Two
Acepilot

AN – Utterly useless plot bunny that came to me one sunny afternoon. Strikes me as a really good idea for an episode, but I decided to write a fanfiction to go with it. Hope someone out there finds it as good an idea as I did.

And the end of this fic is my revenge on all the snotty private school kids who decided that mypublic school Philosophy classwere unworthy ofseeing the Dalai Llama because we weren't wearing blazers, and wouldn't stop telling us so.

Gang age – 15 (Chuckie 16, Angelica/Suzie 17, Dil 14)

Disclaimer – the characters of Phil and Lil DeVille, and the remainder of the AGU gang, are property of KlaskyCsupo. The wonders of siblinghood belongs to everyone.

"Is not, Lil!"

"Is too, Phil!"

"Is not, Lillian!"

"Is too, Philip!"

"Knock it off!"

We both turn our heads to see an exasperated and desperate looking Tommy Pickles, who seems ready to throttle either one of us. "Can you two please just, if at all possible, not fight for fifteen minutes?"

"But it is!" Lil pleads.

"You can't even remember what the argument was about!" Kimi offers from the other side of the table.

"Can too," I defend. "It was about...uh..."

"Cars," Lil prompts.

I roll my eyes. "It was not, Lil."

"It was too, Phil."

"Was not, Lillian!"

"Was too, Phi-"

"Please!" Chuckie wails.

"I agree with Finster on this one," Angelica offers from the table she shares with Suzie. "The two of you have been fighting non-stop lately, and I think I speak for all of us when I say…we're sick of it!"

Tommy nods in affirmation. "You two used to be together all the time. Now, every time you're around each other, you're at your respective throats. Can't we have something like the old days?"

"We fought then too," I point out, in what I think is a relatively sensible manoeuvre.

"Yeah, but this is just..." Kimi shrugs. "Over the top?"

"Excessive, beyond reason – "

"Yeah, Thesaurus Boy, we got the point," I cut Chuckie off. "But what do you want us to do about it?"

For that, everyone seems to be at a loss.

Lil sighs. "Well, then…"

"You could try to be around each other more often," suggests a contemplative Suzie.

It's hard to tell which one of us rounds on her faster. "We could what?" I manage to vocalise.

"Well, the two of you are barely around each other any more. Maybe if you got used to each other again, you wouldn't fight nearly as much."

I'm tempted to scream at her, at great length, about the nonsense of that idea, but something holds me back. What bites, of course, is that she's right. I probably could count on one hand the number of hours every day that I see my sister. My twin sister. Tommy and Dil probably spend more time together. Actually, I know they do.

"Or they'd just fight even more than they do now," Tommy cuts into my inner ramblings. "I don't think it would work."

"Are you saying that we can't be civil around each other?" Lil asks, suddenly with a new venom in her voice.

I feel an odd tingly sensation in my stomach that makes me feel that things are going to go very badly for me from this point forth.

"Well…yeah," Tommy nods. "I mean, you two were really close, once, and you're still siblings and everything, but the two of you spending like 24 hours a day together? You'd go insane."

"I can be nice to Phil!" Lil almost shrieks. "I just don't always choose to."

"Prove it," Kimi challenges. "I'll bet you two five bucks you can't go a week – no, you can't go 48 hours together without getting into a fight."

"What do you mean by 'together'?" I ask, with the dread that I'd felt settling in my stomach starting to really throw a party in my intestines.

"Like…if you were Siamese twins," Kimi ventures. "Tied together at the wrist."

"Ew!" We simultaneously recoil. "That's gross! I'm not getting in the shower with her! She's my sister!"

Tommy rolls his eyes. "Well, you'd take it off when you had a shower or when to the toilet or something. But it would mean living in the same room again, and being in each others lives all the time. For two whole days. And I'll throw another five on the table."

"I'll go ten," Angelica offers. "It's the best odds I'm likely to get all year."

"So let me get this straight," Lil finally interjects. "We're being asked to put twenty –"

"Twenty-five," Suzie mutters.

"Thirty," Dil pipes up.

