Chapter Text
A horse gives way to another horse and then suddenly there are two horses, just like that. That's how I loved you […] What was between us wasn't a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
- what i didn’t know before, ada limon
Danhausen comes into the human world just like everything else does: with very little input into the matter. One second he is one with the great black Nothing and the next, he is blinking awake in the body of some guy named Donovan with a sticky substance slathered across his face while a man in a speedo snaps his leg in two. He lays there, stunned and disoriented, and then a man of some sort blows a whistle and the underwear person laying on him raises his fist into the air, to the sound of applause.
And that’s how Danhausen learns about individualized consciousness, broken fibulas, and professional wrestling, in that order and in very quick succession.
-
The primary issue with Danhausen possessing the body of the man called Donovan is that Danhausen is not, in fact, a possession demon. He doesn’t think. Actually he isn’t sure what type of demon he is; probably because he was yanked into the world with no warning or preparation time, he finds it difficult to translate the thing he had been into something that makes sense in the context of the human realm. He had been, basically, a mass of swirling hunger, a drive to take and own and consume. Anything the black Nothing touched became it, fed it, satisfied it.
Probably because of this, when he wakes up in the hospital with a metal rod in his leg, he is alone. Danhausen doesn't know if he absorbed the person called Donovan the way he had absorbed things as part of the Nothing; he doesn’t even know how anyone managed to call him here at all, like a hook yanking him from the All that was the Nothing. Whoever Donovan was or is, he’s nowhere to be found in the body that Danhausen finds himself the sole proprietor of, with no idea what to do about it. Danhausen really has no business being inside a human being at all.
He is lucky, probably, that his injury is so severe — in the months of rehabilitation following the surgery, no one looks at him askew for how awkwardly he navigates his new human body and its mechanics. He knows he’s bad at it, that he holds his hands oddly, looks jerky in his movements and has difficulty controlling his expressions.
But Danhausen learns many things, very quickly, by dint of being stuck supine in a bed and being given access to a very wonderful machine: the television. He watches it for many hours every day, learning everything there is to learn about the human world on a television program called the Soap Opera Network. He is very happy to have this machine. He tells all the nurses about it, and they think Danhausen is very wonderful, naturally.
A man of some sort, calling himself Davis, shows up after a few days, looking fretful and carrying something called chocolate, which is a very delicious gift, so Danhausen allows Davis to stay. It is very nice, very important to have a servant who brings him such excellent things.
After a few visits, and more supplication in the form of various other candies, Davis says: “So. You’re obviously not Donovan.”
Danhausen frowns. “Maybe I am,” he says defensively. “You don’t know that.”
“You don’t even sound like him,” Davis points out. “And I know he was messing with weird shit. Who do you think sourced all that chicken blood?”
Danhausen must concede that this is a very good point. Davis has proven himself very adept at finding things. He says: “Well. I see you are a detective of some sort. Very well. You have discovered my secret. I am Danhausen, very evil, very scary.” He pauses. “Davis does not seem very scared.”
Davis shrugs, kicking back in his chair and breaking off a piece of his own chocolate bar. “Yeah, well. Better you than the other guy.”
“Other guy?”
“Yeah. Freaky dude who kept trying to stab people with railroad spikes.”
Danhausen considers this. “I was not Mr. Donovan’s first summoning,” he surmises. “Ah! So Danhausen has defeated a possession demon without even trying. Wonderful. He is very powerful.”
“Is, uh.” Davis hesitates. “I mean. Is he, like. Okay in there?”
Danhausen shrugs. “I can’t find him,” he says honestly. No point in lying, really. “I don’t know. But! On the bright side, if Donovanhausen has switched places with Danhausen, he is in the best place that exists. Lots of destruction and conquering of the universe. Very evil, very nice.”
Davis looks down at the chocolate bar in his hand, and then sighs. “Man, I told him this shit was a bad idea,” he mutters. “He really . . . he wanted to win so badly and he just, like, couldn’t. It was all he could talk about at the end.”
Danhausen is unfamiliar with the human rituals of conversation so he falls back on what he’d do back home, which is to lean forward and bite Davis’s hand. Davis yelps, yanking away; humans are very weak creatures. Danhausen says: “I have eaten you. Now you are mine. Congratulations, Davishausen, it is a big honor to be Danhausen’s servant.”
“ Servant ?” Davis repeats, dubious.
