Chapter Text
Shawn Spencer started loseing his hearing when he was 15 years old. He noticed a slight change in the way people sounded, how he had to ask people to repeat themselves occasionally. He figured it was listening to his walkman too loudly, and continued on with his life. It wasn't a problem.
By the time he was 19, he'd lost a good portion of the high frequency hearing in his left ear, notably worse than his right. Its right after he gets out of jail that he finally admits that it might be a problem and sees a doctor about it. Intellectually, Shawn has known his hearing was getting worse, despite his best efforts. He wore ear plugs at concerts, stayed away from the speakers at parties, made sure the volume on his walkman wasn't too high. He tried. And yet still, he was having problems understanding people when there was background noise.
The doctor does a test, and then re-does the test. And then calls another doctor. He sits down in front of Shawn, with the print out of the audiogram and a pen.
"Okay, Shawn, this red line is your left ear." The line slopes downward as the frequency increases, a blue line doing the opposite. "See the shaded section?" He nods, already guessing what's coming next. "That's the normal range for an adult. If you look at this, your reading is just this side of normal, until we get to the high pitched noises. Now, this is generally indicative of sound induced hearing loss. But...I don't think that's what you have. Look at the blue line." Shawn knows what's coming isn't good. "That's your right ear, and you are presenting with low to mid frequency loss. Not something we see with noise induced loss. "
"So, I'm going deaf?" It's what's he's feared since sophomore year of high school.
"It's too early to tell. You have what I'd like to call, at this time, idiopathic hearing loss, since we can't seem to figure out a cause. You might retain what hearing you have now, or you may loss more. Maybe even all of it. Truth is, I don't know." Shawn takes a deep breath, the doctor looking him over, taking in his reaction. "Right now, it isn't too bad. I'm not going to recommend you get hearing aids now, because you said you aren't having too much trouble understanding speech, and generally it isn't impacting your life. I want to see you in 6 months, and re-test you then, see if there's any change."
"Okay. Sure. So uh, how bad, exactly, am I?" He can look at this logically if he just knows. Can research later, can read the facts, the studies. Can see if he needs to learn sign language, or look into hearing aids in a year. He can do this.
"Right now, your left ear is showing moderate high frequency loss, your right is showing mild low and mid range frequency loss. If both sides were as bad as the left, I'd be telling you to come back in 2 weeks for a fitting, since high frequency loss interferes with speech understanding and phone use."
"Thank you, I'll see you in six months then." He isn't going to keep the appointment.
"Yes. And if you at all suspect your hearing is getting worse before then, call or come in right away. Okay?" He doesn't plan too. He has what he came for.
"Definitely."
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4 years later
He never does go back to the audiologist outside Las Vegas. He doesn't see another one for close to 4 years. Doesn't find one when he starts having problems with phone calls to Gus, or understanding his boss. Doesn't make an appointment when he's late to his job driving the wiener mobile because his alarm clock isn't loud enough anymore.
But then he does. Its the turn of the century, the year 2000. And he decides that of anytime for this, now is good.
The audiologist is funny. That earns him points in Shawn's book. He doesn't look upset when Shawn says he was tested years ago and never followed up.
"I'm calling it Idiopathic progressive sensioneural hearing loss. Obviously it's gotten worse. Long story short, and I'm only cutting this out because you seem to have accepted this, you need hearing aids." The second he saw the audiogram, he knew. "Moderate hearing loss at most frequencies in the right, and moderate high frequency loss in the left. You said that one looked almost the same?" It had come as a shock that while his right had gotten significantly worse, his left and only fluctuated slightly.
"Yeah. It looks the same as it did before." He's gotten good at reading lips without even noticing it. He barely needs to understand the spoken words to get the message, all his training coming in handy. Body language, facial expression, differences in pronunciation.
"While strange with how much your right has fallen, its not rare for hearing loss to be unilateral, especially with something like this. Come back in a week, we'll get you fitted for a set of hearing aids okay?" He's known it was coming.
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He hates them. They distort noises and make some things too loud, while others he still has to strain to hear. They're ugly and annoying and hurt his head.
