Before the Mic Cut: Wyatt Butcher

Wyatt Butcher had learned to trust the feeling long before he learned to name it. It wasn’t fear. Fear was loud. This was quieter than that. Subtle. The kind of wrongness that settled in your chest and stayed there, unmoving, like something waiting for permission.

Cody Cage bent closer, eyes following the departing figure, a man with peroxide-white hair and wire-rimmed glasses who trailed laughter behind him like exhaust as he vanished down the corridor.

“Who was that?” Cody asked.

Wyatt shifted his weight, eyes still on the door. He opened his mouth

to answer—

Clap.

The sound cut clean through the moment.

“Hey guys,” one of the hosts said, hands together, voice suddenly louder, brighter. “Sorry about that, ran long.”

Wyatt closed his mouth again. The answer could wait. Or maybe it didn’t matter. The hosts moved fast now, filling the room with motion and noise. Smiles wide. Energy high. Introductions flying out like they were reading from a card. First names. Last names. Social handles dropped casually, like credentials.

Glenn Sterling’s handshake was firm and deliberate, the kind you gave out of habit rather than impression. It was clean. Efficient. Finished. He didn’t scan the room so much as accept it, eyes moving only long enough to place himself within it. Cameras, couches, microphones—it all registered as setup, nothing more. Glenn had come from a time when rooms adjusted to the conversation, not the other way around. Whatever was happening here, he assumed it would eventually settle into something recognizable.

Cody, on the other hand, was loose. Comfortable. This felt like opportunity to him. Wyatt had seen that look before. He didn’t fault him for it. Different instincts. Different eras.

Wyatt hung back, weight on one hip, arms crossed but not tight. The kind of casual that takes years to perfect. His attention had shifted from expressions to the invisible architecture of the room. The distances. The angles. Who crowded forward. Who created space. Whose words rushed to fill gaps and whose silence spoke volumes.

The temperature shifted again as more bodies entered the room.

Mountain came in quietly, shoulders nearly brushing the doorframe. He didn’t look around. Didn’t acknowledge the cameras. He just found a place and stopped moving, like a piece of furniture that had always been there.

Wyatt's jaw tightened. "Christ Jack"

Happy Jack followed, suit and tie crisp against the smudged remnants of his face paint. His smile hung in the balance between punchline and threat. Jack had always lived in that space, the blur where character ended and the man began.

Wyatt had never shared a locker room with Happy Jack, but the stories followed him everywhere, whispers about matches that crossed lines, about real blood mixed with fake paint. Some said he'd once broken character to break someone's jaw. Others swore he never broke character at all. Wyatt had dismissed half those stories as impossible. Now, watching Jack's smile twitch at the corners, he wasn't so sure.

Then Iceman and Thunder arrived as a unit. Their capes hung from shoulders built for spectacle, colors that belonged on warning signs rather than fabric. The hosts pivoted in unison, their expressions shifting from professional interest to the particular delight of people who've just discovered something mockable.

"Wait—seriously?" one of them said through a half-suppressed laugh. "Is this some kind of coordinated bit?"

Jax leaned back, already grinning into his mic. “Hold on, hold on. Are we doing superheroes and clowns today?”

The other host looked between Happy Jack’s face paint and the capes. “I mean, I respect the confidence. I just didn’t realize it was cosplay night.”

Laughter spilled out, easy and unguarded. The room reacted in pieces. Happy Jack chuckled, impossible to tell if it was part of the joke or aimed at it. Cody smiled, a little unsure. Iceman tilted his head, unreadable. Thunder crossed his arms, cape settling behind him.

Glenn didn’t move.

Mountain didn’t blink.

And Wyatt felt the space between laughs stretch just a little too thin, like something pulled tight enough to snap, the moment anyone leaned on it wrong.

This wasn’t a room full of wrestlers being interviewed. This was a room full of people being tested by accident. The hosts kept laughing, filling the space, unaware of how close they were standing to the edge of something they couldn’t control. The cameras rolled. The lights stayed hot. No one said stop.

Wyatt exhaled slowly through his nose. Water didn’t boil all at once.

It heated quietly. And by the time you noticed the sound, it was already too late.