“Every conquerer of the world needs a servant,” Danhausen explains. He has seen this on the television. “I will share many riches with you. You’re welcome in advance.”
Davis taps his fingers on the side of the bed, thoughtful. After a pause, he says, “Well. We’re gonna have to negotiate the title, but it sure beats working at the fucking BJs,” and reaches out to shake Danhausen’s hand.
For a moment, Danhausen thinks perhaps he is a deal-making demon, which would be very exciting: they are powerful! But nothing happens; Davis just grins and sits back and flicks the television on in time for Danhausen’s favorite program.
-
Danhausen likes many things about the human world. He likes action figures, for example, and Auntie Em’s, and of course capitalism. Capitalism is probably the best of all human inventions, so nice and so evil that he’s a little surprised a demon didn’t come up with it. Danhausen’s favorite television operas teach him all about how human monies work, and Danhausen is very pleased to learn that all he has to do to earn it is be very handsome and strong and powerful on television, visiting violence upon human beings in strange shirts. This is very good news to Danhausen, who does not want to work at the fucking BJs.
Still, it takes a very long time for his leg to be healed enough for him to wrestle again, which gives Davis time to show him his old matches and teach him about how all of it works. He sort of already knows; in his head is a jumble of memories and feelings and thoughts and desires that he is pretty sure belonged to Donovan, that he needs jogged occasionally but understands immediately, like a word on the tip of his tongue he needs someone else to say first before remembering. He watches his old matches and it ignites a kind of hunger in him. He wants to win. Very simple, very profitable: Danhausen goes into big arena, many people cheer for him, he defeats his opponents without even trying the same way he had defeated whoever it was that Donovanhausen had summoned before him, then money will appear in his hands and he will be very rich.
Davis helps also navigating human administrative systems, talking for example for Doctor Josh, who has a mustache. Doctor Josh says things like, “Donovan, buddy, are you doing your rehab exercises?” and Danhausen says, “I do not like my rehab exercises! Give me different ones!” and Davis sighs and says, “Don’t worry. He’s doing them.”
So this works quite pleasantly. Eventually, after many practices where Danhausen writes things like “I WILL EAT THIS YOUNG MAN AND ABSORB HIS POWER” and Davis takes the phone and edits it to read boring things like “HOOK is cool”, Davis allows Danhausen access to his Twitter account, and then he can tweet things out to his many hundreds of millions of devotees, and they all give him many hearts and applause. He tells them about Doctor Josh’s mustache and about where they can buy merchandise with Danhausen’s face on them. These things earn him money. So far Danhausen has conquered everything about being a human person with ease and skill. When Doctor Mustache says he can wrestle again, he will very quickly take over the entire AEW company and absorb them the way he had when he was in the great black Nothing, and then after he has absorbed all of AEW he will absorb the WWE and then he will absorb all of television, most especially his operas about soap.
Danhausen doesn’t know what type of demon he is but he knows it is the kind that wants with a kind of ferocity that feels unbearable in his small human skin. He is used to desire the size of the entire universe and now it is all packed into his human frame. He vibrates with it. He wants money and he wants power and he wants candy and he wants applause and he wants violence and he wants victory and he wants Auntie Ems and he wants all the things that Donovan had wanted and he wants the feeling he’d had when he was part of the Nothing, that feeling of oneness, of taking everything you want inside of you and making it a part of you and becoming a part of it and taking taking taking and never being full.
One thing that Danhausen does not like about the world is that you never get to climb into anybody else and be part of them and make them part of you. Human bodies have very firm edges and you cannot inhale them.
Danhausen does not like this. Flawed design.
-
Danhausen heals. Eventually Doctor Joshua P. Mustache tells him that he will be able to get back in the ring once he’s strong enough, has built back enough of the muscle that he won’t get his ass handed to him.
“You should take it easy your first go around, though,” he advises. “You got any buddies on the roster that could go easy on you?”
Danhausen furrows his brow. “Friends,” he repeats dubiously. Danhausen is the future conquerer of the world. He has servants (Davis) and future servants (everyone else).
“Yeah,” jokes Doctor Josh. “You know, someone who likes you.”
“Everybody likes Danhausen,” says Danhausen.
Davis claps a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll bet Orange would do it,” he muses. “I think you guys used to text a lot. Donovan — uh,” he glances at Doctor Josh and then away, “I mean, you always liked him.”
“Great!” says Doctor Josh. “I’ll talk to Tony.”
