Chapter Text
Choking someone out was nothing new for Gunther. Actually, it was so routine for him that it had long since become blasé. Other people went to work and filed paperwork, or assembled car parts, or gently reminded people to try turning their devices off and then on again. He choked people out. Doing it to Jey Uso (again) was no different.
Usually, he wouldn’t even watch the footage of his own matches. Why bother? He was there, he knows what happened. But he’d caught a glimpse of Jey’s face on the Jumbotron as he lost consciousness, and something about it was compelling. He’d rewatched the match a good few times now, each time locking in on Jey’s eyes as that telltale haze settled over them and foreshadowed his defeat. The big, vibrant, sparkling eyes that could win over any crowd the second they came out from under those ridiculous shades, glazing over from asphyxiation.
As much as people liked to speculate about where his capacity for violence came from, he got no sadistic thrill from what he did for a living. To him, the idea was as absurd as an accountant getting off to their spreadsheets. He’d heard whispers in the locker room about wrestlers who did, and he hoped they were false. His opinion was that mixing business and pleasure in that way would be beneath any of them, even the ones who insisted on debasing the sport by behaving like clowns. And besides, he had no interest in men anyway.
So it was…curious, to say the least, when Jey’s glazed-over eyes started showing up in his dreams. The vision of them recontextualizing his own memories of the way Jey’s throat gasped and spasmed in his grip, the way Jey’s hands clawed at his arm, the way Jey’s movements grew weaker and more helpless until the ringing of the bell saved him. Every time he woke up with his chest heaving, his skin clammy, his body reacting…strangely.
Oh well. Es macht nicht. He was sure it was just an odd fixation that would pass eventually. He got up for yet another cold shower, sure that eventually the challenging task of defending his reclaimed title would drive it from his mind.