Steve didn't mean for anyone to find out.
Looking back, the ringing had started before Starcourt, before Billy even. He'd attributed the fuzziness to the recently acquired concussion he'd received from Jonathon, holy shit that guy could punch. Except it didn't go away. It stayed with him like a fucked up reminder of the asshole persona he'd worked so hard to shed.
And even after he came to terms with it, after he realized there was nothing to do about it, nobody seemed to notice. His constant asking of "Huh? and "What?" and when he was in school, "Could you repeat that please?" was chalked up to his airheaded jockiness.
He learned how to focus on people's lips when they spoke, how to not let it get under his skin when Nancy teased him about it, called him stupid, and then later, bullshit.
Billy's gruesome attack had admittedly made it much worse, had transferred the ringing from just the left side of his head to both, but still, nobody noticed. He struggled through the remainder of his senior year and failed to get accepted to any college he applied to. He let his father force him into a job, tell him that he wasn't worth a place in the family company, that he deserved to work minimum wage like the degreeless scum he was sure to be for the rest of his life.
He'd rolled his eyes and pretended to be snarky when Robin insulted him, her tongue moving so fast that he knew there was no chance he would've been able to understand even if he could hear perfectly. When he tried and failed to flirt with the girls that came into the Scoops Ahoy, he let her keep track of his failures on the board instead of writing the daily specials like she was supposed to.
He hid behind laughter as the kids in The Party teased him, told him "This is why you didn't go to college!", called him stupid when he didn't hear the setup for a joke, when Dustin became frustrated because he'd focused on the background music in the Russian transmission; the only part he didn't have to struggle to detect the sounds of.
It was as if he was underwater after that. The words were bubbly and distant, but still, he could understand them, sort of. He made an effort to get face-to-face with Robin in the bathroom, did his best to not make his staring at her lips too obvious as she confessed, and threw out a joke when he realized she was genuinely afraid that he would hate her.
He'd watched the other Party members so he could figure out what he was supposed to be doing, having given up trying to understand whatever instructions Dustin and Nancy were prattling out. He tagged along with Robin as Dustin and Erica rushed up the hill to guide Hopper, Murray, and Joyce throughout the Russian base using Cerebro, replying to her concerned “Are you okay dingus?” with an “I’m fine,” that he couldn’t even really hear.
He did his best to help out, feeling a twinge of accomplishment when he insisted that he and Robin go check out what the fuck was going on with Starcourt’s lights, although it was quickly drowned out by the worry for the children he’d come to adopt as his own.
Even as he and Robin got in the car though, he couldn’t ignore the little voice in the back of his head that snarked “Is that really all you’re good for now that you can’t hear? Noticing the lights?”, responding to it with an inner denial he didn’t even remember having.
He thought hard as he and Robin drove as fast as they could back to Starcourt, his mind racing. “You could maybe even live like this,” he told himself as he gripped the steering wheel.
Then he saw Billy’s Camaro speeding towards Nancy, saw her failed attempts at derailing him with bullets.
And he didn’t even think before flooring the gas pedal, pressing his and Robin’s backs into their seats as he crashed, head on, full speed, into Billy’s car. His head ricocheted off the steering wheel, back into the headrest of his seat.
Then the fuzzy underwater noises in his ears gave way to metallic ringing, and everything went dark.
His memories are murky and vague after that, flashes of clarity amidst all the chaos. Throwing lit packages of fireworks; the panic that grew in his chest when Billy brought El towards the Mindflayer; not being able to hear Billy and Max's screams well enough; the bile that rose in his throat when he learned that Hopper had been lost to the Upside-Down.
He remembers Robin screaming when a paramedic tried to pry the two of them apart, shaking her head and repeating, "No, no, no. I need to stay with him," as she'd cried. How El crumpled to the ground when she realized that her father was gone.
He doesn't remember how he made it through the physical exam from the ambulance staff without someone picking up on it, doesn't remember what they'd told him about his injuries.
He remembers peeling off his grimy uniform with Robin, trying to take turns in the shower, and eventually resorting to washing the other's hair in the bathroom sink because they couldn't reach up high enough to do it themself. How Robin had tried for days afterward to scrub the blood and sweat and ash out of their uniforms, breaking down in tears when Steve grabbed her hands and held her when she beat his chest as she cried.
He doesn't remember how Robin first figured it out, just knows that one day they were sitting on the floor of his barren room sifting through tapes, and she'd maneuvered the record player off his desk. How she'd looked utterly affronted when he asked her what the fuck she was doing, responding with an incredulous, "Because it's on your left, and you can't hear out of that ear, dingus," as if it was obvious. How she later explained to him that her father was deaf, that she knew sign language alongside Spanish, French, and Italian.
He remembers how she'd searched through Hawkins Library, and eventually taken a day trip to Indianapolis with him so they could find books to teach him American Sign Language. How giddy she had been when he signed his first sentence to her, how she'd said it felt like the secret code but without the malintent.
He remembers how Robin had eventually dragged him out to an audiologist in Indy, rationalizing the cost with his parent's money, and how they learned that he was 100% deaf in his left ear and had 30% hearing loss in his right. How he'd been given a set of hearing aids that he'd promptly put in a drawer and purposely ignored.
And yeah, the world was weird, and Steve couldn't really hear it, and there was really only one person with which he could actually communicate and understand.
But he would survive because he always did. Because he had to. He was Steve Harrington, for fuck's sake. It was his job to take care of other people.
So yeah, nobody was supposed to find out.
But Steve is fucking grateful that Robin did.
did i write this at 11pm instead of doing work? perhaps. will i probably fail several classes because of this current hyperfixation? most likely. do i care? not really, no.
im probably gonna write another one of these if this lands well (and also if it doesnt cuz thats what the brain worms want) so lemme know what you think
next one will probably be about dustin and/or the older members of the party (nancy, jonathan, etc)