He leaves them. Danhausen frowns at Davis, very puzzled. “Who is Orange? I do not know this person.”
But as he says it, a jumble of memories arrange themselves more clearly, a man in a lot of denim, wearing sunglasses. Very lazy, very evil. A sense of something warm and, Danhausen does not know the word, but it is like eating candy, very nice, comes over him. Perhaps Donovan’s feelings for the one who is orange and blue. Danhausen flaps a hand before Davis can answer him, because he knows now, yes. He pulls out his phone and waves it in the air. “Yes, yes, Danhausen will text. He remembers.”
hello it is i danhausen he types.
There is a pause, then three dots, then Orange Cassidy writes back: hey man. been a while. how’s the leg? u good?
Danhausen shows the message very smugly to Davis. He had been right: everybody likes Danhausen, even his enemies! He writes doctor mustache has declared danhausen all fixed. now i must debut on the television. i would like to give you the honor of debuting me.
“You’re really bad at pretending to be a regular person,” Davis tells him, sounding resigned as he reads over his shoulder. “Like — can’t you look back at your old texts and just write like that?”
“Why would Danhausen pretend not to be Danhausen?” he asks. “The best person in the world to be is Danhausen. Everyone else wishes they could be him.”
Davis just laughs, shaking his head. “Well that’s ... a healthy perspective,” he says. “Okay. You work it out with Orange. I’m gonna go return your crutches. Meet you at the car.”
He goes. Orange texts: sweet. u talk to tk?
danhausen has dispatched dr mustache to do this.
👍, writes Orange. So Danhausen guesses he doesn’t mind that Danhausen doesn’t text like Donovan had.
-
Danhausen and Davis have many fights about Danhausen’s face paint. Davis thinks that he should do it the way Donovan’s old demon used to do it, to stay consistent. But it doesn’t feel right. Danhausen hates it. He stares at himself in the mirror and he doesn’t like it, feels something pricking along his shoulders, something swimming in the back of his mind, like how it does when Donovan’s memories are surfacing. But these don’t feel like Donovan’s memories. Those are mostly very nice, very helpful, very full of information about how to use microwaves. These are shrouded in shadow, cutting together and flashing apart like they are deliberately confusing him.
The second time they try the makeup, Danhausen peers in the mirror when he’s finished, and then shudders as a frothing wave of black slips down over him, like he is dunking his head into sludge. When he manages to claw his way back to attention, Davis is crouching beside the bathtub, where Danhausen is sitting under the water, paint running off of him in rivulets.
“Dude. What happened?” Davis asks, voice gentle, hand on Danhausen’s arm.
Danhausen shakes his head. He doesn’t know. Maybe it is something about the type of demon he is, maybe it is something to do with the scattershot memories that hit him now and then. Maybe he has had not enough or too much candy: it doesn’t matter; Danhausen puts his foot down about the face paint. He must sound very serious, very stubborn because Davis lets it go, helping him out of the bathtub and kindly making him a dinner plate of Oreos.
For his debut match, Danhausen paints something different on his cheeks, lets his hands decide what goes where. When he looks into the mirror he feels the sticky dark clouds of the old paint dissipating. He thinks the new paint is very good. He thinks the new paint looks like his real face.
-
Unfortunately, at the Beach Break event, Orange ends up getting roped into a Lights Out match with Adam Cole, which is very annoying to Danhausen. Very inconvenient. He is supposed to have an extremely successful and powerful debut and instead his good friend Orange Cassidy is stuck fighting some other stupid wrestler whose hair is not very good and whose skin is very sweaty.
Danhausen cannot debut fighting someone who has already been in a fight and is weak and tired! This would not showcase how powerful and evil he is!
To make matters worse, it becomes clear a few minutes into the match that it is possible that Orange might actually lose this match. Then Danhausen cannot possibly debut with him, because Danhausen cannot debut by fighting a loser. He must debut against someone very strong and very good at winning.
Distraught, Danhausen sneaks beneath the ring so that he can see the match better up close. Also so that he can maybe curse Adam Cole into losing so that Danhausen can still debut by fighting his very good friend Orange. Danhausen doesn’t know if he is a curse demon but he figures it can’t hurt to try.
Unfortunately what this means is that he is underneath the ring when Adam Cole tries to yank one of the chairs they leave stacked under there, which he is probably planning to use in a violent way. Danhausen can’t let his good friend get whacked with a chair, that is not very nice, and it could mean waiting even longer for Orange to be well enough to fight Danhausen. So he grabs it and is yanked out into the open.
