Chapter Text
Growing up, Hook’s problem was that nobody could agree on what Hook’s problem was. His teachers said he was sullen and unresponsive; his coaches said he was too intense and unpredictable; his classmates either thought he was weird and made fun of him or thought he was scary and avoided him.
Hook didn’t think he was that complicated. He didn’t like to be touched by strangers. He liked routine. And he liked the feeling when the whole world narrowed to how it felt to be in your body when you pushed that body to its limit. He’d been a small kid whose parents took a hands-off approach to letting him run around the city, and he was always having to prove, over and over, that needing to tilt his chin to look up at a lot of people didn’t keep him from taking swings.
His mom said Tyler, baby, you have to use your words. But he couldn’t. They wouldn’t come, gumming up in his throat. And anyway he thought he was pretty good at making his point without them.
When he was in the seventh grade he had gone with some neighborhood kids to toss a lacrosse ball around in the East River Park, and one of them, Hook hadn’t known him that well, had deadnailed a pigeon right off the bench it was perched on. Hook had felt himself filling with a kind of tearful fury he’d never experienced before, looking at the poor stunned bird on the concrete as the guys around him laughed. It hadn’t even been doing anything annoying, had just been sitting there, picking at crumbs. He had felt himself shaking, getting madder and madder as everyone else just kept playing catch, nobody going over to see if the bird was okay; it wasn’t like Hook cared about pigeons but there was just something so infuriating about it, about hurting it for no reason, about thinking that the pain was funny.
The next time they’d tossed him the ball, he’d whipped it back at the guy who’d hit the pigeon, aiming dead for his thigh, right next to his dick. It hadn’t gone over well: the next thing anyone knew, they were on the ground, Hook’s skin scraping against the cement as they rolled, one hand fisted in the guy’s hair and one wrapped around his neck. Eventually they’d been pulled apart; Hook had brushed blood off his lip with the back of his hand.
He realized with a distant sense of surprise that he was grinning. Yeah. He could make his point just fine.
“What the fuck is your problem ?” the pigeon kid had spat at him, and Hook had just shrugged. So far nobody could give him a definitive answer, and anyway, he didn’t owe that guy an explanation. He didn’t owe anybody shit, actually, these people who had stood around and laughed at a joke that wasn’t funny, just because they were scared to be the only ones not laughing.
Hook’s dad had taught him that you always punch up at guys who are bigger than you. There wasn’t anything tough about picking on someone you knew you couldn’t lose to.
So the neighborhood kids had stopped inviting Hook to hang out, and Hook had come home with a dying pigeon in his hands, which made everybody freak out about getting the plague or something, but afterwards his dad hadn’t yelled at him or anything. He’d just clapped a hand on Hook’s shoulder and said, “Well, listen, if you’re gonna keep picking fights like this we’ve gotta get you trained up to win.”
He’d never planned to become a professional wrestler; the idea of being front of all those people and all those cameras, of doing the whole puffed up muscleman routine, starting feuds just to get ratings, made him want to curl up and hide somewhere. He’d just wanted to help his dad out in the early days of AEW, basically acting as a particularly strong go-fer while Ricky and Hobbs did all the fancy footwork. But then everything had happened with Punk, the whole “Send Hook” meme and everything, and it turned out people liked that Hook didn’t have much to say and didn’t even seem to much want to be there. So when Fuego called his name with that stupid meme, making a joke out of Hook in order to make a joke out of Team Taz, he’d looked at his dad and then at the ramp and then back at his dad again.
His dad had given him a weird, almost sad sort of smile. He’d said: “Only start something if you plan to finish it,” so Hook had marched out to the ring and he’d done exactly that.
-
He’d kind of thought, maybe hoped a little, that he’d make more sense in this world. That people would stop asking what his problem was when what they really meant was that Hook himself was a problem.
But the wrestling world is full of big guys with big mouths, full of affectionate back-slapping and play wrestling and hanging out by catering talking about nothing. Hook’s not good at any of that stuff and doesn’t want to be. So he mostly just sticks to what he was doing before, which is trailing around after his dad and Team Taz, AirPods in and volume up.
