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Alan’s been watching them for a while now and he’s sure it’s probably something he’s found fascinating all his life, but he hasn’t seen them interact with each other in years.
Gordon and Bonnie move around each other effortlessly, she’s supposed to be helping him make dinner except she’s a little limited in her range of movement with her arm strapped up; so, she’s just been passing him things instead. But the thing that’s been fascinating Alan isn’t how his two immediately older siblings work so easily in tandem, it’s the fact that they’re not even talking to each other.
Gordon isn’t asking for things and Bonnie isn’t asking what he wants, she’s passing him the right stuff just when he needs it, and to Alan it’s a baffling sight to behold. It must read through on his face too because when Gordon finally catches his eye, he looks like he might drop the bowl of potatoes he’s holding, he starts laughing so hard.
“You doing okay there, Sprout?” He asks.
Bonnie turns quickly at the question and suddenly Alan finds himself under the scrutiny of two identical pairs of amber-brown eyes.
“Yeah, fine.” He mumbled.
“Really, ‘cause you had your curious, question face on.”
“I don’t have a…”
“You do,” Gordon cut in before he could finish. “Kind of like this.” Gordon pulled a ridiculous and over exaggerated face, with his tongue stuck out and his brow furrowed.
“Shut up.”
Alan resisted the urge to throw something at his brother, but Bonnie beat him to it, whacking Gordon half-heartedly around the head with a tea towel.
“Leave him alone.”
“You can’t tell me you haven’t been able to feel the kid staring at us for the past thirty minutes? If you have a question Allie just ask it. All family here, remember?”
Gordon put down his dish of potatoes and before he could even look around Bonnie passed him the potato masher.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?” Bonnie asked, returning to add some salt and pepper to the potatoes, Gordon making room for her automatically.
“That. You guys don’t even talk to each other, yet you’ve never passed Gordon the wrong thing and he’s not had to ask for anything, you just know.”
“Oh.” Bonnie sounded unbothered. “Are we doing it again?”
“Doing what again?”
“That’s what’s got you all confused? It’s a twin thing Allie. That’s all.” Gordon said with an air of nonchalance.
“What?”
“There’s a theory - -” Bonnie started to explain as she added a splash of milk and some butter to the bowl, but Gordon cut her off.
“It’s not exactly a theory though is it?”
“There has been research but no conclusive proof,” She wagged her spoon at him. “As I was saying: there is a theory that twins share some kind of connection that isn’t seen between other siblings that don’t come from a multiple birth, and Gordon has taken this to heart, to be an absolute truth. I can’t deny that there is some kind of weird connection here,” She waved a hand between her and Gordon. “That I don’t feel with the rest of you,”
Same,” Gordon added unhelpfully.
“And we do things like this,” She held up the butter and the spoon, and gestured to the bowl. “All the time when we spend time together. It’s just an easy thing that I’m not even going to pretend to understand at this point, it’s something I don’t even notice any more.”
Alan nodded slowly.
*
After Bonnie’s explanation Alan had grabbed his tablet to do some research while he continued to watch them make dinner. Scott and Kayo were out on a simple mountain climber rescue, and Virgil had taken Grandma shopping, so Alan didn’t have much else in the way of entertainment.
“Can you guys feel each other’s pain?” He asked, scrolling through the page he was currently on.
Bonnie shook her head.
“With the state she’s gotten herself into I think you’d all know by now if that was a thing.”
Bonnie whacked Gordon with the towel again. “Ow.” She said before he could squawk in protest.
Gordon grinned instead.
“Oh, yeah…” Alan stopped scrolling again. “What about reading each other’s minds?”
Bonnie and Gordon looked at each other for a second too long for Alan’s liking, before bursting out laughing.
“No Squirt, we can’t. Would have saved me a call last week though.”
Alan huffed as he tried to find another question to ask.
“It says here that there’s all sorts of tests you can get done as kids to see if the ‘twin bond’ is a thing. Did Mom and Dad ever get you tested?”
“Alan.”
He looked up as Bonnie put a hand on his tablet and pulled it away from his face.
“There aren’t any strange quirks to this that we’ve noticed yet. Most of the research is conducted on identical twins anyway, which Gordon and I are not.”
“So you’re saying there’s no weird stuff going on? Really, when I’ve just watched you guys prepare and start to cook a meal together without saying a single word to each other about what you’re doing or what you need?” Alan snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“What weird stuff are we talking about?” Virgil asked as he and Grandma joined them in the kitchen.
“Twin things.”
“Ah, the mysterious twin bond thing that you guys have got going on, where you say you can’t read each other’s minds but I’m pretty sure you can. Especially with some of the stuff you did when we were kids.”
Gordon and Bonnie both rolled their eyes.
“I for one definitely believe in the twin bond after watching the two of you grow up. So different from Scott, John, and Virgil.”
“A contributing factor to that was probably the fact that I’m a girl.” Bonnie quipped, earning a stern look from their Grandmother. “Sorry,”
“The not talking to anyone thing that you both did was a personal favourite of mine though.” Grandma said, smiling as she sat next to Alan.
“What not talking thing?”
Alan put his tablet down and waited for the story, but it was Virgil who spoke instead of Grandma.
“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t know because it was before you were born, I only kind of remember it. These two didn’t talk to anyone but each other apart from the occasional ‘Mama’ or ‘Dada’ until they were two. Mom and Dad thought there was something wrong with them, took them to loads of doctors and everything. Wasn’t until John was walking past their nursery and heard them that anyone figured it out.”
“Your parents were absolutely beside themselves with worry over it all. So much so that when it all came out what had been happening, I thought your Grandpa was going to keel over then and there from laughing so hard.” Grandma smiled. “Pair of little partners in crime right from the off.”