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Summary:

Like a puzzle, the last little notch slips cleanly into place and Sam stares at an increasingly uncomfortable-looking Tommy.

“Tommy,” he says, and he makes sure to keep his voice gentle. “Has your hearing gotten worse over the years?”

(Tommy struggles with the aftermath of being around so much TNT. Sam helps him, and enlists a friend. HOH [hard of hearing] headcanons abound.)

Notes:

disclaimer: i am not HOH nor do i interact with those communities often! if anything in this fic is inaccurate or needs to be changed, please, let me know!!!! the signs i describe in this ficlet are mainly pulled from ASL, but i like to think that this "AU-world" has it's own version of mashed-up sign language types.

this fic is dedicated to my friend cry! love you!!!!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: new beginnings

Chapter Text

Sam is the first person to notice it.

It starts off with small things. Nothing too major to note. Tommy asks him to repeat a sentence here or there, the way that he favored people to walk on his right side, the way that if you walked up to him quietly enough, he’d startle as though he hadn’t known you were coming. For a while, Sam doesn’t put the pieces together. It’s not until they’re working together around the hotel one day does it set in.

“Pass me the shovel?” Sam asks, holding his hand out. Tommy is to his right, kneeling in the dirt and ripping out weeds. He pays Sam no mind-- so after a second, Sam tries again. “Tommy? Can you pass me the shovel?” Again, Tommy ignores him. He’s humming gently under his breath as he tugs a weed out of the dirt, the shovel on the other side of him, lying in the grass. They’re landscaping the area, to make it look nice, and Sam’s just about done moving the soil. “Tommy,” he tries again, and then finally, raises his voice. “Tommy!”

“Oh, shit, yeah?” Tommy, apparently snapped from his reverie, turns to glance at Sam. “What’s up?”

“Why were you ignoring me?” Sam asks, feeling perplexed. “Can you hand me the shovel? I called your name like four times.” 

“Wasn’t ignoring you, big man,” Tommy says, wiping his forehead with the back of one palm, smearing a bit of dirt there. “Just didn’t hear ya. Speak up next time.”

“Tommy, I had to shout to get your attention,” Sam says, and that perplexed feeling sinks in deeper as Tommy leans and hands over the shovel to him. He frowns, setting the tool on the ground in favor of reaching out and snapping his fingers right next to Tommy’s ear. “Can you hear that?”

“Bloody--” Tommy grimaces, reaching out with two hands and shoving at Sam’s wrist, pushing his hand away. “Personal space, bud! I can hear you just fine!”

“Humor me,” Sam says, and for a second he thinks he’s going to have to pull out the Sam Nook act to get Tommy to let him mess around, but after a solid minute of silence, Tommy lowers his hands from the defensive position they’d taken up in front of his face.

With his sleeves pushed up like they are in the garden, Sam can see the scars from where he’d obviously used the motion before and taken the blows with his forearms.

It makes his stomach roil, but he pushes aside whatever protective instincts are flooding through him in order to reach out with a hand and snap gently again. Once on Tommy’s right side, and once on the left.

“Can you hear those?” He asks, and Tommy grumbles, but nods. Sam does it again. “Does it sound fuzzy at all?”

“It’s clearer in my right,” Tommy finally admits. “Sharper.” 

Sam sits back on his heels and ponders. Suddenly, all the little details start to click into place.

The explosions that rocked L’Manberg not once, not twice, but three times. The crater he’d seen when he went to go visit Logsteadshire after the final confrontation with Dream. He’d had to settle his mind after hearing Dream talk aimlessly to himself, and he’d found a wasteland full of holes and detonated gunpowder residue. He recalls how Tommy prefers people to stand to his right, the little flinches that come when you’re not approaching him head-on, the way he misses people calling his name when he’s occupied or has other noises going on around them. Like a puzzle, the last little notch slips cleanly into place and Sam stares at an increasingly uncomfortable-looking Tommy.

“Tommy,” he says, and he makes sure to keep his voice gentle. “Has your hearing gotten worse over the years?”

“What?” Tommy sounds scandalized, but after a second, his fingers tap. Reminiscent of a piano, fingers laid atop invisible keys. “Well. Maybe a bit, I suppose. ‘S not anything ridiculous. Been around a lotta big booms, I guess.” 

“Right,” says Sam, and he can see the way that Tommy is shifting, uncomfortable, so he’ll drop the subject for now. “Just curious. I’m almost done here. If you want to go, I won’t mind.” 