"Thirty-five," Chuckie adds.

"Thirty-five dollars on the line, to prove that we can walk around tied to each other at the wrist and not get into a fight for two days?"

Tommy, Angelica and Kimi exchange brief glances. "Yeah, that's right," Tommy confirms.

"In class? At night? All the time except when we're in the bathroom?"

"Uh-huh."

I hang my head and bang it lightly on the table.

8- *- * -8

"I didn't agree to this!" Phil yells. "I want it on full and complete record that this wasn't my idea. And that, if we lose, you're paying up!"

"Like hell. If we lose because you pick a fight, then you're putting the money forward."

"That's not fair! I never agreed to this stupid charade."

"Deal with it, Philip. Now, do you want the red scarf or the black one?"

Phil sighs. "The black one."

"Good." I discard the red one before grabbing his right hand and tying it swiftly to my left.

"Hey!" he objects. "Why do I have to drag your hand along with me every time I want to write something?"

"We'll switch," I suggest.

"Are you two really going to go through with this?" Mom asks from the doorway, looking over us with a critical eye.

I turn to face her. "Mom, they implied that we couldn't stop fighting for two days! They insulted our powers of self-control."

"So I can't voice my doubts with out being insulting?" she asks.

I glare at her.

"Alright, alright, I get the point," she assures us, bringing in the air mattress. "Now, you know that I've been enlisted by the collective to make sure that the two of you don't fight and hide it. So there'll be no fighting under this roof without the expectation of being dobbed in."

"We know, Mom," I declare, and am not entirely surprised to hear Phil's voice, in almost perfect time with mine, echoing me. "And we won't," I assure her.

"Good," she assured us. "See you guys in the morning."

She shuts the door on us, and as she walks away, I can hear her muttering, "Maybe we'll get some peace and quiet in this house for a change."

I raise an eyebrow at my brother. "We're not really that bad, are we?"

He smirks. "Want me to answer that honestly?"

I glare at him and stomp over to my bed, dragging him complaining along for the ride.

8- *- * -8

We're alone in the dark a long time before she speaks.

"Seriously though. Are we really that bad?"

I hear the change in her voice. "Yeah, we kind of are, Lil. I mean, most of the time when we're around each other, we're fighting. About one thing or another."

"It's just a sibling thing though, isn't it?" she asks, sounding hopeful but doubtful at the same time.

I sigh and roll over to face her in the dark. "I thought it was, too. But...maybe we do have a problem, Lil. Maybe we do fight too much."

"I don't mean to fight with you," she tells me. "It just...kind of happens."

I nod. "I know. The same thing happens to me."

"We didn't used to be like this, did we?"

I roll over. "I don't know." I take a deep breath. "Lil?"

But there's no answer. Either she's asleep or she's faking it.

8- *- * -8

We've only been tied together for one period of the school day and I'm already regretting it.

News of our bet has circulated quickly – quicker than I thought was possible. People have been trying to get us into accidents all day. The most memorable was when two guys in our science class engaged us in conversation and led us in different directions.

So we can't remember everything all the time.

I glare at the collaborators darkly, but they just laugh merrily. I have to resist the urge to run over and hit them...we'd probably just have another accident.

I look at my watch instead. "Come on, Phil, we're going to be late for class."

"No, we're not," he tells me, and I look over at him.

He seems to be looking for something by the lockers. No, not looking...more like...waiting.

Hmm.

"You're always late for class," I tell him. "Now come on, just because you don't mind being late - "

"No, I'm not always late, you're always early. And we're not going anywhere."

"Phil –"

But I don't get any further as he shoves me into an empty nearby classroom and shuts the door on the scarf, sticking me on the inside and him on the outside.

I take a deep breath to scream at him when I hear something…intriguing, on the other side.

"Hey, Phil."

"Hey Kimi."

"Where's Lil? Are you two cheating on our little bet?"

"Little! We stand to lose thirty-five bucks! Anyway, no, she's in the classroom there. She's…talking to someone."

"Cool. Well, I'll see you at lunch."