But its better, as much as he hates to admit it, the aids help. So he wears them to work when he needs too. If its a job that requires talking to people he does, but around whatever apartment or motel or hostel he's staying in, he doesn't. He gets even better at reading lips and eventually buys a disk set of ASL videos, learns that, just in case. He hates how people see the flesh colored plastic and talk slower at him, act like he's stupid. One instance in particular, there was a very condescending women, he'd been selling a used car too, or trying too. She'd been fine, until she saw his hearing aids. She'd asked, in very over exaggerated and loud speech, to see a supervisor, since she wasn't going to buy a car from the lot sweeper. Shawn, who'd been having a fairly bad day anyways, had nodded, avoided saying the remark on the tip of his tongue and walker back to the employee break room and stalked to his locker. Quickly changing his shirt and taking his hearing aids out, giving himself a minute to acclimate to the muffled noise he turned to Marcus, another sales guy.
"Volume check. 'M I good?" Marcus was great, he didn't care, at all, that Shawn couldn't hear for shit anymore,and he was always willing to help out with costumers who wouldn't close on a sale with him.
"Yeah, you're good." Marcus was also very good at facing Shawn when he was speaking. "Batteries dead?"
"Nah, this chick is being a bitch. Wanted to talk to a supervisor. So, supervisor Shawn." Because of his amazing sales figures, he had been promoted to the shift supervisor just a few weeks before. Thus the change in shirt, to the one that said 'Shawn, duty supervisor' under the logo.
"Ah. Well, if you need anything, you know where I am for the next...23 minutes." Marcus enunciated well, making him easy to read.
"Yup. Gotta go, see ya." And he's back out in the lot, near the '97 Volvo sedan.
"Hello ma'am." He's gotten good at judging his volume even when he can't exactly hear himself.
"Hello, I'm interested in buying this car, but I have a few questions." She turns and Shawn prays that the muffled warble isn't her continuing to speak. "The man that was out here before, is he your brother? The deaf one? "And there it is, the familiarity without recognition that Shawn was trained to manipulate. Change the things someone catalogues about you, and you can change who they see.
"Who, Sean?" They'd misspelled his name on the regular work polo. "No, he's not my brother."
"Oh, okay I was going to say though, it's great if your establishment to employ the disabled." He clenched his fists in his pockets. He doesn't want to the loose the sale and he has a point to prove so he doesn't say anything.
"He's a great guy. He'd have sold you the car, just as same as I will. So, how bout those questions?"
"Gas mileage, and your leasing options. I'm pretty much decided on this one." Good, less verbal to deal with.
They get to the paperwork stage and Shawn very much on purpose doesn't move the package of hearing aid batteries from his desk. She's signing the leasing agreement when he decides to end the charade and excuses himself for a second, under the guise of coffee for them both. He stops by his locker, grabs both hearing aids and two cups of coffee before heading back to the desk and the blond woman.
"Here you are miss." He sits down, putting the devices in plain view before opening the battery hatchs and replacing both (he'd been meaning to all day, the little beep that indicated the batteries were dying getting annoying).
"Oh, how nice of you to do that for him." Just sign the paper, let me hand you key. Then I can tell you.
"Hmm?" He feigns innocence as the woman signs the last line.
"Doing that, with the batteries. Sean must appreciate it."
"Its actually pronounced Shawn. They spelled it wrong on my first polo." He snaps the hatches shut and slips the ear hooks into place. "I changed my shirt, and did the whole rest of the deal without 'em. You wanted the supervisor, but you were already talking to him. "
"But...how?" Her dumbfounded look amuses him. "You're deaf, how are you a supervisor?"
"Same way you are an interior design specialist. I'm good at this. Just because I'm hard of hearing, doesn't mean I can't do everything you can." He hands the key over with a smile. "Have a great day, remember any problems, give us a call." He hopes she learned a lesson. Even if she didn't, he had fun, playing her like that.
Marcus signs a quick little 'nice play shawn' ,and Shawn responds with a 'thanks. This bitch thought S-E-A-N different person than me.'. That's another reason Marcus is great, his older sister was born almost completely deaf, and he'd been signing longer than he'd been talking.
The woman's eyebrows raise and she walks out of the building with her keys and paperwork.
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He visits his dad in 2001. He doesn't say anything about his hearing loss, doesn't wear his aids at all the whole time. His dad, master detective, doesn't suspect a thing.
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