#trans!hook

So, it wasn't until whoever had walked in plopped down next to Garcia, just over Yuta's head, that he blinks and twists to see who's there.

"Uh," Garcia says, looking up from his own phone, "hi?"

Hook is sitting back such that he's basically swallowed by his hoodie, a shock of blonde hair sticking out, his handsome face all pouted and his shoulders hunched. For a long moment, he just glares at them. Long enough that Yuta pockets his phone and shifts up off Garcia's lap, sitting upright on the couch.

"Dude, what's up?" Yuta asks, and Hook's eyes flicker to him. This quiet guy that Yuta's met maybe all of one time seems, for the first time, to possibly be uncomfortable. Unsure. He's looking between the two of them, hands stuffed into the front of his hoodie, and he seems...anxious.

"My dad...told me you guys are trans," Hook says, and it's the most consecutive words Yuta's heard from him. His voice is quiet, low, and there's that distinct New York accent on him. Yuta looks at Garcia, then at Hook, his hackles starting to raise.

Garcia, the bolder of the two, the one who strutted in his first day with his top surgery scars and vagina and had undressed in front of the whole locker room long before Yuta got the same courage, asks,

"And?"

Hook's frown deepens, and he glances around. There's a few other guys in there with them, but they're being too loud over some video game for them to notice the three guys on the couch. Finally, Hook shifts to sit closer to them, angling his back to the rest of the guys, and he pulls something halfway out of his pocket.

At first, Yuta doesn't know what he's looking at. It's a...mount of flesh, maybe, with a clear cup coming out of a gaping hole in the top, and-

"Oh...oh!" Yuta gasps, and Hook, a vibrant shade of red, shoves his STP back into his front pocket.

"I don't know...how to use it. I wanna start using the urinals here, but.... Internet doesn't help much," Hook mutters quietly. Garcia, who a moment ago looked like he was rearing for a fight, is suddenly smiling with all his teeth.

He glances at Yuta and the two of them share a look of excitement, right before they focus back on Hook. Yuta grabs Hook's hand and gives it a tug.

"There's a single-stall bathroom a couple halls down, we'll show you the trick to it!" Yuta promises him.

"If yours doesn't work, it might just not fit," Garcia adds, standing up, and Hook is wide-eyed as the two of them tug him along, excited, thrilled, and Yuta wonders in the back of his head: Is this what it felt like for an endangered species to find another one of their own? Is this how the last two Dodo birds felt, huddled together in the forest? This thrill, this excitement, this immediate knowledge that he would lay himself down on the railroad tracks for Hook?

"You can try mine, I have an extra one," Yuta says once they're in the hallway. "If yours doesn't fit, I mean. I always bring two in case one breaks."

It was his own fault, getting used to having someone there to take care of him. Someone used to be there to lay behind him and rub his stomach and help him through the pain of. Well. All of it. But that person was gone now, and Max- Max didn't want to try and go down the road of thinking what Cole was really thinking during those times. He didn't want to know what Cole really thought of him.

Another cramp rolls through Max and it's almost, almost bad enough to keep him from hearing his hotel room door open up. Startled, his head jerks up and he blinks, and a thought flashes through his mind - Cole, breaking in, hearing he was back in town, hearing he was travelling again, but-

It's not Cole.

It's not one person.

It's three.

"...What the fuck are you morons doing in my hotel room?" Max snaps as Yuta, Hook, and Daniel Garcia filter in. Yuta, whose arms are full of Burger King and who is holding the room key between his teeth, just does his sickeningly adorable smile, and Hook meanders over to Max's bed and just. Sits on it.

"Heard you were back in town, buddy," Garcia says, dropping a bag and sitting on the other bed. "And would you look at that! You're still synched with us."

Max blinks in disbelief as the Goon Squad invades his hotel room, Yuta setting the warm Burger King bags down and stuffing the key from his teeth into his back pocket. He's all smiles still, passing out the food as he sticks his tongue out at Hook.

"Told you. Once a bunch of guys synch up, we don't synch out."

"That's the lamest thing I've ever heard," Hook answers, sitting back against the pillows beside Max. Max shifts himself and frowns, sitting back as Hook pulls a bottle of Ibuprofen out of his front hoodie pocket.

And Max had forgotten about that, completely. That at one point, he'd walked into the bathroom in AEW and tried to covertly undo a pad, taking the wrapping off inch by terrible inch, sweating because there were other guys in the room who would hear, and they would know, and they-

Heard. And they knew. And before Max knew it, Garcia's head was popping up from the top of the next stall and he was waving a pad at Max.

"Hey, twinsies!" he exclaimed to a frozen, shocked Max.

It was Garcia who tugged him along and introduced him to the others, the covert and not-so-covert transmen of the roster, who were such fucking dorks. There wasn't a single not-mid transman on their roster, just a bunch of dorky twinks, and Max only hung out with them to make them feel better about themselves.

"I've got a heating pad," Garcia says, tossing an electric pad on Max's stomach, "a bunch of chocolate, and like, every Shawn Michaels match that exists on DVD."

"God, give me a chocolate," Yuta groans, crawling up onto the bed next to Garcia. "You got the Burger King!"

"Cuz I was craving it, but now that I smelled it I have the ick," Yuta whines, which, fuck, feeding that guy on his period is a nightmare. "Hook can have it. He isn't even bleeding anymore."

Hook, without a word, snatches up the bag and sets it in his lap, all of this happening while Max is trying to understand what's going on. And then, at some point, when all the guys are laid back and watching Shawn Michaels flash his ass on the hotel TV screen, Max realizes exactly what's going on.