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Cuno has grown a lot in the months living with Harry. He was a scrawny, small, too small twelve-year-old and now he is thirteen, still scrawny, but almost taller than Kim.
“Almost,” Kim reminds him whenever it is brought up.
And every time he’s reminded, Cuno glares and does the same motion of putting the flat of his hand on his head and moving it towards Kim, slightly higher than Kim’s head, silently saying Almost huh? What’s this then? Then Kim quirks an eyebrow and says “You just have more hair.”
That is a conversation that occurs mostly at home. Their home? Kim is there a lot. Maybe he moved in too, Harry seems to love collecting strays. Everything he has an affection for he somehow squeezes into the tiny one-bedroom apartment. There is a bookshelf in the living room/Cuno’s room that is overflowing with reading material, and another bookshelf in the master bedroom full of trinkets that Harry collects and can’t bear throwing out. Like a crow. It is a mostly harmless form of hoarding.
Cuno does not see either of them during Junior RCM training. Good. He doesn’t need Harry embarrassing him by showing up in a maroon Disco suit or making sure he has a snack or doing other Harry-like things. He also doesn’t need The Lieutenant throwing his rank around and giving a subtle but no doubt important lean towards Cuno to the instructor. He can pass on his own, thank you very fucking much.
Also having an adult figure hovering around in any capacity might remind people that you have to be fifteen to be in the program. He’s tall enough to seem older than that, but if there’s someone worrying about him having a juice box or a fucking nap time then people might start asking questions.
Though he does wish that one of them would pop their head in and say something like ‘Excuse us, there is a very extremely difficult case and we need expert eyes. Can we pull Cuno from learning how to file paperwork so he can solve a murder?’ because it is boooooring.
It might be more fun if he got along with the kids. Or the instructors. But like a stubborn cactus, even after you think the spikes have been plucked out, somehow it still stabs you.
He hasn’t literally stabbed anyone, though. Yet.
He feels a ball of paper hit the back of his head. Muffled laughter follows. He grits his teeth hard enough to feel his jaw pop. He did not choose where he sat or else he would have gone to the way way back. Instead its alphabetical so his fucking tall-ass is near the front. Sitting in front of older kids significantly smaller than him. Smart move, teach, really showcasing the brightest of the RCM here.
He also blames Harry for this too. Being small, while it fucking sucks and you’re more likely to be violently targeted by bigger things just because they’re bigger, it is also easier to go unnoticed if you’re a pipsqueak. Just look at Kim. This is the unfortunate side-effect of replacing drugs with regular access to filling foods. Fuck you, Harry.
It is taking everything in him to not launch himself with the unrestrained strength of a street kid and pummel and claw until he is pulled off, like a feral dog. He succeeds in not doing so.
Until a small bit of an eraser hits the same spot on the back of his head.
He springs upwards, causing a sudden and loud commotion in a mostly empty room as the chair scrapes backward. He stares at the kids directly behind them. Immediately they jump out of their skin and look at him with a surge of fear but he doesn’t have time to relish in it before he is interrupted.
“Excuse me!” The instructor rings out authoritatively. He is an older man, used to be a loyal officer before several shots in the leg took him out of field commission completely. He’s loyal enough that he wheels himself back to the precinct every day to deal with snot-nosed Juniors In Training. “Cuno! The fuck you think you’re doing?”
He wheels around to face the instructor.
The fuck does it look like, pig?! He wants to scream. You want some too? I’ll beat you just as well! I’ll rip those stupid fucking wheels clean off and leave your Cripple ass in the dirt!
But he doesn’t say anything. He stares, breathing heavy, but doesn’t let a word drop out of his mouth.
The teacher slaps the papers previously in his lap so that they puncture the room with a violent sound. “No, go ahead. Since you concluded that this outburst is more important than anything I was saying, say what’s on your mind! We all want to hear it!”
His brain screams a litany of cruel words that he could throw out.