One good thing about no one ever expecting him to have anything to say is that they leave him alone, more or less, and it gives Hook plenty of opportunity to observe. With the time he saves not running his mouth about every thought in his head, the way most of the guys do, he picks up on a bunch of the stuff that goes on between bouts and interviews. He gets pretty good at knowing when someone is getting antsy, looking at him with that expression that says they want to throw a lacrosse ball at a pigeon, and they think that he’s the pigeon to hit.
Still: Danhausen is a surprise.
He had noticed Danhausen for the first time before either of them even debuted: it’s hard not to pay attention to the guy who’s jocular and friendly one minute and then threatening to shove a railroad spike down peoples’ throats the next. It’s a weird bit, but Danhausen pulls it off, the way his body changes, the way his gait becomes confident and predatory. Hook thinks it’s kind of cool, even though it doesn’t get a ton of airtime, probably because it freaks everyone out so much.
“It’s not if you win it’s how you win,” his dad always says, shaking his head when a fight gets out of control or fighters desperate for a win turn to cheating. But Hook thinks he means, like, drugs. Whatever Danhausen’s got going on seems like something else entirely.
He looks at Hook sometimes, eyes dark. Hook notices but does nothing; let him look. Everyone else is, sizing him up, taking his measure. Hook mostly just tries to avoid him, until QT and his stupid fucking certificate, when Danhausen comes after him out of nowhere. He doesn’t even do anything, really, just draws close and points right at Hook, the curse thing or whatever — and usually Hook would just lay him out and be done with it, but —
Hook waits. Just for a second. He doesn’t know why, he just . . . wants to see what Danhausen might do.
C’mon, he thinks. Do something other than look.
But nothing happens. Hook pushes past, trying not to call the feeling in his stomach disappointment.
“What a fucking weirdo,” Ricky mutters when Hook gets backstage. He doesn’t clap Hook’s shoulder because Ricky’s all right. “What was that?”
Hook shrugs.
“You piss him off somehow?”
Hook thinks about it. There was the way Danhausen used to look at him, and the one time Hook had looked back, just a few seconds of returning the gaze, enough to say I know you’re looking at me. But nothing had come of it.
He shakes his head, then shrugs again. Ricky says: “Well. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Not like you can’t take him.”
Hook thinks about railway spikes, and about what some guys are willing to do to win. He’s pretty sure that he could take Danhausen on, railway spikes and all, but. Something niggles in the back of his brain. An alarm he doesn’t know what for.
He shrugs for a third time and Ricky says, “Christ, kid, if you never open your mouth they won’t have anything to put on your merch.”
“Send Hook,” says Hook, and Ricky laughs so hard that it almost drowns out the music for the next match.
-
Danhausen shows up during Hook’s TV spot recording. He pops out of a garbage can. He somehow manages to break into Hook’s locker in the changing room and leaves a Valentine with his own face on it that says BE CURSED. XO Danhausen.
“Dude’s obsessed with you,” Hobbs diagnoses, peering over Hook’s shoulder. “Does he want to fight you or to fuck you?”
Hook drives an unkind elbow into his side. That’s not it, he thinks. That’s not — Hook gets hit on by women a lot, he’s got the kind of hot face that says he won’t care about your emotional interiority but he will eat out for hours as a matter of professional pride, and he mostly manages to get laid by keeping eye contact and then kind of jerking his head toward the door. And it’s fine. People don’t like Hook for his personality and never have, so it’s easy. But.
But Danhausen keeps leaving the locker room before Hook enters it and he’s been asking people shit like, “When is Hook’s birthday?”
Why does he need to know Hook’s birthday ?
“No, I’m serious, he’s obsessed,” Hobbs says. “He’s been tweeting about you since like, November.”
Hook frowns. Danhausen was out with an injury in November; he hadn’t even been signed to AEW yet. Hook’s seen the footage of the injury; it looked pretty bad.
Hobbs holds up his phone and waves it a little; Hook grabs it and scrolls through. Hobbs is right. It’s innocuous but it’s there, tweets that don’t even read like new Danhausen, too generic, just commentary really. He thinks Hook is cool.
Weirdly, that sort of makes Hook feel embarrassed. His ears feel a little hot and his eyes skip over the tweets, like he can’t stand to read them. He shoves the phone back at Hobbs, mad for no reason, and grabs his stuff, letting the card fall on the floor. XO Danhausen.
-
His paint is different. Danhausen’s.