"Yeah, see you then."

I listen carefully as Kimi's footsteps fade off into the distance before opening the door.

Phil is standing in front of me, watching Kimi's retreating back. This close to him, I notice the beads of sweat on his forehead, the look of wonderment on his face, and the sheer happiness in his eyes.

"This is why you're late all the time?" I ask, staring at him with amazement. "Because you stop to talk to Kimi?"

I seem to break his trance – he looks down at the floor and glows red. "Yeah," he mutters. "Look, sorry if I'm making you late. Come on, let's go."

As he drags me along to class, I find myself amazed at the revelation that I've just witnessed. Not only have I just discovered that my brother is seriously after my best friend, but I've just discovered that I really don't know what's going on in his life…at all.

8- *- * -8

Something's bothering my sister as we take our seats in history. She's watching me intently and it's growing wearing very, very quickly.

I finally snap. "What!" I ask, spinning to face her.

"Nothing," she mutters quickly, looking away and pulling her books out of her bag.

"Right," I harrumph, matching her action with my own school supplies.

"Are you two fighting?" Tommy asks, taking a seat at the table across the row from us.

"No!" we both insist at the same time.

He raises his eyebrow at us but remains silent, except for a quick, "If you say so."

I glare at him and my sister quickly, but she isn't looking, so I don't think she really appreciates it.

I look down at the black scarf that binds my left wrist to her right, and I wonder what would have happened if we'd really been joined at birth.

Of course, fraternal twins can't be conjoined. It wouldn't work. And we probably would have been separated shortly thereafter, anyway, so it wouldn't be an issue. But it's something to think about, I guess. It sure beats this class.

8- *- * -8

"Phil?"

He looks up from lunch. "Yeah?"

"Why are we so different?"

He offers me a look of slight disbelief. "What?"

"Well…why are we so…different?"

He shrugs. "I dunno. You're the one who seemed to change."

That stings.

"I guess," he continues, without really missing a beat, "that it's because we're boy and girl or something. I mean, not many people have really close relationships with the opposite gender at our age. You're closer with Kimi than you are to me, and I'm closer with Chuckie and Tommy than I am to you. That's probably it."

For some reason, I find very little comfort in that argument, no matter how logical it may, on the face of it, seem.

8- *- * -8

I'm just closing my eyes when a voice penetrates the darkness.

"Phil?"

I snap them open again. "Yeah, what?"

There's reluctance in her voice. "How long have you had a crush on Kimi?"

The answer 'It's none of your business,' leaps to the forefront of my mind.

But then I realise that that's…wrong, somehow. Because this isn't just anyone asking. This is Lil. If I can't trust her, who can I trust?

"A while now," I confess. "Maybe a year or so."

I can feel a jerk from the scarf we're connected by. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I stare at the ceiling in the dark. "I don't know, really. I guess…well, I guess we didn't really talk all that much about that kind of stuff. Or about any kind of stuff."

"Yeah, I guess we didn't," she agrees.

And I could swear I can hear regret in her voice.

"What about you?" I ask.

"Do I have a crush on Kimi?"

I chuckle. "No, doofus."

"Yeah, I know what you meant. I dunno…I guess I'm kind of interested in Tommy –"

"You're what!" I explode, causing Mom to bang on the wall.

"Keep it down, will you, he lives next door, you know. The way you yell he'll probably hear."

"Sorry," I apologise. "Just…Tommy?"

"Kimi?" she counters.

"Touché," I concede. "Just…wow. I never would have picked it."

"I play my cards close to the chest," she says.

"That sounds a bit pretentious," I tell her.

She sighs. "Even if we didn't tell each other…does it seem somehow depressing to you that we weren't even able to pick up on these feelings our twin was having?"

I nod in the darkness. "A bit."

"I think we should start fixing that," she declares.

And I find myself compelled to agree.

"Phil? Are you still awake?"

"Yeah," I tell her.

And as we talk long into the night, I realise that I'd never known how much I'd missed this.