Instead, he throws his chair against the blackboard and stomps out the room. He hears something break. If it’s the chair then it’ll probably blow over. An easily replaceable mess of cobbled-together wood and screws. If he broke the blackboard then he’s fucked, they’re not paying to install another one of those.
Four months. Cuno has been sober for four months. 124 days exactly without anything in his system dulling his senses, where his emotions are on edge at all times. Is this what life is? What it always will be? No, it can’t be.
When he stormed out his feet moved on their own. It was not long before he found himself slinking through the evidence lockers.
Juvenile RCM members are not supposed to be here unsupervised. Recently sober Junior RCM members who just showcased a blatant lack of respect and overt aggression to a superior probably shouldn’t be here at all. Cuno doesn’t care. Somewhere in this fucking room is confiscated drugs just sitting in an evidence bag. Planned for waste.
He only tears through three lockers, finding jack and shit, before a familiar voice interrupts him.
“Ah, Cuno, no doubt here to brighten my day.” Vicquemare is carrying a plastic bag with a blood-stained shirt in it and, like he almost always is, he’s smoking a cigarette.
“Piss off, pig. I’m allowed to be here.” Cuno stops pawing through the locker and tries to slam it shut. He used too much force so it just bounced back open. He gently closed it.
“You most certainly are not.” He places the plastic bag with the other relevant evidence and takes a drag, smoke filling the room slowly, menacingly. His cigarettes are not chestnut-scented. It is only smoke and ash and pure nicotine. “You can’t keep calling us pigs when you’re one of us, you know.”
“Who’s gonna stop me?” His hands twitch. His eyes darted around looking for a window to jump out of. As it is, he would have to try and rush past Vicquemare to get out the door. You can’t hardly tell when he’s wearing the full pig suit but he’s ripped. If he had heard about the incident earlier and was specifically trying to find Cuno it would take no effort for him to grab him by the scrawny shoulders and . . . do what?
Probably tell Harry about what he was clearly looking for in the evidence locker.
His hands involuntarily twitch more.
Jean sighs. Changes the subject. “Something’s happened.”
Ah, here we go. His outburst, mild compared to his past behavior but still unruly, is rearing its ugly consequences.
But that’s a weird way to phrase it, isn’t it? Of course he knows something has happened. He threw the fucking chair. What’s going on?
“Shitkid has, apparently, been running some sort of fucking ‘secret investigation’,” Vicquemare used air quotes to puncture how stupid he thought all this was. “Keeping it even from his precious partner, so I’ve heard.”
Harry went on a secret investigation. Something has happened.
Harry relapsed and he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Vicquemare is here to put you in some boy’s home. You thought that you were good enough to keep him off the sauce? You couldn’t even make your own dad like you, and he was blood.
“Harry’s dead?” Cuno asks because he has to hear it. He’s going to make Vicquemare fucking say it.
“What? Dolores Dei, no! No, shit, he’s fine.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not very good at these, apologies.”
I hate this fucking guy so fucking much, holy shit.
“Spit it out then!”
Jean looks up at the ceiling for exactly ten seconds before exhaling. “He went back to Martinaise to try and find Cunoesse. He couldn’t, it made him really upset, caused another fucking panic attack or something. He asked me to drive you home.”
Ah. That’s a name he hasn’t heard in a while. He speaks out quickly to avoid having his real emotions displayed on his face.
“You could have said that earlier, pig.”
“You could have avoided jumping to the wrong conclusion.”
“Isn’t delivering bad news a skill a pig is supposed to have?”
“I already said that I wasn’t good at it! And stop calling me pig.”
“Whatever you say, oinker. Lead the way.”
They continued to bicker until they were both in a car. Not his, since Harry drove that car into the ocean, but someone else’s in the precinct. He’s going to drop Cuno off at home and then bring it back, probably won’t refill it with gas because he’s that kind of asshole. Cuno can respect that.