“Oh.” As Sam turns back to the pile of dirt and sod in front of him, the enchanted shovel gleaming under his fingertips, Tommy stays where he is. He seems confused, but Sam doesn’t press him any further, and after a minute of him shoving the tip of the tool into the dirt, Tommy turns back to the weeds and soil. Five minutes later (long enough for Tommy to think Sam won’t think he’s running away) Tommy gets up, brushes the dirt off his knees and hands the best he can, and waves Sam a simple goodbye before launching himself into the sky with his trident.

Sam settles in for a few more hours of manual labor to clear his head, and then afterwards, goes to find an old friend.

 

----

 

Tommy is not looking for Sam, alright? He’s just… hanging around where Sam usually is. The hotel is obviously the first candidate for this, but proves to be abandoned. Almost finished, the red and white walls careen high into the sky, a multitude of rooms inside and nearly ready for visitors. With a hotel like this (so fancy! So nice!) Tommy will surely never be alone again. People will flock to see it, and him! But alas, Tommy sits on the steps of the hotel for a good long while before giving up in his quest to wait for Sam. They’d been working together the past few weeks to finish it, and usually they’d meet up there. The steps, however, remain empty save for Tommy.

So he gets up, and checks the prison entrance. No one inside, and he doesn’t dare press the summon warden button. Sam as the warden is cold and mean-- Tommy prefers Sam the older brother construction worker, or Sam Nook, his eccentric secretary. Tommy’s been playing along with Sam Nook for shits and giggles, but dammit if he hadn’t started to get mildly attached. 

The grass and area near the prison are empty, so Tommy makes his way down the prime path and checks the church. He checks the spider spawner, ducking under a tendril of-- what had Tubbo called it? An egg?-- and continues down his way. The new community house looms overhead before long, and he takes a moment to appreciate the rebuilding job. It’s pretty. Even if it brings back horrible memories of an axe to his throat and angry words and tearful, silent apologies. But this new house-- it’s the same, but different. The workbenches shift under his feet as he steps inside.

And there, in the corner, is Sam. Purple netherite chestplate on like it always is, and beside him…

Beside him is a face Tommy hasn’t seen in ages.

“Sam,” he calls out, watching as they both turn to face him, Callahan waving silently as Sam breaks into a grin. 

“Tommy!” He calls out, and Tommy neatly slots himself into the little conversation corner they’d had going on before he’d nudged the door of the community house open and barged his way inside. Sam’s fingers are clumsy as he holds them up near his chest, glancing between Callahan and Tommy. “You remember Callahan?”

“Been a while,” Tommy says, holding a fist out, and grinning when Callahan returns the gesture, bumping knuckles. “Where you been, man?” 

Callahan signs something, held close to his chest, and Sam translates aloud.

“Off-server,” Sam says, and Callahan shrugs. “Didn’t want to get too involved because of admin duties.”

“Right,” Tommy says, thinking of the current server owner and his status as a maximum-security prisoner. The owner, who happened to be one of Callahan’s closest friends before this mess started. “Good to see you back, then. Sam, I was wondering--”

“Actually, Tommy.” Sam cuts him off, which is surprising, but then again, is it really? Tommy shuts up, opening his mouth to argue, and then shutting it again. He’d wanted to work on the hotel again today, but apparently Sam had other plans. “I invited Callahan back for today. I wanted him to talk to you.”

“To me?” Tommy snorts. “What, come to officially transfer server ownership rights to me? I fuckin’ deserve it, for beating that prick and putting him in jail.”

Sam shakes his head. “It was about something different,” he says, and Callahan rolls his eyes, then signs something quickly that makes Sam snort. “I wanted to know if you wanted to learn sign language?”

Everything screeches to a halt in Tommy’s mind.

“What?” He asks, and there’s a thudding in his chest that surely can’t be audible to anyone but himself. Like the ringing in his ears he gets sometimes. Sam’s voice fades out slightly as he turns his head away from Tommy to look at Callahan, and all of the sudden Tommy realizes that this whole conversation, Sam’s been looking at him when he spoke. He’d consciously shifted to the right when Tommy had arrived. He’d moved to Tommy’s good side, without Tommy prompting it himself.

Memories of yesterday flood in, with Sam’s fingers snapping in his ears and a concerned looking briefly crossing the older man’s face. 

“--might be beneficial,” Sam is saying when Tommy tunes back into the conversation, forcing himself to listen. “Callahan knows it like-- okay, well, excuse my funnies, but he knows it like the back of his hand. I can interpret, but I’m crap at the signing myself. I thought we could work as a team and maybe have you learn a little bit.” Tommy’s staring at Sam with his mouth hanging open he’s sure, feeling quite like a fish out of water. Something passes over Sam’s face, and he’s quick to amend: “Only if you want to, though.” 

