than his.

His hopes were dashed when her icon lit up again. "What does that have to do with me? I…" She paused again, and when she started up again, she was half shouting, desperate. "Wait, is this about the accident? That's what it was! An accident!" Sam defended herself. "I didn't know what would happen!"

Tucker felt his jaw clench as she pleaded with the wrong person.

"I know, Sam, I know. And so does Danny… but … that was the first time…"

"First time?" Sam repeated, her confusion coming through clearly. He could match her voice to how her eyebrows raised when she was confused. "What do you mean the first time?"

Tucker shook his head. This was stupid. He really shouldn't be doing this. This wouldn't help anyone. "This is a bad idea… I… Sorry, let's just leave it at that."

"No, Tucker!" Sam shouted. He almost reached up and tore off his headphones due to how loud she was. Instead, his hands rested on them as she begged desperately, "Please, tell me! What happened? Why does… does he blame me?"

"No!" Tucker nixed that immediately. "He doesn't! Or… at least he tries not to! He's happy! Really! He loves the ghost powers, he loves being a hero! He's… he's glad that it's happened, but… he still remembers how much it hurt…"

"Then why?"

Tucker heaved out a breath and looked down at the floor near his desk. He really should clean this room, there were old empty bags of beef jerky everywhere, but a questioning sound from Sam through the headset made him refocus as much as he didn't want to. "Sam… you remember Paulina's birthday? When you had that fight with Danny? You made a wish, and Desiree granted it. You two never met, and Danny never got his ghost powers…"

"Y-yeah," Sam stuttered, hesitant. She probably had forgotten it, but now that he was bringing it up it was ringing a bell. "I had to dress up all girly in order for you two to even listen to me."

"Yeeeeah…" Tucker drew out, trying to think of how he should navigate this.

Sam seemed to realize where this was going. Even if she had forgotten just why she had made the wish, there was no way she didn't remember what had followed. How she convinced him to get back into the portal before turning it on. "He… he blames me for that? I… I didn't know what to do! I didn't have ghost powers! I couldn't fight Desiree! And… I knew he'd get them! I don't know if I would! I thought about it! You know… when you guys turned me away the first time! I thought about going in and turning the portal on myself…"

Tucker sucked in a breath despite himself. That would have killed her. It did kill Danny, but he came back. They didn't know if the same thing would happen to him or Sam.

She could have died and stayed dead.

"Is that what I should have done?" she whispered.

"No!" Tucker shouted. He straightened up and started waving his hands back and forth. "No, no, no. Definitely not!" He froze in place before slumping back into his seat. "It's just…"

There wasn't much left anymore. Just one thing.

"Sam…" he paused, he shouldn't say this, but everything else was laid out already. "Sam… you wished that you and I would remember everything… and Danny too."

Sam gasped. "So he…"

"He remembers dying… twice."

"I-I didn't…" Sam uttered. This didn't sound like her.

She sounded broken.

"I know, Sam… I know…"