#//ahhhh nice to have marley back in her element

[detectivedreameater]

Cut To The Chase || Cutler and Marley

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @clarkesconvenience and @detectivedreameater SUMMARY: Cutler’s name keeps popping up in Marley’s files, so she decides to pay him a visit.

Marley hated paperwork, and that was all her job had been lately. Paperwork. Case file after case file. She’d gotten to interrogate a few suspects, but nothing that exciting happened in the precinct. This wasn't a place of mass murderers and drug lords-- it was a place of mystery and intrigue! And supernaturals working underground, hiding behind prying eyes! She wanted to be out in the field, she needed to be out there. But they would never let her. Queenie would never let her. And she knew, somewhere deep inside, she knew they were right. It was dangerous for her to be out there, not just for herself, but others. But she still craved it, like another part of herself. It had just been another piece of her being that Roy had taken away from her, and she was still fighting to reclaim that.

And that was when a file came across her desk and for the third time the same name had popped up. Cutler Clarke. Several people had seemed to visit his shop just before the incidents had happened, and some of them had been carrying strange objects with them, now sitting in evidence lockers. One man had even had a wad of cash in an envelope with Clarke’s name on it, scrawled in shitty handwriting. People were so stupid sometimes. 

After digging back through the evidence files, Marley had a decision to make. Something was going on here, something shady. All of the files that had Clarke’s name referenced in them were “cold”, with no clue as to what happened next or what the suspects were. It was clear to Marley though, that these were supernatural incidents. Which meant this was something she needed to take care of. She was the only one that could, after all.

It was with that that the decision was made. She grabbed her jacket and her glasses, and tucked the files away in her desk, before heading out, the thrill of a chase already exciting her. 

The shop was closed by now, but that was no problem for someone who could turn invisible. Though her abilities were still faltering every now and then, Marley had enough focus to change herself and slip through the doors, past the alarms and towards the back of the store, where she noticed a light on. There seemed to be another door in the back, and she’d bet it was locked. Again, no problem for someone like her. She stepped through the door, peering around, and found herself in what looked like a makeshift hospital room. And in the middle, the man himself. Marley grinned wickedly before deciding it was a good time to reappear, standing next to the “exam table”. She tapped her fingernails loudly on it, and when the man turned, she tilted her head. “You know, I’m pretty sure once your license is taken away, you’re not supposed to keep practicing,” she said, brushing her jacket back to expose her badge as she put a hand on her hip. “In fact, I think that’s illegal.”

Cutler peeled the surgical gown from his body like he was shedding a second skin, deep grimace set into stone features. This had been a hard one, touch and go for a little while. Even after he had practically begged his patient - no, client - to take it easy in their recovery, they had insisted on walking out of there and driving themselves home. The envelope of cash sat heavy in his back pocket, dragging his spine into a guilty slouch. He dropped the gown into the wastepaper basket at his feet, where it drifted to meet the plasticky refuse of the operation. 

The tapping of fingernails on the table behind him snapped his posture back upward, feet leaving the ground in a terrified jump for a split second. He was absolutely sure he had locked the door behind him, and yet, there was a woman standing in front of him with a predatory look on her face. I guess that makes me the prey. As she spoke, the bare fluorescents above them flashed off her police badge and his heart sunk even lower, resting in the acid pit of his stomach. 

“Officer.” Sour fear lingered at the back of this throat and he swallowed it back down, vocal chords scraping together dryly. “I didn’t see you come in.” He nudged the basket away from him with the toe of his work boot, metal scraping against the unfurnished cement. Each action was slow and practiced, an illusion of ease. As he turned to face her head-on, he busied himself with the methodical rolling of his sleeves up his forearms. “I also didn’t see a warrant. Or catch your name.” 

A wicked smile spread on her face as fear pulsed through the air. Marley couldn’t help it. At her core, this was who she was. She fed on fear, she needed it, she craved it. It satisfied her like nothing else. Taking in the gulp of fear, she ran her hands along the cool table as she began her saunter over towards the man. “You wouldn’t have,” she said, shrugging, “but that’s not the point.” Ah, so he knew his rights. Too bad those didn’t always exist in the supernatural world. Her fingers clicked against the table again. “It’s a good thing I’m not here for an arrest, then, isn’t it?” She took a moment to look around the space, confirming her previous thoughts when she’d first found it. “I really just wanna talk. Because, you see…” she lifted her hand from the table and pointed at him, “your name has come up in quite a few of my files. And I thought, well, isn’t that strange?” Arms folded across her chest. “So, why don’t you tell me yourself, why exactly that is. And what, exactly…” she gestured around her, “this is. And we'll go from there.”

