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Max, having lost most of her sight, learns the ridges and smooth planes of hands to match them to their owners. Their voices had already been burned into her mind from countless calls over walkies that had given her a fluency in static frequencies and an appreciation for the scuffed wall phone that hangs in the trailer. Their images are gently placed in her mind, memory-sights she often calls upon when nightmares are wicked enough to pretend as though waking up doesn’t throw her from explosions into a cooling fire pit where no embers are left to light the way.
Mike and Nancy’s hands bear the vague similarity of siblings - his longer, hers daintier, but both just this side of bony and with a little backwards bend at their last knuckle joint. Mike’s nails are often trimmed or ripped short, while Nancy’s are orderly, regularly coated in thin, smooth layers of polish that, Max knows, distract from the way she picks at the skin around them. Nancy’s hands feel like a broad-toothed comb with how deftly but gently she cards them through Max’s hair, braiding it now by habit following months of physical therapy and her hospitalisation, the older kids having kept her company when they could, exchanging spots throughout the day like clockwork but with a gentleness that made her eyes prickle even thinking about it.
Dustin’s palms are broader now, and Max wonders if it means the nerd is gonna go through a growth spurt one of these days. They remind her a bit of Steve’s - although where Steve’s hands learned the transition from piano keys to splintering wooden nail bats with little resistance thanks to a toughness gained by sports in simpler times, Dustin’s hands remain smooth, a last reminder of his youth. She knows there is dirt caked under his nails more often than not, could feel the way the dusty earth would settle against his skin. His hands are always in motion, from explaining stories to setting up examples of layouts with household items so she could get a sense for a room or building before they visited it. One time, he had her holding onto his hands while he told a story, and she swore he almost dislocated her good shoulder with how much his arms were flying around to emphasise his soaring tale. But even telling him off wasn’t so serious when they both couldn’t stop laughing for the first time in weeks.
Erica’s hands still hold small hints of her childhood, most notably that her never-ending energy and motivation are growing alongside her. It were Erica’s hands that had been the first to open medical textbooks on acupressure, and that gently guided Max’s own hands along her points of pain and stubborn stiffness that were a daily reminder (as if she needed another) of what she had gone through. Erica may be trying to grow up faster to join her friends in their adventures, but her scattered collection of puffy 3D stickers always brings a smile to Max’s face when she finds them stuck to the side of her sunglasses and water bottle. It’s fun to guess what stories they’re telling, because Erica has the same penchant for storytelling that Mike does, even if Max knows exactly what kind of identically offended expressions they would both wear as a result of that comment.
Steve’s hands are the ones that coax her through the braille alphabet for the first time, even though it’s really the fourth try and she’s still on the verge of tears. It’s all so much to process, so much to try and understand when she can’t see and all she wants is to make her own way through places again. That’s when Steve’s fingers gently encircle her wrist, picking up her hand with his much larger one until he’s guiding her to his hair and telling her to go nuts. He ends up with six different started braids, two of which managed to cross over into some hybrid beast, a set of tiny pigtails and what could generously be described as an attempt at a styled fringe. The hilarity of feeling it with her fingers makes her glad to see with her hands, lets her cackle as she can picture and more importantly feel the world around her, and truly sense how she’s not being left behind by the rush of it all. That she will always have her people.
Eddie’s fingers are singular - while Robin also plays an instrument, hers doesn’t form the ridges across her fingertips that Eddie’s do from countless hours slaving away over his guitar strings. The weight and temperature of his rings are comforting. There’s familiarity in sensing the always warm metal atop her head when he ruffles her hair in greeting. He’s got dry patches along his skin that she remembers are paint splotches, most likely from miniatures, and invisible smudges to her senses from where his pen leaks while drafting lyrics and new campaign plots that leave her howling for minutes on end when he tells her them in a whispered, enthusiastic rush before anyone else gets to know (he says she’s a tricksy master manipulator, she just shrugs and says she’s a young, innocent lady with no such intentions, and that sets them both off again). But she especially likes the still moments that they try to find between the chaos that is the Party and its babysitters, when Eddie places a guitar in her hands and guides her slowly through fretboard finger-placements and a simple chord or two, giving her something to do; something to create.