The second he pops to his feet, the crowd explodes, shouting for him. For him! It feels very wonderful, just like being back in the black Nothing, all the screams and shouts and everyone wanting you to be a part of them and to be a part of you, and whatever is left of Donovan inside of Danhausen is happy too, both of their energies pouring into each other, and it feels very good and very exciting and very buzzy, like there is power in him, like it could spill right out.
He points at Adam Cole and tries to direct that buzzing energy out of him through his fingertips. He doesn’t know if it works, but when Adam Cole tries to swing his chair at Orange he misses and whacks himself instead. Very funny. Very cursed. Danhausen looks at his hands and is pleased.
Orange has managed to get back to his feet and flashes Danhauses a grin, grateful, before he launches himself at Adam Cole, back in control, and proceeds to smash him down into the dirt. Danhausen takes this opportunity to walk away from the ring, because he doesn’t want to distract the crowd from his very good friend’s very good wrestling. But as he moves the crowd’s cheering moves with him, shouting his name, calling for him. Danhausen feels better than he has felt since he came into this strange world. He feels almost as good as he felt back when he was part of the Nothing, when there were no problems and no metal rods and no pain and nothing except wanting things and then getting them.
Backstage, Danhausen looks at back at where Orange is now standing with his hands raised in the air, victorious. At the entrance other wrestlers are watching, too; when Danhausen reaches them, they all call out his name and clap his back quite powerfully, telling him how funny he was, congratulating him on his first TV appearance with AEW. Danhausen doesn’t think he was very funny; it is a very serious business to be the best wrestler in the world. But humans are strange.
Only one person doesn’t seem entranced by what’s happening out in the ring, or by Danhausen’s heroic actions: a hunched figure leaning against the concession table, one hand in a bag of chips. He does not seem to care about the very big win that Danhausen graciously gave to his friend Orange. He does not talk to anybody, and nobody talks to him.
Danhausen peers at him. He cannot see his face beneath the hood and the preposterously thick shock of hair that drapes down over his forehead. After a moment, as if he can sense Danhausen staring at him, he raises his head and meets Danhausen’s gaze, open and frank. He raises his eyebrows, teeth closing around a mouthful of chips.
He’s handsome, features sharp and sulky, his puffy mouth pulling down into a frown. Danhausen feels that buzzy feeling again. Peculiar. Interesting. The big-haired person looks back down at his chips, away from Danhausen. Danhausen wants him to look back again. He wants it very much.
“Whozzat?” he asks Trent and Chuck, when they come over, presumably to say thank you very much to Danhausen for rescuing their best friend.
Trent raises an eyebrow. “Taz’s kid?” he asks. “Dude, he’s like, everywhere right now. Didn’t you have TV when you were recovering?”
Danhausen frowns. He remembers the name from a clip he watched during recovery but nothing from before that floats into his head, no memories from Donovan, no thoughts that he had forgotten. There’s a sort of vague idea that maybe he has seen the hooded person skulking around but never paid him much attention.
“Goes by Hook,” Chuck adds helpfully. “He had a damn good debut. Undefeated so far. Why, you gonna fight him? He’s pretty young.”
“Undefeated you say?” Danhausen asks, and can feel himself starting to smile.
-
Tony Khan says that Danhausen can’t debut now until there is space for him in the lineup. It is not Tony Khan’s fault, says Tony Khan, that Danhausen’s debut partner decided to do an off-the-records match on the day that Danhausen was supposed to fight him.
This is annoying, but it does buy Danhausen time to find a new enemy now that he cannot fight Orange.
“You literally just saved him, nobody’s going to believe it’s a real fight,” Tony Khan says. “Just go antagonize someone til they start throwing punches. You’re great at that, it’s why we signed you.”
So, okay! Danhausen begins to antagonize.
It turns out Danhausen is very good at this job. He is used to being very nice, because being very nice gets you lots of money, but being very evil scratches some itch in him that he hadn’t realized was there. It feels very good, very satisfying, to curse people, to make them trip or start sneezing or drop beverages onto their clean clothing. It makes something in Danhausen light up, gleeful, sparking. He makes the Ass Boys so angry that they chase him down into the deepest bowels of the arena and Danhausen has to open a pocket dimension to escape them.