There was something unnerving about the grin on the face of his impromptu guest. It didn’t fit here. She was much too relaxed for the situation at hand. Her expression was light - joyful, almost - but something else slithered underneath, flashing behind dark eyes. Hunger. “If you’re not here for an arrest, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Cutler busied himself with the familiar motions of post-op cleanup, hoping the rote repetitions would mask the rising fear in his chest. She looked around the room, and he looked at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“This is exactly what it looks like.” He felt her pointed finger like a laser beam, drilling past his friendly facade with ease. This was her job, after all, if she was to be believed. “A store room, modified for my needs.” A hand raised to his chest, distractedly scratching away the discomfort. Bugs under a microscope were less exposed. “I-I’m sorry, what-?” He blinked away the stutter, tight tongue betraying him. “ What are you hoping to get out of this? You want money? I have money.” The envelope of money landed on the operating table with a dull thud as he threw it toward her. “Yours, if you want it.” 

“But, you see,” Marley said with a slick tongue, sliding around the side of the table and stepping ever closer to him, “I don’t want to leave. And, well, can you imagine how tragic it would be if someone left an anonymous tip at the station? About some backdoor surgical center with an unlicensed doctor working out of it?” She watched the envelope flop onto the table with disinterest, frowning. They always tried this. Still, she picked it up, looked inside, then dropped it back on the table. “I don’t need your money, nor do I want it. I’m not here for that. I’m here to determine whether or not you’re a problem. So, tell me,” her voice was getting more harsh now, lower. She was done playing around. His fear was egging her on, it was so palpable, so enticing. It wasn't enough to fill her up yet, she wanted more. “What do you do here, and why have you shown up in so many of my files?” Her hand curled tightly around the envelope of cash, tearing the outer paper with sharp nails and grip. “And if I were you, I’d choose my words carefully.”

Cold sweat prickled at Cutler’s temple as he watched the money drop back to the table. He could feel it pooling at the dip in his collarbone and sticking his shirt to the curves of his back. The only thing more terrifying than knowing what she wanted was not knowing. He had paid off a cop or two since he started the operation, but she seemed utterly disinterested in bribery. “Tragic.” He echoed her flatly, stalling for time. Running through his options in his mind. There weren’t many. When he spoke again, the slight crack of his voice betrayed him. “I feel like we might have, ah, gotten off on the wrong foot.” 

He took a half step backward, desperate to put space between them. Her fingers tore through the envelope in a decidedly inhuman manner, setting his teeth against each other. “Officer. You’ve got the upper hand here, clearly. But I’d like to at least know who I’m speaking to before I incriminate myself. It sounds like you’ve already got some idea of my operations.” His eyes flicked between hers, looking for some semblance of empathy, and finding none. “I’m Cutler, obviously. Maybe we can help each other out, somehow. This isn’t what it looks like.” 

Marley inhaled the fear wafting off the man, running her tongue along her lips. This had turned out to be a lot more satisfying than she’d thought it would, but his refusal to answer her questions was beginning to grate on her. “I think I’ve been pretty clear about what I want here, Cutler,” she said, arms folding tightly across her chest. Long nails drummed against the leather of her jacket and she wondered if she would be the center of his fears if she gazed at him right now. “I’d hate to burst your bubble so early on, but there’s nothing you can help me with that I need from you right now,” she pointed out, “now answer my question, or I’m going to have to expedite this whole…” she waved her hand around, gesturing between the two of them, “process.” She wasn’t going to kill him, no-- his fear was already proving to be of more use than anything else. Maybe she’d finally found a steady meal source outside of Miriam, it certainly seemed like he was a prime candidate. She didn’t want to play her hand so soon, in case he happened to know about the supernatural, but her glowing red eyes were glaring at him through her glasses, and she was so close to showing him her true nature. Here was to hoping her head stayed straight long enough for it.

Cutler felt the tapping against her jacket in the back of his own skull, skittering any rational thought back into the corners of his mind. He had rarely heard his name delivered with such contempt, and the fluorescents reflected in her glasses were giving her eyes an unnerving reddish tone. At least he thought it was the fluorescents. 

“Alright, alright.” His eyes followed her hand as it moved in the space between them. “I help people.” The lie was sour on his tongue, flipping his stomach. “People who need medical attention and can’t seek it through more conventional means. So, that’s, uh, sometimes that’s people who don’t have insurance or-or, you know, people who you might have come across in your files. Who don’t have a great relationship with law enforcement. A lot of gunshot wounds, stabbings, that sort of thing.” He chewed at the inside of his cheek, resisting the urge to continue running his mouth. He was well aware that she would love nothing more than for him to release the anxious words behind his clenched teeth. Against his better judgement, he added, “It’s not technically legal. But it’s not hurting anyone.” 

