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It takes James far too long, in his opinion, to learn not to reach for things with his missing right hand. It had been a particular nuisance at times, that right hand. The nails too ragged from chewing them, the skin unevenly marked from erratic sun exposure, the little finger a little too crooked to sit flat with its brethren. Still, it had been his hand, living at the end of his arm, and now it was not. The arm was gone too, leaving a small fragment of bone at the shoulder, but it was the hand that James particularly missed. It is hard to shoot anything when you’re missing your trigger finger.
So James left his life, the life of a man with two functioning arms and a steady shot for moving variables in a target range. No one wants a target shooter who cannot even hold a rifle properly. James’ new life is full of not-people like himself, identities defined by the missing parts they carry around with them in phantom form. Or so James thinks.
When James first meets Steve, he feels vaguely unnerved by the soft blue gaze that focuses somewhere over his partial right shoulder. It is only the lack of a hand to wave that stops him from swiping through the air in front of Steve’s face in an attempt to draw his eyes up to his face. Steve smirks anyway, like he felt the damaged muscles twitch in James’ arm. Steve might be blind, but he sees more than others. Walking up the hallway of their ground floor apartment, Steve slips on a matt bent in the corner, and James is stopped from catching him by the fact that the hand he puts forward is a not-hand and by extension cannot catch even air. Steve rights himself with a laugh and an unfocused glance over his shoulder, thanking James for trying. James wants to cry because if he hadn’t lost his arm, he would have succeeded.
The canvases in the living room seem out of place until Steve steps towards one with a paintbrush in his hand, feeling forward with the other hand to find the material’s edge. James can’t stop staring at Steve’s hands. He has two. It seems that James tips out of balance more obviously as he realises that he doesn’t. He has a hand and a not-hand. But at least James has his eyes. Steve assures him he doesn’t need his to live happily, hand running lightly over James’ face to trace the scepticism hiding in the lines there. Soft smile, unfocused blue gaze.Steve says he doesn’t need eyes to see for painting, he just needs a heart to feel.
When James first hears the thumping drums drifting down the hall, they itch at his mind in a way he can’t resist. A quick word to let Steve know that he will be leaving the door open, and down the hallway he goes, not-hand brushing along the wallpaper in his head. The door at the other end of the hall is open too, letting the drum beat bleed out into the hallway and his brain. The man sweating away behind the kit does not hear him the first or second or third times he calls a loud greeting over the thump of wood against skin, so he places his only hand on the pumping shoulder instead. The sweaty man spins so fast he nearly falls of his chair, waving frantic hands in front of his face as James trips over the apologies tumbling from his mouth like a waterfall. A red haired woman comes running in from the bedroom, quick fingers twisting and turning into strange shapes she directs at the sweaty man. Waving her hands down and turning to James with a wry grin, the man speaks in a vaguely inflected tone, saying he should know better than to sneak up on a deaf guy.
James watches the man’s eyes slip to his lips as he starts to reply, and wonders if this whole building is inhabited by not-people. He learns that the sweaty man is Clint, and his red-headed girlfriend is Natasha. Natasha doesn’t speak. Clint doesn’t hear. James thinks they make a good couple. It takes a while, but James learns to read what Natasha’s saying in the soft quirk of her lips and the slight downturn at the corners of her eyes, the arch of her dark brows as she watches Clint teach James how to hear things in the vibrations in his bones and against his skin. He never manages to read the slim shapes of her fingers, but he thinks they are beautiful anyway, directing different people like puppets to create symphonies with just a flick or turn of her hands. James doesn’t know any music teachers, but he still think’s Tasha’s the best, more expressive than anyone he knows who can shout and scream at their musicians.
It finally hits him, one day while they’re all out in the park enjoying the summer. Tasha’s soft laugh, a quick expulsion of air, is more than adequate to signal her happiness at the bright day; a loud voice to break the stillness would just be out of place. Clint doesn’t need his hearing to feel the vibration it makes against his chest, and he doesn’t miss the sound of the wind any more than he hated it before. Steve doesn’t need eyes to feel the sunlight on his skin, or to sense the blush on James’ face as he takes his hand. And James only needs one hand to pull Steve close, one arm to hold him beside him and kiss his forehead. Yeah, it hits him like a bullet.
He learns to stop thinking of them as their missing pieces, as not-people. They are no longer an artist with no eyes, a musician with no ears, and an instructor with no voice. He is no longer a gunman with no trigger finger. They are his friends, and he is a person. He learns that being whole is not about the parts of you that have been taken, but about the parts of you that can be shared with someone else. He learns these things, and he doesn’t need two whole hands to keep them close. A hand and a not-hand are more than good enough.