8- *- * -8

As we stalk the corridors of school, we're a bit more in command of our abilities. At least we haven't been walking into things today.

Actually, this has proved to be all sorts of fun. I feel…I dunno, more free or something, tied to Phil like this. We've been haranguing people. It's great fun. We insult people, we're generally irritating. I feel…liberated, from the expectation of being Lil DeVille, a girl trying to be popular. Now, for the moment, I'm Lil DeVille, Phil DeVille's twin sister, and I'd forgotten how much fun my twin could be.

When I see Kimi coming toward us, I nudge him in the ribs. "Go on, talk to her."

"Uh, no," he tells me, amusement lacing his voice. "I'd just as soon not make a fool of myself."

"You won't make a fool of yourself," I assure him. "You're…well, it pains me to say it, being your sister at all, but you're not a moron or anything…and Kimi knows all your worst points and she still hangs out with you…" I take a deep breath. "And I look pretty good."

He offers me a quizzical glance at that last comment before something very evidently clicks. "Oh. Thanks, I think."

I watch him watching Kimi, and I smile.

Just as she opens her mouth to say something to the two of us, I cut her off quickly. "Gee, I have to go to the bathroom, so…" I quickly work the knot on the scarf loose and throw a grin at Phil. "See you in class, little bro," I offer, and stroll away.

Feeling oddly elated.

8- *- * -8

I sit down next to her and she holds out her right wrist. While I'm tying us back together, I mutter, "Little bro? Little bro?"

"Can't face facts, can you?"

"Oh, shove it," I mutter.

"So, how did it go?" she asks, excitedly.

I raise an eyebrow at her. "What do I look like to you, a girl?"

"Do you really want me to answer that question?" she asks, grinning mischievously.

"No, probably not," I concede.

"So…" she makes gestures with her hands, clearly expecting me to elaborate.

"Yeah, it went alright," I cave.

"Alright!"

"Very alright. Now stop squealing like a little girl, you're embarrassing me."

8- *- * -8

"…eight, nine…ten. There," Angelica sounds decidedly unhappy with the result. "Enjoy."

"I only count thirty," Phil announces from our side of the table. "Who still owes?"

Kimi stalks forward, a mock-irritated but ultimately amused look on her face. "I still say you cheated."

We raise our eyebrows simultaneously and ask, in stereo, "Cheat? Us?"

Kimi laughs at that and pulls a five dollar note out of her pocket. She goes to put it on the pile, but instead runs the taut edge over Phil's nose and down the side of his face, causing him to flush bright red.

"Enjoy," she whispers so low that only Phil and I can hear, and then skips off grinning extremely deliriously for someone who just lost a bet.

We watch her go, and I can see Phil cant his head to the side out of the corner of my eye. "Mind if I borrow five bucks?"

I grin and untie him from me for the last time. "Go right ahead."

He plucks the five dollar note from the top of the pile, clasps my shoulder with his hand, and calls out, "Kimi, wait up! I'll buy you a drink!"

When I meet him outside the Java Lava that evening, he's still grinning like a maniac. "I hope you didn't look like that all afternoon," I tell him, "you probably would have scared the poor girl off."

"No," he assures me, falling into step as we walk away from the Lava, into town. "This is just me being happy."

"Good."

"You wanna go do something? We've still got, like, thirty bucks."

"Sure. Sounds good," I tell him. "What did you have in mind?"

"I have no idea," he admits, shrugging. "Why don't we try and hook you up with Tommy?"

"I don't need any help for that, thank you," I assure him.

"Oh, alright…I know, let's go harass the snotty private school people at the mall and throw curly fries at them!"

I shake my head slowly at him. "You really are one of a kind, aren't you?"

"No, not really," he says, throwing an arm around my shoulder as we walk on.

No, I guess not, after all.

"You know that I don't want to move back into the one room again and stuff, don't you?" I make sure.

"Yeah, I know. We'd drive each other nuts."

"Good," I announce. "Now come on. Curly fries and stuck-up snobs await."

Phil just laughs, and we stroll into the lights of the city at night.

8- *- * -8

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