It takes Hook a few weeks to understand why the weird encounter on the ramp is bothering him, and as with most of his breakthroughs this one happens at the gym, when he’s turned his muscles liquid and tired and it gives his mind room to work. But now that he knows it, he can’t let it go. It’s stupid, probably; guys change it up all the time. You have to, to stay relevant, to keep people interested.
But this feels different. The way Danhausen had looked at him in the arena had been different, not the dark, hooded-eye gaze from before, but something else, big and trembling.
Curious despite himself, Hook steals some time in the locker room to watch old YouTube clips of Danhausen’s fights from the indie circuit, before he signed with AEW. Hook’s right: it’s a different design on his face, although it’s close.
Other stuff is different, too. The way he walks, the way he holds himself, the hunger with which he bites down. The way his lips curl back to reveal a mouthful of too many teeth. He’s quieter than the new Danhausen, too. Doesn’t taunt his opponents or try to engage the audience. He doesn’t even seem to want to play with his food: he stalks into the ring like a hunter and he fights like he wants to produce a carcass. Hook’s not super thrilled about the way a shiver climbs up his spine, watching; about the way it feels electric when old Danhausen looks right at the camera, as if he’s looking into the future, at Hook.
Hook wouldn’t choose to fight him, but he would, he thinks, if that guy had followed him down the ramp. He’d have to. Part of him would want to, maybe, because you’d have to be completely no-holds-barred. You’d have to be willing to eat teeth and spit them back out. You’d have to be willing to get bloody.
But New Danhausen is, like.
Goofy?
Hook doesn’t get it. Old Danhausen was creepy as fuck, but he was an amazing wrestler. New Danhausen seems to mostly stand around and point at people.
He pops up after a match, for God’s sake, digging a finger into Hook’s chest and demanding they fight, really fight, not the weird curse shit but an actual bout in the ring. And it’s just. Hook doesn’t want to fight that guy. He’s … funny. He’s weird and charming and kind of — whatever, Hook doesn’t know. He’s likeable. Hook doesn’t laugh at a lot of stuff but Danhausen’s TV bullshit has gotten to him a couple of times.
Hobbs thinks knocking the shit out of Danhausen would bring in pretty big views, but Hook doesn’t fight for ratings or for Tony or for the fans, he fights because sometimes people need to be punched in the face. And anyway, Hook doesn’t want to be the asshole that beats the shit out of AEW’s favorite little guy. Hook knows he can be an dick but he’s not a heel.
This doesn’t seem to matter to Danhausen, who insists on being everywhere, all the time, needling Hook but always staying just out of reach. Every room Hook walks into, Danhausen seems to have just left: twice he enters the locker room and someone says, “Oh, hey man, Danhausen was just asking about you.”
Asking about. Not for. All this guy can talk about, apparently, is money, curses, and Hook.
It makes Hook feel like — it makes him so —
Old Danhausen had looked at Hook all the time. Eyes lidded. Thoughtful, maybe. But he’d never said anything, never seemed to want to do any more than look. New Danhausen can’t seem to look for more than five seconds, chattering on about Hook being his nemesis but never just standing still and letting Hook look at him.
It’s driving Hook nuts.
-
In the end, it’s a lot of things.
It’s Ricky and Hobbs starting to bicker all the time, putting Hook in the extremely ill-fitting role of peacemaker on Team Taz. It’s the fans, the way they love him for being silent and moody and rough in the ring but get upset when he won’t pose for pictures or do cameos. It’s reporters who follow him around backstage and shove microphones in his face, asking him stupid questions no one cares about his answers for anyway. It’s Tony Nese breathing down his neck for no fucking reason, mad because Hook’s dad was cool in the 90s, mad because Hook’s a good wrestler, mad maybe because Hook has a pussy-eating mouth and Nese looks like he thinks a 2AM text that reads wyd counts as foreplay. Pick one; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Hook’s got enough on his plate without the ever-present problem of Danhausen, distracting Hook all the time and setting him on edge.
By the time Danhausen interrupts Hook’s interview by stomping on a bag full of discarded Lays, Hook feels like a string about to snap.
It feels good, to shove in, to press against Danhausen’s chest and keep him pinned after so many weeks of having him slip through Hook’s fingers, gone just before Hook entered the room. It feels good to press close and hear Danhausen’s rabbiting heartbeat, to know that for once Hook has him on his back foot and not the other way around.
