Curate, connect, and discover
What if, after years of explosions and poud sounds from the fireworks, Yong actually goes deaf?
And yes, I know Varian was around a ton of explosions with his science and everything but the entire point of fireworks is that they explode one way or another and since he'd be a stupid little kid when he started making them he probably wouldn't take proper safety measures, so he would slowly lose his hearing.
And let's say he didn't really notice it, for him barely being able to hear (I wanna say he's completely deaf in one ear and mostly deaf in the other) is just normal for him and while he finds it weird how Yong asks him to repeat everything or speak louder, Varian would just assume its him trying to understand it better but Hugo, that would be a different story.
Hugo gets just a tiny bit sick of having to yell for the kid to hear him, but his annoyance turns to concern when one day Yong almost gets run over when the Caravan's breaks malfunctioned and Hugo had to shove him out of the way since Yong didn't move when he screamed (Varian and Nuru were out buying food or something in this senerio) so he finally starts to actually ask proper questions and Yong just says "Yeah, I can't hear most of the time" or something like it's completely normal?!
So, after hearing all this. Hugo not only teaches Yong (and later the rest of the gang) Ingvarian sign language (since he used it with Olivia sometimes) but made Yong either hearing aids or later on cochlear implants and Yong is just completely flabbergasted at how things normally sound like for people and might get overwhelmed with the sounds so they have to help him get used to it and this could actually help him make fireworks better since he could recalibrate the explosions or something? (Idk how fireworks work) and it would just be reaaaaaaaly cute<3.
Im on FIRE with thease headcannons! Anyway, feel free to use this in a fic or fanart (tag me so I can see it) and yeah, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk folks!
-ImMadAtDisney <3