Chapter Text
Hook has never been more annoyed in his life.
Okay, well there was that one time when his dad kept insisting he bring his girlfriend home for dinner when he was sixteen. She wasn’t his girlfriend for a start, she was his volunteer model for a photography project he’d been doing and his dad had just so happened to see them together while Hook was showing her some of the final photos.
It had taken him three months to convince his dad that no, they were not dating and that no, he wasn’t attracted to her at all. He has a sneaking suspicion his dad still thinks they dated to this day, but Taz always denies it with this weird look in his eye.
But now, right now, he could pour his water over the man currently blabbering to him too quickly for him to follow. Danhausen for the past two weeks has been all over him, excitedly expressing how he was so glad they were friends now and how he couldn’t wait for their tag match on Sunday.
Hook wants to waterboard him.
Alright, he doesn’t. Maybe.
The demon just…won’t stop talking. Hook even put his headphones in and stared him in the eyes and he still won’t get the gist! How socially inept could a demon be? Yes, he does realise how stupid that sounds, but he’s angry and the music blaring through his headphones is not helping him calm down like it should be.
“Hook should let Danhausen paint his face.” Danhausen says, leaning closer to Hook than perhaps necessary. He’s wide-eyed and has a crooked smile plastered to his face. “Yes! Very nice, Danhausen can make Hook look very evil. Yes yes!”
Despite his voice being muffled by the music, Hook can make him out clearly. He almost wishes he couldn’t.
He pulls a face, lips turning down into a moderately less angry scowl and stares at danhausen like he’s delirious - he is, Hook won’t take anything else for an answer. The handsome devil really can’t think of a stupider idea. Paint his face? How ridiculous.
Danhausen frowns before pulling his face back a little so that hook can finally breathe air that is so rightfully his. “Don’t look at Danhausen like that! Hook will look great, very powerful.”
The handsome devil’s scowl turns more into a frown. He reaches up his left hand, an empty chip packet slotted between his fingers - mentally reminding himself that he still needs to throw it away - and yanks on his headphones with his remaining fingers until they fall out.
The crinkle of the plastic resounds around the room, the only other noise besides the music still blaring, albeit louder now that the buds had been removed. Hook should be mad. Should tell him that it’s a stupid idea and that he shouldn’t ask Hook such foolish things, but Danhausen has a look on his face that Hook just knows he doesn’t intend to drop the topic anytime soon.
He sighs.
“So, can he? Danhausen can make you look very evil. Like…what does Dadhausen say…oh! Right. Like the ‘handsome devil’ Hook should be?”
“‘Dadhausen’?”
Danhausen smiles a wide, almost unsettling smile at Hook's voice. He doesn’t get to hear it much, especially when Hook isn’t threatening him and he always seems to smile wider whenever he does decide to talk to him. It freaks the brunette out.
“Dadhausen calls you a ‘handsome devil’. Which reminds Danhausen, is that why Danhausen can’t curse Hook? Because Hook is a devil? Danhausen wouldn’t think of cursing a devil. They are much more powerful than Danhausen-”
“You call my dad ‘Dadhausen’?” Hook asks again, and he will never admit it to anyone that he feels almost guilty for cutting Danhausen off. The demon just has a tendency to go off topic onto wild rambles and Hook is more interested in when Danhausen started calling his father the, frankly, cute nickname.
Danhausen stares at him for a second, mouth agape. He's always unnaturally quiet when Hook speaks, at first Hook thought it was weird. inhuman. Then as the days pass by as they train together, it hits him that Danhausen isn’t human. It’s almost like he…stops talking so that he can hear Hook. It's weird.
Eventually, the demon nods with a clenched jaw. Originally, Hook thought Danhausen did that when he got angry, or Danhausen’s version of angry, anyway. But when the demon follows you around for two weeks straight like a lost puppy, you tend to pick up on some things. He wasn’t angry, he was just stimming. “What else would Danhausen call him?”
“His name?”
Danhausen shakes his head.
“You call me by mine,” Hook replies, his scowl lifting into a small smile.
“Yes, because Hook is…don’t ask Danhausen how he refers to people!” Danhausen leans further into Hook’s personal space again, this time moving his entire body forward so that they are pressed together. “Can Danhausen paint Hook’s face or not?”
Before Hook can reject him, Ricky strolls into their shared locker room whistling a little tune. He eyes Danhausen for a second, practically in Hook’s lap with how close he’s gotten during their nickname conversation, before shrugging and strolling over to his bag, title in hand.
Hook pushes the demon out of his personal space out of reflex and stares almost anxiously at Ricky, praying he doesn’t say anything.
He doesn't, of course, because Ricky is a saint and knows how to mind his own business. Even when Danhausen was trailing Hook and joining their group outings Ricky didn’t say a thing. Hook loves him for it. Hobbs, on the other hand…
“Oh! The pearl bracelet Starkhausen wears is on the floor. It slipped out of his bag while he was getting changed.” Danhausen points, breaking the silence. Ricky spins to look at him with a small smile before turning back and crouching to retrieve his beloved bracelet. It seems to almost gleam in the harsh locker room lighting.
Hook watches the interaction closer than is probably necessary, until he realises that he’s staring and tears his eyes away, unclenching his jaw. When had he tensed up? Ricky turns around again, bracelet on his wrist and looks at them both with kind eyes.
“Are you joining us for dinner, Danhausen?” He asks sweetly, and really. Why does Ricky have to be a sweetheart? Hook was going to invite him anyway, but it’s okay that Ricky did first. It just means he doesn’t have to speak more than he wants to. It's fine. Don’t worry about him.
Danhausen nods fervently, excited that team Taz likes to include him in their activities outside of work. Maybe they can convince Hook to let Danhausen paint his face? He should ask them when they get a free moment. Ricky smiles at his antics and pulls out his phone, fingers flying over the screen before putting it up to his ear. “Hook, Danhausen and I are already, where should we meet you?”
Hook uses Ricky's phone call to Hobbs as an excuse he’s free of the conversation and wraps his headphones around his phone messily. All he can hear is his dad telling him off, that he’s going to break his headphones if he keeps winding them around like that. The memory brings a little smile to his face, though not big enough for anyone to notice. He grabs his bag and water bottle, strides to the trash can and tosses the little plastic packet in before walking out of the door.
He knows Danhausen will follow.