Between the two of them, they figured out how to shuffle cards.

If they wanted, they could have figured out how to shuffle as a team - each had the hand that the other lacked. But male pride kept anything so silly from entering their heads, and if it had, it had been instantly dismissed. They were too different to work so close; the lithe, smooth-talking Mideelic Turk and the bulky Corellian miner who should have been clumsy but wasn't. But they had that one thing in common, the replacement of a flesh and blood hand with one of metal, that made people stare and children point and normal tasks an issue or even a nightmare. The problem usually lay in the prosthetic being too good, too natural in it's movement, so good you nearly forgot about it and went to scratch your balls and damn near castrated yourself. It prevented a lot of things, like scooping up a little girl without worrying about bruising her tender skin, or talking to a stranger without their eyes dropping to your hand every few seconds. Sure, it was great to have a claw or machine gun grafted right on your arm when something large and nasty was coming down on your head, but it made finding a good whore damn near impossible.

Another thing they had in common was cards - Poker, 21, Hearts, Solitaire if no one was around. Vincent taught Barett how to play Midgan Rat-slap, Barett taught Vincent Cheat, and they both had a secret love of Go Fish that they thought was childish. The others were amused or bemused by the odd friendship that had been struck between the two over a simple deck of playing cards and the occasional bottle of tequila. Cloud or Cid would join them some evenings, and on occasion Tifa or Cait Sith. But usually, it was just the two of them in the early evening, playing through a hand or five, their way of winding down after a hard day of blood and adrenaline.

But the first issue was shuffling the cards. Metal fingers or talons made it difficult to hold on to a deck of slippery cards, and the task was further toughened by the fact that both of them had lost their dominate hand. In fact, that issue was what had brought them together. Vincent had followed the sound of muttered cursing one evening to find Barett sitting a short way from camp, attempting to shuffle a new deck of cards and doing little more than spraying them into his lap. They had eventually spread a section of Vincent's cloak on the ground and mixed up the cards face down on it before playing a hesitant game of Poker, more testing the ground than anything. Then Barett had approached the gunman the next night about a game of Speed, and the rest was history.

At first, they had spent long minutes figuring out how to shuffle the deck without having to mix the cards in a pile on the table top and pull them together again. It was Barett who started shuffling in his lap, using his false hand to keep the cards in a neat pile on his thighs while his good hand cut the deck. Vincent had figured out how to cross his legs and prop the cards against the upper leg instead, a move that looked less silly and was more comfortable. Eventually, through much trail and error and an interesting accident that forced them to buy a new deck, they perfected the move and could get a satisfactory mix out of the cards. The bridge-and-water technique would be forever out of their grasp, but at least they could deal to a group without needing someone else to shuffle for them. And frankly, that was enough.

o o o

The result of thinking about prosthetics and cards and reading a bit too much S. King.