It helps that whoever he is sharing the Linnea with is a total slob. Dirty napkins and takeout containers litter the floor. If the owner cared for it as much as Kim cares for his cars, then Jean probably would be a little more respectful to the owner’s gas mileage.
There’s a lull in their bickering. Cuno figures Vicquemare needs a moment to think of an appropriate comeback, but then the mood shifts.
“You uh,” He coughs, not looking anywhere but directly ahead of him. “You haven’t seen her since moving to Jamrock, have you?”
Goddammit. Stop talking about her.
“No.” He wishes it was a lie. He wishes he did as much as Harry tried to do. He doesn’t want to talk about this to Vicquemare, of all people. As if he would understand, he still sees his codependent survival partner.
It’s just that he has found someone else, someone willing to help, and has ditched him. Left him behind to lean on someone more helpful.
He’s not going to talk to Vicquemare about any of this. He’ll probably agree with Cuno and say that he’s a piece of shit and should have tried harder to help C. Bring her with him to salvation, even if his fears were right and she would have brought him back down again. Back to home.
“Why is there no music playing? Because you have shit tastes, huh?”
“This is not my car. I don’t know what the radio is set to.”
“Turn it on then!” Cuno could lean over and fiddle with it himself. It is more fun to be bossy.
For a second the car is filled with the crooning voice of a pack-a-day smoker singing about the body of a woman he doesn’t know the name of.
“Like I said. Fuckin’ terrible.”
“It’s not my music!” Vicquemare turns it to a different station. They silently listen to music until Cuno is dropped off. They do not say goodbye - Cuno says fuck off and Vicquemare says ‘yeah, yeah’ and leaves before Cuno reaches the front door.
Harry is in his room. The living room. Cuno’s bedroom. He is sweating, hands clutching his knees, with red eyes. When Cuno walks in he does not burst into tears but anyone could tell that he wanted to, badly enough that Cuno was slightly impressed at his composure.
His instinct is to call him pathetic. Not necessarily because he thinks he is. And not to hurt his feelings or anything. But that’s how he talks to him.
Maybe he does think Harry is pathetic? His dad certainly would. Men don’t cry, they just beat their wives and kids.
How can he think that of Harry? He went out and attempted to do the last thing on Cuno’s list that haunts him at every waking moment. To find her and see if she’s okay. He knows that a too-large, objectively irrational reason for why he hasn’t tried is because it would lead him to cry as well, which would just make him feel like he’s About To Die and then he’d do exactly what he attempted to do today. Maybe he would have succeeded.
(No part of his brain ever tells him that he’s just thirteen, and a thirteen-year-old shouldn’t be worrying about going out to a different part of the city, alone, trying to find someone that he feels responsible for. He would never give himself that leeway.)
So Cuno does not call him pathetic. He doesn’t say anything. He puts his backpack and things on the ground and joins Harry on the folded-up couch that doubles as his bed. He looks at the wall as Harry begins to cry in earnest.
Later, when things have calmed down, the phone goes off in the kitchen. Cuno is in bed with the curtains closed. When Harry answers it he is seized in an icy-cold grip, knowing exactly what he’s being told.
“Really? Really?” Harry says as if he could even pretend to not believe that Cuno is the kind of kid that would do that. “Alright, I’ll talk to him. Thank you.” He hangs up. Cuno doesn’t move and continues to not say anything.
Harry goes to bed.
“You really fucked up this time, you know that?”
Cuno rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. What the fuck ever.” He shovels more horse shit to the side.
Despite the word usage, Vicquemare is not trying to rub it in. He’s not trying to pull one over on fuckup Cuno. He’s just not a gentle man that can use words to make people feel better. “You’ll get another chance, but Dolores Dei the timing you chose was bad.”
He is referring to the fact that Cuno’s punishment means he will be on sole stable duty for the time being, possibly the rest of the year, right as they are about to move on to the more interesting stuff like gun maintenance and possibly graduating to uniforms.