Does he want to? Memories of nights lying so close to Tubbo in order to whisper pop into his head, memories of explosions and bright lights and how, after the second explosion of L’Manberg, Tommy’s ears had bled on and off for a few days. He’d wake up with red staining his pillowcases. Even more repressed memories are the ones in exile; Dream, standing in front of him with a handful of TNT and shouting, Dream blowing everything up so close to Tommy that he was left with burns. How, after the one night that had changed everything, Tommy had stumbled to Techno’s and how Techno had dabbed the blood away from his ears and cleaned him up gently. 

He can’t play the piano anymore. There are a few reasons why-- painful memories of family, the way his fingers cramp, and how his ears ring with the notes and how he can’t quite hear what he’s playing right.

“Tommy?” Sam’s voice, once again cutting through the damaged tissues of his ears and pushing right through to his very soul. His voice is muffled. It always is muffled, because everything is muffled in Tommy’s world and he’s just had to adapt to it. Stand to the left of people. Tip his head and nod and smile, even if he hadn’t heard what they’d said. Be loud himself, because he can’t properly tell if he’s shouting or speaking normally.

“Can Tubbo learn too?” He asks breathlessly, instead of giving Sam a direct answer. It must be enough, though, because Callahan rocks back and forth on his toes and Sam just smiles.

“I don’t see why not,” Sam says, tugging his communicator off his belt. “Want me to send him a message?”

“I’ll do it,” Tommy says, tugging his own communicator off his belt. “He’ll answer me even if he’s busy.”

“Alright,” Sam says. Callahan signs something, and Sam nods. “Right. Uh, Callahan says that he can use his comms to work with you and Tubbo to get some basic stuff down. I can help too, but I only really know the basics as well. Sounds good?”

Tommy’s going to be able to talk without worrying about how loud he’s being. Without worrying about getting a properly audible answer from Tubbo in return. 

“Sounds good,” he says, fingers flying across his communicator and whirling a message off to Tubbo. “Really good.”

Sam is smiling when he looks back up. Tommy returns it with a grin of his own.

 

----

 

Can you still hear the birds in the morning?

Tommy wrenches his eyes up from Tubbo’s hands to his face, the clunky language still new for them both. Callahan was not a patient teacher by any means, and they were rambunctious and obnoxiously loud students, but the lessons had proved to be… helpful. 

Tommy raises a hand, bringing together his first two fingers and thumb. No. He can remember the birds, and he struggles for a second to recall the sign for them, then brings his hand up to the side of his cheek and does it the best he can. Birds are too quiet. 

Tubbo’s face falls gently, but it perks right back up when Callahan butts in. His way of signing is fluid and clean, years of practice compared to Tommy and Tubbo’s week or two. Yet, he’d come every day, sitting with them and explaining signs and their meanings. Occasionally Sam would pop in, signing a hello and handing over snacks with a cheerful smile on his face. 

Sam and Tommy still worked on the hotel together. Instead of shouting over to him, Sam would clunkily sign the word shovel over at Tommy, or help me , or are you okay? And Tommy would smile or nod or bring over the requested tool.

Stop thinking about it, Callahan signs, eyebrows furrowed. You think too hard. Sam said you were all instincts. Apparently, he was wrong.

Fuck off, Tommy signs back, because their third lesson had been an all-inclusive course on how to swear in sign language. 

You fuck off, Callahan shoots back. Tommy scowls, and his hands fly as he tries to get his words across without opening his mouth, finger-spelling what he can’t remember.

I am not scared of your teacher bullshit, bitch, he says, grinning lightly as Callahan rolls his eyes. I own the server now.

No, you don’t, Callahan says, shaking his head. I could un-whitelist you.

You won’t, Tommy says, and then Tubbo waves a hand between them, catching both their attention. 

“Ranboo needs my help in Snowchester,” Tubbo says out loud, and then groans loud enough that even Tommy can hear him from here. Callahan raises a brow, and then taps his ears again. “Right.” It takes him a second, but then Tubbo’s signing the same thing, painstakingly finger-spelling out Snowchester. It’s probably very wrong, but Tommy gets the gist of it. So does Callahan, who waves him off dismissively.

“Come roun--” Tubbo cuts himself off again, tongue poking out as he scrambles to his feet and signs at Tommy, grinning at each other. Come over tonight for dinner.

Okay, Tommy signs back, waving a hand in goodbye as Tubbo launches himself off the community house roof with a trident. It’s… freeing. Being able to speak in a whole different way. He doesn’t worry too much about hearing anymore, especially when it’s just him and Callahan, sitting on top of the community house roof and signing back and forth to each other.

Tommy thinks back to their very first lesson, and raises his hand to his lips, then lowers it down gently with a flat palm. He smiles. Callahan smiles back.

You’re welcome, he says.