“You wanted my attention?” Hook snarls. “You got it now.”
For a long second, they look at each other. Danhausen seems frozen in place. Good, Hook thinks. Good. Let him see how it feels, to be looked at, to have words gum up in your throat, to not know what it is the other person wants from you. You’ve got my attention. What are you going to do with it?
He pulls back and storms out, electricity in his hands.
-
Hook’s not really a drinker, but Ricky drags him out that night anyway, him and Hobbs both. They’re not fighting at the moment, which Hook guesses is good. But he grew up around the ring; he knows how it goes with stables. He knows when you put that many people in a room who all want the same thing, eventually it’s going to get tense.
He goes because he feels frenetic, still, almost jumpy: he wants to fight someone or fuck someone or, barring either of those things, he wants to drink enough that the urgency dies away. He’s not used to this, being riled like this. It feels like sparks beneath his skin.
Hook leans against the bar and lets people talk at and around him, nurses a beer for a while and then switches to shots when he starts to feel like the music is too loud and people are standing too close. It helps dull things, makes him more languid and calm, like his standing a few inches outside of his body.
Someone is talking to him, her voice high and soft, and Hook still has electricity in his hands, making his fingers restless. He rolls his head to look at her, considers. Looks a little older, maybe thirty or so. Brunette. Pale. Dark lipstick. Blue eyes that catch the low light. It’s really working for him, actually.
When she sees that she has his attention, she grins, wide and sharp. Across the room, Hobbs flashes him a thumbs up.
Hook leans in. “You wanna?” he asks, the first thing he’s said to her all night.
She mimics his body language, leaning in toward him. Hook has a flash of earlier that day, Danhausen against the wall, the crunch of chips beneath their feet. They’d been standing close like this. Hook’s face had been at the same angle. If Hook could have — if Hook had wanted to —
Does he want to fight you or to fuck you?
Hook blinks. The woman is saying something about getting her coat. He nods, on autopilot, and watches her duck away toward a table and Hook is thinking about half-lidded blue eyes and the dark smear of lipstick on Danhausen’s mouth, and he is thinking shit. He is thinking fuck. He is thinking some guys will do anything to win.
But Hook’s not. Hook’s never.
By the time she comes back, Hook’s gone.
-
He pushes it away, the night in the bar, the flash of blue eyes. This is just part of it, he thinks, of whatever game Danhausen is playing, whatever angle he’s trying to work to get a leg up, and Hook’s not going to give it to him. He snaps at Hobbs in the locker room and at his mom over dinner and at his trainer in the gym, working furiously, flirting with a tear or a sprain as his form slips in favor of speed and fury.
But he’s ready next time. Fuck this, fuck Danhausen: he wants a fight, Hook thinks, yanking on his wrist wraps, he’ll get a fucking fight. When Danhausen yells, “SEND HOOK,” into the microphone, Hook is already waiting in gorilla. They barely have time to queue up his music before he’s marching out, that electricity back in his hands, ready. Ready.
Danhausen lets him get close again before he clams up, mouth going wide in a frozen grimace.
“Maybe this is a little extreme to do right now,” he dissembles, “maybe some other time — ”
“We,” snarls Hook, not thinking about how it’s the first word he’s spoken into the mic, “are doing this. Right now. ”
And there it is: a flicker in Danhausen’s eyes, blue to black then back to blue, something sparking up in them, something that Hook finally recognizes as hunger. Danhausen opens his mouth and Hook thinks yeah thinks come on thinks fucking do something, fight or fuck, he doesn’t even know which one he wants anymore and they’ve barely ever even been in the same room.
And then Mark Sterling is yelling, “Hooooold on,” and Tony fucking Nese is coming out of nowhere, shoving Hook into the ropes before tossing Danhausen into the corner and stomping down on his leg.
Hook gets up. Hook realizes he’s grinning. He flings himself at Nese with a kind of ferocity he doesn’t usually bring to the ring, usually doesn’t have to. But he’d come out here to throw punches and he can’t think of a better person to throw them at.
It feels good. Wrestling always feels good. Winning does. He chases Nese into the arms of his stupid lawyer and he feels it zipping through him until Danhausen’s hand lands on his chest and it all flows directly to his palm, lightening to a rod.
