HenchStick

HenchStick is the slash ship between Henchman and Stickler from the Cuphead fandom.

Canon
In "Sweater Off Dead" (S1E8), when the Devil hosts a party celebrating the capture of many souls, Stickler holds the party back while others celebrate, much to the annoyance of the Devil and Henchman. He insists that the Devil cannot rest because Cuphead's soul has not yet been captured. When the Devil leaves, Henchman condemns Stickler for his behaviour, to which Stickler condescendingly refuses to apologize for doing his job.

While they're not seen interacting that much on-screen and judging by his reaction upon seeing Stickler coming in, where he says "Not this guy.", it can be assumed that Henchman does not have a positive view of The Devil's auditor. He expresses annoyance with him as he keeps pestering the Devil about how he hasn't collected Cuphead's soul yet, even frantically motions for him not to bring it up, and gets angry at him for ruining the latter's party, only to be met with Stickler reacting defensively and refusing to apologize for doing his job. Despite this, his annoyance towards him doesn't stop him from giving Stickler the invisible sweater so that the Devil can't kill him. Indicating that he does seem to actually show some concern for him. However, it cannot be said that the feeling is mutual.

As of the second season, Henchman is also shaping up to be the perfect opposite of Stickler. Personality-wise, Henchman is a tad dopey but emotionally intelligent and caring towards his boss, where Stickler is a highly intelligent auditor with a brain like a machine but relentlessly takes his own boss to task over bureaucracy despite the very real dangers of doing so. They also have opposite relationships with the Devil - Henchman is the closest thing the Devil has to a friend, whereas Stickler is completely and totally despised by Old Scratch. This culminates in an attempt by the Devil to flat out try to kill Stickler, only thwarted by the impenetrable, invisible sweater. Furthermore, Sticker either cannot or refuses to pick up on the Devil's mood swings. Henchman, however, is likely the only person in the setting who can safely counter his boss' volatile behaviour and calm him down.

Fanon
HenchStick is somewhat of a rarepair in the Cuphead fandom as there's no real reasoning behind it other than that they both work for the Devil. Much like DevilDice, the ship's portrayals tend to ignore the canonical portrayal of the characters' interactions. In this case Stickler as someone who doesn't care about anyone in the Underworld and Henchman hating Stickler's guts and pestering  towards their boss, the Devil. Sometimes, the ship is portrayed in a similar way to Lumity, with Henchman being in the role of Luz and Stickler being in the role of Amity.

There are currently no works on AO3.

Fandom

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