Robin fumbles things with her hands almost as much as Max does these days. Steve tells her it’s something that used to carry across to dropping ice cream scoops mid-service. Robin’s hands are often clammy when she drags Max along to things, and while it’s a little bit gross, it has also become Max’s way of knowing how to react without verbal interactions to an environment. It rarely ever happened just around the Party, so it’s a good guide if one of the parents has rocked up unexpectedly. Sometimes, it’s like Robin’s anxiety can detect someone before her own eyes do, giving Max a chance to notice things before the rest of her friends do. They keep trying to ask how she knows that Mrs Wheeler is approaching, and she likes to creep them out by saying it’s the superhero level strengthening of her other senses. (They’re all a good bit better now that her sight is mostly gone, but she’s far from Matt Murdoch. It can be a bit hit and miss. Doesn’t stop her from having fun with it.)
Will’s hands are a bit like Eddie’s - often stained with various inks, paints and charcoals. She likes to guess what medium he’s working with that week based on how the residue feels against her fingertips. Having once been the smallest of the Party, Will has grown most noticeably. His hands are strong, but still gentle. Despite everything, he has stayed a gentle heart, even if it has a few more hardened layers surrounding it now. Sometimes, he takes his brushes and paints landscapes onto her arms, bringing colour and warmth to her life that she could feel more than see. His hands are delicate when he holds her arm still to make a particularly complex pattern come to life, but she revels in the under-his-breath bitchiness of his comments as they trade insults about anyone who decided to be more than 2% of a moron around them that day.
Jane’s hands, too, are strong. Sometimes, they tense and seem to get stuck in the position as her mind runs away with her. Max will hold on, tapping slow patterns onto the back of Jane’s palm until she can hear the way Jane’s hair sways as she shakes her head back into focus, hear her breathing even out. Jane’s hands help her see so much, because Max still dreams vividly, so when Jade finds the strength and Max doesn’t feel like doing so will make her hate the reality of her disability all the more, Jane crafts dream worlds for Max. On the good days, Jane joins her and they go from mall to forest to a beachside that they can now both recognise to be Somewhere, California. On the best days, days where Jane feels like a live-wire, she gets to see all of her friends. The dreams are shorter, but seeing them again, even if it sometimes leaves a bitter taste behind, is always worth it.
Most of all she knows the weak callouses that have been settling over Lucas’ palm, both firming and wearing down with his endless hours of practice at the school gym and with Steve when the older boy has time between work and driving rotations. The way his fingers twitch just a little before settling when he grabs her hand, like he’s giving her an out should she want it - like he’s not quite certain himself whether to take the plunge every time he opens his heart to her.
She could still remember how those hands had grasped at her like she was trickling sand between his fingers. She had felt like cracking glass in those moments, shifting in the air and ready to shatter to dust if someone didn’t help hold her fragments together.
He had been there then, just like he is here now, muttering in that dorky endearing way he’d picked up from mother-hen Steve. She could picture the way his shoulders would be hunched while he applied bandaids to the spots she could feel stinging from grazes across her palms, the memory of getting back onto her board vivid in the senses she still possessed.
These are Lucas’ favourite hands, even if she doesn’t know it. He knows that she’d scoff if he even whispered as much while inspecting the soft patches of skin that had so far evaded her growing collection of skateboarding badges of honour. He knows with certainty he’d cop a shove to the shoulder if he mentioned how her freckles span across her skin like far-away wildflowers across a field.
(There are many stars and constellations out there, and they are beautiful, but they would always be somewhat cold and far away to Lucas. There had been enough at-arm’s-length for a lifetime between then. He much prefers being close enough to see Max’s face bloom as she laughs.)
Sure, he’d get shoved, maybe lightly smacked, but if he sneaks a look at the right time, he also knows he’d catch the way her blush would start just below her ears before flooding her cheeks as they protest against the smile trying to push its way outwards from her lips.