He hadn’t known he could do that! He can’t figure out how to do it again, but at least he knows he can. So that’s cool. When Danhausen was part of the black Nothing he didn’t have any powers in particular, but he also had all the powers of everything that the Nothing had consumed. So it is hard to figure out what he has now and it is hard also to figure out how to use them.
Still, despite the fun, Danhausen does not find anyone strong enough to debut against. Lots of people want to hit him now but none of them are going to make him the most powerful wrestler in the world.
And then, in an arena in Bridgeport, QT Marshall seizes the microphone and yells into it, “The recipient of the first-ever QT Marshall certificate of accomplishment ... HOOK!” and the sulky, sharp-jawed boy from before pushes past Danhausen on his way to the ring, and something in Danhausen flashes bright and hot, the way it had felt back home when the Nothing had found a new world to consume.
Undefeated. Young. Heir to a dynasty. Untouchable.
He feels himself baring his teeth, wanting to bite down, wanting to sink his teeth into Hook and keep him there. That will show him. That will show everybody .
He follows Hook down the ramp.
He raises his hands as Hook comes to a stop in front of him. His expression doesn’t flicker. He looks at Danhausen steadily, at his face and then at his pointed hands, where no curse is emerging. His hair isn’t as in his face as it usually is. His has warm, unimpressed brown eyes. Danhausen feels — a little flustered, actually. This has never happened before.
Hook waits for a beat, almost as if giving Danhausen a chance to do something, to say something, and when he doesn’t, Hook pushes past without a second glance. Danhausen looks down at his own hands, betrayed.
Look at me, he thinks, body turning after where Hook is disappearing backstage, but Hook doesn’t turn. The audience is shouting Danhausen’s name but it feels hollow. Audiences are easy. They love him always, because he is Danhausen. It is like when Davis brings him candy and it tastes delicious but it makes Danhausen’s stomach hurt afterwards.
Danhausen wants . . . he doesn’t know. He searches Donovan’s memories, and the closest thing he can find is one time in a bar where Donovan had leaned in very close to the bartender and they had held eyes and the bartender had flashed his teeth and something had flipped in Donovan’s stomach, which he’d registered as new and surprising.
And then something slithers into the back of his mind, something achy and hungry, something that says give me it. It looks at Hook’s retreating back and says give me give me GIVE ME GIVE ME, louder and louder until it drowns out the audience, until it drowns out everything but the sound of Hook’s footsteps, which Danhausen can hear long after he should be able to, when he has disappeared through the tunnel and past catering and down to the locker room, where Danhausen hears him unzip his backpack and pop open a bag of chips.
-
“Y’all right, bud?” Davis asks through the bathroom door, knocking a knuckle gently against the wood.
Danhausen ignores him. He stares at himself in the mirror. His paint is a little smudged from sweat, his hair a little disheveled. He can’t stop ringing his hands. When he had pushed past Danhausen on the ramp, he hadn’t tripped or sneezed or dropped anything; Danhausen’s curse hadn’t worked. He can’t stop thinking about how Hook had walked away from him, ignoring him completely, keeping all his attention to himself.
But first he had looked at Danhausen, waiting. He had looked at him before, too, the day Danhausen had helped Orange.
In the mirror, Danhausen thinks his face is changing, the paint twisting up, the red growing deeper, but when he blinks it’s gone. Danhausen bends down and splashes water onto his face, ruining the hotel towel scrubbing himself clean.
“Dan,” Davis says, more firmly this time. “Talk to me, man. It really wasn’t that bad. The internet seems really thrilled, actually — everyone’s wondering when you guys are gonna fight. Seriously, I’ll bet TK is thrilled.”
“I’m not upset,” Danhausen answers finally. He braces his hands against the counter to steady himself. He has been very good at being a human person so far. But it feels like something is rattling inside of him, something hungry, something that wants to take Hook’s hand into his mouth and bite down. He had been more powerful than Danhausen’s curse. He has never been defeated. He has warm, impatient eyes. Danhausen wants them to be looking at him. He thinks his will make him the most powerful wrestler in the world.
When he opens the door, Davis is looking very dubious. “You’re not,” he says. “Really.”
“Really,” Danhausen tells him, and feels his mouth tip up into a smile, too-wide to be fully human, laughter tripping suddenly out of him. He feels giddy with it, the idea of it, getting close enough to Hook to sink his teeth in and absorb whatever power he has, whatever power he has over Danhausen that had made his curses fail.
Danhausen doesn’t know what kind of demon he is.
He thinks it is time to find out.