Marley had to balk at that. “Not technically illegal?” She’d have been a hypocrite had she really chastised him for that, but the pure audacity of the statement in front of someone who was technically an officer of the law made her laugh, loud and hollow. “An illegal clinic, operating in the back of a convenience store. I feel like I’ve just walked in on a Breaking Bad spin off,” she chuckled, shaking her head. “Wait, no, that one was about drugs. Which show was the one about the doctor’s doing illegal things? Sorry, I don’t watch a lot of TV.” 

His nerves were filling up the room, almost stiflingly so. Marley didn’t want his nerves, she wanted his fear. And while she didn’t disagree with his little operation, she wasn’t happy about it, either. “What about those who can’t see a real doctor? Do you treat them? Those with...special afflictions.” Like her blue blood, or someone else’s lack of iron. Was this a supernatural doctor operating behind closed doors, or a human getting in over their heads? Either way, this man thought himself above the law, and Marley had made her decision-- he needed to be punished, and she knew just how.

Cutler responded before he had a chance to think. “House? Or Rush-” He cut himself off, teeth grinding slightly against each other as she kept speaking. She doesn’t really want to know the name of the show, Cut. If she was going to arrest him, he would rather she just got it over with. And if she was going to carry out some kind of vigilante justice, well… I guess karma is real after all, he thought to himself miserably, trying against all hope to remain focused on what was being said to him.

“Special afflictions?” His tone was light, unburdened by the implications she was throwing at him. As the words hung in the air, he thought briefly of Chloe and her mysterious illnesses, of the unnatural bone structure and brutal fang marks of some of his regulars. Strange scar tissue and injuries with no logical explanation, disturbingly inhuman-looking substances in place of bodily fluids. “I help anyone who comes to me for help. I don’t ask questions. There’s a surprising amount of medical anomalies for a-” The word doctor stayed on his lips, unspoken for fear of invoking further wrath. “-person with my skill set. Things regular doctors wouldn’t treat, or wouldn’t understand. I offer a solution that doesn’t involve being treated like a test subject.” 

It all sounded a little too good to be true. Whatever this Cutler really did behind closed doors, Marley was hard pressed to believe for a second that someone would treat the supernatural without having some sort of fallback in place. Especially someone so human. He had to have been doing something to them, threatening them, using them, exploiting them-- something. But if he didn’t want to tell her, that was fine. She had other ways of figuring these things out. Her lips twitched as she tried to fight back the anger building in her stomach, licking her lips and moving away from the desk again. “Right,” she slid her finger along the top of the table, as if to check to make sure it was clean, “out of the goodness of your heart.” Rubbed her fingers together, making sure they came up clean. “I’m curious,” she said, though her voice showed no sign of the feeling, “how’d you get started with all this? What was that spark that pushed you into pursuing this?”

Cutler felt steely guilt settling in his stomach. Strangely, the thought of being arrested was almost as stress inducing as airing his dirty laundry for a stranger. This woman was the first person to see through his facade. To understand that his job wasn’t out of some misguided sense altruism. It was penance. “Not the “goodness of my heart”, exactly. I make money from this. The store doesn’t see nearly enough business to stay afloat.” He watched her fingers, anxious to see the result. He knew he had sanitized all the surfaces, but he had also just performed a procedure. What if she found something he had missed? “You know I don’t have a license. So I’m assuming your background research told you why.” 

His voice was cold and detached, the weight of his unspoken misdeeds dragging it down into a lower register. “I have the skills, that’s never been questioned. There’s a need, I fill it.” He breathed deeply, digging deep for some level of courage he didn’t possess. “I’m about to finish up here, and then I’m going to go to bed. I’m tired. Are you going to stop me?” 

“Ah,” Marley said, smiling satisfactorily to herself, “there it is.” And really, that was all the proof she needed. She certainly didn’t owe this man an explanation, even if she knew he wanted one. “I do, you’re right,” she tacked on, “I know a lot more about you than you’d ever know about me.” And it was a threat, and her sharp gaze told him that, even if she was staring from behind blacked out frames. She wanted so bad to taste his real fear, but patience was a virtue. Instead of a small dose now, she’d wait until later, when she could get a full meal out of him. He was already looking worn and exhausted, and his suggestion to go to bed only made her smile. It curled up her lips like broken tree branches. “You know what?” she said, strutting by him, giving him a stiff pat on the shoulder, “I don’t think I will.” Headed for the door, turning her head to look back at him when she got there. “Sleep well, Mister Clarke. I heard guilt can be a real...nightmare.”