Hook snaps. He yanks Danhausen forward and snarls, “Whatever the fuck it is you did to yourself, leave me out of it,” and if Danhausen scolds him for swearing, Hook is out of the ring before he can hear it.
-
Hook apologizes to his mom and his trainer for being an asshole but he doesn’t apologize to Hobbs because Hobb’s been a real dick lately, him and Ricky getting into it all the time about the stupidest shit. His dad lets them, knows better than to try to make wrestlers play nice, but it sets Hook’s teeth on edge.
He takes to sitting by himself in one of the back rooms by the vending machine, eating chips with his headphones turned all the way up. It’s fine. He’d liked it better when Team Taz felt sort of like, not a family exactly but a crew at least, but he’s old enough to know that nothing lasts forever in professional wrestling. Everything’s got a timebomb ticking away inside it somewhere, has to. Otherwise they’d all reach nirvana and there would be nothing to put on TV.
Still: for his birthday, everyone gets it together enough to sit through a team lunch. Hobbs gives him a very badly wrapped $1000 Amazon gift card; Ricky’s gift, beautifully presented, is a full day at the spa, including a milk bath and a facial, which he knows damn well Hook will never use.
“If you don’t want it just give it back, I’ll get a refund,” Ricky tells him, grinning wide: he’d bought it with the express purpose of Hook not liking it, and they both know it.
“Fuck off,” says Hook, shoving it into his hoodie pocket because the real gift is Ricky wasting money on a spa day he now won’t get to use.
His dad doesn’t let them have cake because Hook’s got a match against JD Drake, but he promises that if Hook gets the win he’ll take them all out after. It kind of feels like how it used to, all afternoon and up through match prep, Hobbs and Ricky hyping him up in the locker room before sending him out to gorilla. His dad’s commentating the match, Hook suspects for ratings purposes rather than any sense of family feeling from TK, and by the time Hook gets the pin he feels like maybe whatever the past few months were, they’re over.
And then Danhausen starts down the ramp.
Hook can’t help it; he closes his eyes, blows a long breath out his nose. He tugs at his hair, the sharp pain of it grounding him as he watches Danhausen climb into the ring, mouth already working, saying something about Tony Nese and —
Christ alive, Hook thinks. He wants to tag team.
“Perhaps . . . you could be . . . in Danhausen ’s corner,” Danhausen says, eyes flickering up to Hook’s face and then away, oddly vulnerable. The crowd roars behind him and it straightens Danhausen’s spine a little, gives him the juice to tap Hook’s shoulder a few times. His eyes flash, no dark this time, just blue and brighter blue.
Hook wants to pull him closer, push their noses together, make Danhausen look at him until Hook can get to the bottom of whatever is hidden there, until he can make even just a part of this whole farce make any fucking sense at all.
He doesn’t do that.
He can’t. He’s on TV. His dad is commentating.
He shoves Danhausen down and away, maybe hard enough this time to fucking end it, to rip whatever it is that’s been buzzing in him out from under his skin. For a moment, Danhausen stares up at him, wide and shocked, and then with jerky movements he reaches into his jacket and pulls out —
Fuck, thinks Hook. Fuck, it’s a bag of chips with a bow on it, it’s a birthday present —
Danhausen skitters from the ring, not looking back. There’s a roaring in Hook’s ears. He bends down and picks the bag up, thumb brushing under the stupid little bow. He imagines Danhausen sticking it on, pleased and careful, blues eyes brown hair dark mouth, fuck fuck fuck he thinks, and nearly sprints out of the ring.
-
His dad clicks his tongue when they meet up in the parking lot; Hook sinks down in the seat and pulls his hoodie tight. He doesn’t want to hear it.
“You forgot something back there,” he says, fairly neutrally, given Hook’s dad’s constitutional inability not to have an opinion on all things wrestling, and tosses something into Hook’s lap. It’s the fucking chips, pink bow and all. “What’s going on, kid? You’re all over the place.”
Hook shrugs, but his dad is his dad, so into the pointed, waiting silence, Hook mutters: “Dunno.”
His dad gives him a shrewd look. “His whole … I’m just a funny little guy shtick really got to you, huh?”
Hook blows out a breath and reluctantly emerges from his hoodie, accepting that this is a conversation he can’t shrug his way out of. “Kind of.”