Not that Cuno was ever going to benefit from that anyway. Again, he’s way too fucking young and technically not in the training program. He’s just some kid mascot that they’re allowing in the classes, probably as an experiment to see if admitting them slightly younger makes for a more well-rounded pig.
He grits his teeth angrily and shovels more shit.
Vicquemare regards him as he feeds one of the horses. It is dark chestnut in color and he doesn’t know what kind it is, at least not yet as that seems like a skill he should definitely acquire eventually, but it is lean and looks like it was made to be speedier than some of the other ones. Jean is outside the stall, feeding it through the fence, and there is a label that reads ‘Handcuff’.
“It stinks in here.” Cuno says, mostly just to complain. Complaining is good. Like letting air out of a balloon.
“Hmm, I wonder why.” Vicquemare is petting Handcuff with such an open tenderness that it's possible he isn’t even aware of how vulnerable. Which is a mistake, since he’s being vulnerable in front of Cuno.
“Didn’t know you were such a horse girl, Viccy.” Cuno says in his nasally, volatile way. “Are we going to paint our nails next? Ask me to put little bows in your beard?”
Vicquemare sighs and continues to brush Handcuff. “You’re going to fit in just fine with the RCM someday.” It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
Something has changed. Cuno thought they had a specific thing going on, he pushes Vicquemare and he replies sarcastically, or something curse-filled, pushing back almost as hard. A little like how he pushes Harry except he never pushes back, just replies in an embarrassingly sincere or chaotically unhinged way. Nothing like how he talks to Kim since any amount of pushing gets shut down as quickly.
It doesn’t feel good. He would think being told he would fit into the place he’s actively trying to worm his way into would. But there’s something in how he says it.
With this stable as clean as it’s going to get, he moves on to the next.
Should he apologize? God, how often is he going to be thinking about doing that? It seems every other thing that comes out of his mouth he’s thinking about saying sorry for. And then he doesn’t. He’s not going to do so now, either. He’ll just let it stay silent and cold and awkward. Fuck you.
Dolores Dei, he needs to start smoking. How can he get his hands on a pack?
“Do you know how to handle a horse, Cuno?” Vicquemare eventually asks, breaking the silence.
Hah! He won. Just like he thought he would.
What did he win? More conversation with Vicquemare. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and all that.
“Obviously.” He stops working to stand and stares in a dumbfounded, ‘What kind of question is that?’ way.
“Oh really?” He raises his eyebrows. “Okay, Mr. Smart-Tough-Guy. Come clean her hooves.”
“I don’t know how to do that! ” He balks. In other instances, he may have feigned knowledge and experience, but handling the hoof of a fidgety, strong, temperamental animal that can likely kick through your chest and then scraping a sharp instrument through said hoof is not something Cuno is interested in faking his way through.
“You don’t?!” He gasps. “That’s so shocking. Get your ass over here.”
By the time the sun is setting the stables are clean enough to - well, not eat off of, but at least there’s no more shit. The shiny new horseshoes applied to Handcuff may be clean enough to eat off of, though. If you’re a horse.
Before leaving the stables to go to the shower, Cuno swipes Vicquemare’s pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket. It is almost empty with only four left. He also swiped his lighter and he lingered outside the backdoor to the precinct.
It tastes terrible though and he doesn’t feel much better. He finishes it though and keeps the rest, even if he doesn’t anticipate wanting to steal from Vic again.
Cuno has been clean for 125 days which is 125 more days than he ever thought possible.
When he goes home with Harry the smell of horseshit apparently isn’t strong enough to cover the cigarettes. He doesn’t mention anything but he does hold out the palm of his hand. Cuno gives him one, not the pack, and the lighter.
“Why did Jean give you his cigarettes?!” He asks after lighting up. They are walking home. Harry used to be so much taller than him, now it’s only half a head or so. Still, he is making sure to not go too fast and keep the pace casual.
Cuno shrugs. “Ask him, I don’t know why horse girl does the shit he does.”
That makes Harry burst into laughter. Cuno tries not to grin. He fails.