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He does this shit on purpose.
She barely thinks it, doesn’t dwell on it too much—Cutter isn’t magic; he’s not a witch or a psychic but he always knows, it’s always best to keep your head down and mind on task when he’s around—but when Cutter arrives in what must be the most godawful manipulation of fabric and tailoring this side of bell-bottoms, right on time to the most important corporate merger of the fiscal decade, Rachel can’t help but feel personally attacked. This was her short day. Her normal Friday, where she would finish work at exactly six and be on a plane at exactly eight, to spend the next three government-sanctioned vacation days idyllically lounging around in some fancy vineyard deep in the heart of Napa.
But then Cutter takes a seat, and their potential new business partner looks up, does a truly terrible job of choking down a laugh, and asks, with all the sincerity a man who doesn’t yet know he’s about to die can muster, “What the fuck are you wearing?”
Rachel meets Warren Kepler’s eyes from across the room. Now, she doesn’t like Kepler—can’t stand him, not since that stunt he pulled when he was hired or since the debacle when he became director—but in this singular moment, as they both see Cutter’s smile stretch a hair too wide, see a light come on in his eyes that wasn’t there the moment before, they share a brief camaraderie in the fact that their pleasant, work-free weekends were just pumpkin-chucked a cozy light-year out of their grasps.
Because the thing is, Cutter wears nice suits—they're made of some of the finest material this side of St. Peter's gates and cost more than what some small countries’ economies are worth in a year. They also, unfortunately, happen to be made in colors and patterns that Rachel hadn't thought anything but the new Sensus III units’ radiological sensors could pick up. They’re hideous, it’s—there’s—there’s no way around it; they’re tailored so beautifully and fit so impeccably and yet also, as Dr. Pryce was wont to put it, an “affront to the cold dark majesty of the universe and a physical manifestation of entropy smeared onto Italian silk.”
But there, there is the catch. It is Goddard’s unspoken litmus test, informal and unplanned (insofar as Cutter can not-plan anything) and one that Rachel has seen countless business partners and potential new investors lose their lives to. Dr. Pryce, through whatever bizarre deal or camaraderie or relationship that two eldritch horror shows can form in the deep, dark pits of wherever they crawled out of, can say whatever the fuck she’d like. She has, on more than one occasion, laughed when Cutter entered a room, and never let it be said that Cutter didn’t give back everything he could take, with interest. But anyone else? Any other fool who’d find somewhere deep in themselves where their common sense couldn’t reach to have the gall to do anything but respectfully cower in Cutter’s very presence, well—
Cutter straightens, adjusts his cufflinks. His smile doesn’t even budge. “I must have misheard you.”
Has Mr. Henderson noticed quite how many teeth Cutter has, what with that smile still aimed his way? Rachel’s never looked long enough to count them herself, no, in all the years she’s worked here she’s found that she’s terribly fond of keeping all of her bodily fluids circulating right where they belong and not dripping out of a leaky garbage bag somewhere in Jersey. He mustn’t, obviously, because he scoffs and gestures in Cutter’s general direction. “Your suit, it’s—” he stops, chuckles. “This is a joke, right?”
His associates have started to notice, even if he hasn’t—the unnatural quiet, the way no one else has so much as smiled. Except Cutter, of course. Cutter and his terribly white teeth and his terrible wide smile and how terribly pleasant he is when he asks, “Oh, you don’t like it?”
Across the room, Kepler locks the door and the man who'd been standing by his side and making eyes at him for the last twenty minutes perks up. Rachel lowers her chair as far down as it will go and holds her manila folder in front of her face to spare herself most of the splatter.
Rachel glances up at the clock and tries not to think about how she could be tasting fourteen different kinds of Merlot right this very second, but no, clearly that was asking too much. She is at least vindicated by Kepler sitting across from her in a new, clean dress shirt and as deeply entrenched in the allocation of their—ahem—newly acquired resources as she is. The rest of the building is dead, metaphorically or not, and the last of the hallway lights have flickered off. It’s just them and Cutter, bogged down with folders and laptops and too much paperwork in his shiny, too-bright office, moving money and consolidating budgets and ordering a good deep scrubbing of the sub-basement trash compactor.
She is officially three hours later for a flight that is long gone without her when she sets down the last of the paperwork and sighs. “You know, sir,” and Kepler’s looking at her now, probably wondering if he’s perhaps disassembled his firearm a little too soon, “we wouldn’t need to find this many places to dump bodies and illicit cash if you were a little more,” Rachel grimaces, “conservative with your business attire.”
The typing continues for a long moment before it pauses, stops. Cutter looks up from his laptop. "You know, Rachel, I think you're right."
Rachel wants that engraved on her tombstone (as if she’ll ever get one, as if her career here is going to end in any other way but a chai that tastes a bit too sharp and smells a little like almonds), "Sir?"
"Perhaps pairing the puce tie with the houndstooth suit jacket was a bit,” Cutter hums, looking for the right word, finger tapping his cheek, “perhaps a bit gauche." He turns to Rachel with a grin that’s all teeth and glee and the distant screaming of the tormented innocent. “Not my, ah, finest moment.”
Rachel has sent too many perfunctory emails to grieving spouses and parents to be caught by this adder-tongued asshole; she knows a trick when she hears one and settles for a confused, "Sir?"
Cutter fiddles with his cufflinks once more, out of habit. When he smiles at her again it’s not with nearly all his teeth, and Rachel thinks she may yet live through the night. He looks almost apologetic when he sighs, “Teal was obviously the more reserved choice, in retrospect." His gaze slides between her and Kepler, not quite through having his fun. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, sir.” There isn't enough space in Rachel's lungs for a sigh of the magnitude that this conversation deserves. "Of course."