I love the idea that after he gets beat up the first time, Steve just- starts going deaf.
He notices obviously but it’s not like his parents are around to take him to get checked out, and then he just thinks that there’s so much else going on that it’s not the most important thing to bring up. They have bigger issues.
By season 3 he’s completely deaf in one ear and HoH in the other, (i also head canon him as having chronic migraines)
now lip reading is a hard art form to master (it’s mostly just guesswork) but he figures it out by talking to himself in a mirror and memorizing how certain sounds look, he gets books on body language to help with the guesswork and gets really good at reading people’s emotions because that’s all he has to go off of. He learns sign language from a book but never really uses it since no one else seems to know the language but it comforts him to have that in the back of his head.
he doesn’t really try to keep it a secret, it’s just that he’s always been known as an “airhead” so when he seems to not know what’s going on people just assume it’s that. Steve doesn’t really realize that no one knows, like it never crosses his mind that he’s never said anything. And Robin only really started hanging Out with him after he lost the majority of his hearing (he loses the rest of it from the Russian beating/mixing that with side affects from the unregulated drugs they’re slipped ) so she has nothing to compare it with, so despite her and Steve being platonic soulmates, she just doesn’t clock it. Anything she does notice she just assumes is part of his migraines, which are much harder to hide so she knows about that.
It ends up being Argyle who figures it out (because he may be high out of his mind but that guy is SMART,) because Argyle notices that Steve only responds verbally to conversation when he’s facing the person talking, and he tilts his head so that his left ear (that can still pick up on things like tone) is towards the presumed sound. (He also notices that Steve seems WAY TO FOCUSED on eddie’s lips compared to everyone else’s but he’s really good at keeping secrets and Steve is a Bro, Argyle won’t tattle)
He reveals it to the group in a very casual way. Argyle doesn’t make a big deal of things and he does also just assume that since he knows, it must be common knowledge. The group wants to have a movie night and argyle being the sweet sweet loving man that he is offers to get movies with captions because
“one of the guys I give weed to lost his hearing to a sickness and he’s super smart so he found a way to make them” (idk if that’s actually possible in the 80’s so let’s pretend it can)
and Dustin or something just sits there like “why would we need captions” and argyle just smiles and goes
“well it’s not gonna be fun for your babysitter if he can’t understand half the sh*t that’s happening, man”
And Dustin just looks around like “why would Steve not be able to understand the tv?” So argyle shrugs and goes
“the man can’t hear anything dude, I just assumed he’d get tired of it. Do you usually just get him a copy of the script somehow? Oh your girlfriend probably gets them, doesn’t she? Yeah that explains it, man”
And now everyone is paying attention like “wait he cant hear??” And argyle obviously doesn’t know that he’s revealed some Top Secret Information, and now everyone’s talking about it like “did you know??” “No- did you know??” And before Steve can enter the room, they start planning how to figure this out without asking Steve because Maybe He’s Embarrassed and that’s why he hasn’t said anything.
Cue Dustin getting Susie to add captions to a movie and paying super close attention to steve, and watching as steve seems to actually pay attention to a movie for the first time since Dustin’s known him- and he’s just sitting there all angry at himself for not realizing- obviously steve wouldn’t get his references even though he’s watched all the movies- steve Cant HEAR what’s going on in said movies, and then Dustin’s all upset because he’s been doing stuff like this with steve for YEARS why was he just sitting there even though he has no clue what’s going on?? (Steve just really loves Dustin and wants him to be happy, wants to hang out with him, so if that means staring at a silent screen for a few hours, he’ll take it. He enjoys the drive home, when he can see that Dustin is smiling and ranting about what happened in the film, even if he only catches a few words)
And Robin starts having really outlandish conversations with Steve during work when he has his back turned. It starts with stuff like “hey I’m thinking of learning Russian” and “me and Vickie got together finally and hey, I’m pregnant” and it evolves into the weirdest sh*t she can think of on the spot, like once she confesses her undying love for him, and when he doesn’t notice anything weird until he turns around and sees her kneeling on the floor, that pretty much confirms it. She also does start to notice that he never really says anything to someone until he’s facing them. She always just thought he didn’t care about the conversation or was being annoying.
Nancy gets really upset because she was DATING THIS MAN for a while and never once thought that hey maybe there’s a reason he was failing in school and didn’t know when he had an assignment half the time, (it’s because sometimes teachers don’t write important things in the board!!) and now it makes so much sense, how he would sometimes write essays on things that didn’t have anything to do with the topic presented- he misread the teacher’s lips and context clues
And Eddie, who previously thought steve hated Eddie’s music, realizes that Steve likes the music he already knew before going deaf because he could time when the words were being sung and use the vibrations to sing along,
And when they hang out Eddie starts playing his music (which he always played but more quietly, because of Steve’s migraines) but just Louder this time and Steve actually reacts to it, which he’s never done. Before, Eddie would ask Steve what he thought of the music and Steve would just go “eh, could be better” when in reality steve didn’t even know music was playing and got nervous. He didn’t want Eddie to get mad at him, because Steve CAN concentrate on the music and pick up small parts of it if he tries really hard so he thinks Eddie is gonna call him lazy if Steve admits he didn’t pay enough attention to ‘hear’ it, but once Eddie starts playing it louder, so it makes the walls shake, Steve starts enjoying it much more,
And eventually the group figures they have to have an intervention, like- he’s their friend, why did he never tell them this ?? And when they do, Steve just goes “you didn’t know???”
If I were a better writer, I would make it super comedic but I’m terrible at that. Feel free to take the idea and run with it.
Edit: you have permission to use this idea in a fic!! A few people have asked!! I cant write so I’d love to read anything yall create!!
(Also- the first time Eddie tells Steve he loves him, he uses sign language for the first time and Steve cries)