“It only kind of got to you or it’s only kind of the thing that got to you?”
Hook grits his teeth. “No, it’s.” He flaps his hand to indicate Nese and Team Taz and the fans and being kind of famous and also the face-painted freak who has become the main source of anxiety and maybe, despite his objectively weird posture and commitment to keeping his facepaint on, some sort of sexuality crisis. “Everything.”
Understanding dawns on his dad’s face. Hook hates it: he knows his dad is stressed about Team Taz and commentating and being Hook’s, like, manager or whatever. And he knows he’s doing the best he can. This is why Hook never talks about stuff; it always makes people look like that.
Hook traces the edge of the gift bow with his thumb. It’s his favorite brand of chips. Half a year ago Danhausen had been this crazy scary indie wrestler and now he’s a crowd darling who made sure to note Hook’s birthday.
“Don’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble, kid,” his dad advises as he starts the car. “Focus on the things you can choose and figure out the rest when it comes.”
“Yeah,” says Hook, and his dad takes pity on him and lets it lie, turning on the radio loud enough that talking isn’t possible.
He does feel sort of better, though.
-
Danhausen goes quiet. No more interruptions in Hook’s workouts or interviews; no more tweeting about him; no more popping out of trash cans. And that’s fine. That’s what Hook wanted: to have things back to how they were. He feels great about it. He loves winning, and this a win, so Hook is definitely, absolutely, in a great mood about it.
“Dude,” says Ricky after he accidentally hands Hook the wrong towel in the locker room and Hook nearly suplexes him to the floor, “what the fuck crawled up your ass and died there?”
Hook doesn’t grace him with an answer, just bares his teeth and then flings himself into a shower so hot he thinks maybe he sears some of his skin off.
It’s just —
The way Danhausen had looked at him. Blue eyes. Only blue, no dark flash, nothing, wide and earnest, wanting Hook to say yes to him, wanting Hook to say yes, wanting Hook.
He’d put a bow on a bag of chips, for Christ’s sake. It’s just hard to know that he’s the one who put that guy on the ground. This was what he hadn’t wanted. This was the whole reason he kept saying no, the whole reason he’d avoided a big confrontation in the first place. But Danhausen had kept pushing. What was Hook supposed to do but push back? What had Danhausen wanted? He cursed him, he challenged him to a fight, then he offered to tag-team. None of it makes any sense.
Hook only knows that Nese challenges him to a fight because they get booked on the public schedule. Hook’s not even supposed to be there. He’s not booked for anything. He just goes because he has the day free and Tony likes to have extras around and he’s got this niggling feeling in the back of his mind. All of Sterling’s other guys fight dirty, and Nese certainly does. And Danhausen — new Danhausen — he’s so, like. Trusting. It’s like he doesn’t know how people are, how they operate. How they deadnail pigeons for no reason.
So Hook goes and he waits backstage with his eyes glued to the TV and he’s not planning on doing anything about it because it’s important that Danhausen learns, if he’s going to survive in this business. But he just wants to watch. He wants to know what happens in real-time, not through reportage or later TV airings.
It’s a bloodbath.
Hook watches with his throat closed up, his hands in fists. Nese cheats and Sterling cheats and Danhausen is going to be hurt, like really hurt, like out for months and months again kind of hurt, and the last time that happened he came back an entirely different person. Hook just met this one and he’s already ruined Hook’s whole life, so what will a third Danhausen do?
This is what Hook tell himself he’s thinking as he finds himself out on the ramp, finds himself sliding into the ring. This is what Hook tells himself he’s thinking as he scares Nese and Sterling out of the arena, leaving Danhausen to collect himself.
But as he stares down at Danhausen’s outstretched hand, Hook knows that’s not what he was thinking. Hook knows that he was thinking about blue eyes and black lips, about electricity grounded through someone’s touch against his chest. He was thinking that Danhausen had a nice face, and it would be a shame if Nese bruised it.
He was thinking, somewhat helplessly, does he want to fight you or fuck you?
His dad says Hook should focus on what he should choose, and deal with the rest as it comes, so Hook looks at Danhausen and waits for his eyes to flash, dark and heavy-lidded. But they don’t. It’s only blue, blue, blue.
He reaches out and takes Danhausen's hand.