CLOSE BEHIND | F. Hargreeves²

01

Beau sat at the counter, eyes downcast, as his mind continued to cloud over. The quaint diner, with checkered flooring and red leather seats, was the only place Beau could stomach in the small city he had found himself in. And with the house he had come upon to call his own, he wanted to spend as much time away from it as possible.

The house was small, rundown and barely furnished. Cobwebs hung in corners, dust-coated the window sills and cupboards while white sheets covered a particularly old couch, a cabinet a table and a chest. The water was barely drinkable and the mice had chewed holes through the cabinets and the ceiling causing it to leak when it rained. It got too cold at night and too hot in the midday but it was a roof over Beau's head and that was more than he could ask for. 

After finding himself lying in an alleyway, blood dripping from his head and side bruised black and blue, he barely knew how such a thing could have happened. None of the Hargreeves insight and left in a completely different time period; seemingly finding himself back in time. 

Beau's state of depressed mind was very much on and off, he could sometimes push it aside to focus on something more important but other times it liked to plague his mind and have him imagine a world where the end never happened or if he never had Rosie there to help him through the lowest moments of his life. Beau would surely be even more of a wreck without her. But then there was Five, a brief moment of life ripped away by his own doing. They were content with each other and yet he guessed that wasn't enough because he was no longer by his side. Days of never being without each other to now an entire month without even seeing his face.

Rosie's eyes had turned blue, he couldn't dare look at her without thinking of him.

"Here you go." A plate of fries and a burger was set down in front of Beau, knocking him from his less than pleasant thoughts. Beau looked up, his hooded black eyes meeting the boy's melancholic blue ones, light brown curls obscuring his sight a little and cheeks emitting the rosy hue they always did. His nametag read Jude in cursive and his bowtie was a deep crimson red that often made Beau amused, his hands shook slightly with anxiety and Beau always noticed it, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. 

Beau had entered the diner every second day at exactly two o'clock. Why that exact time, he couldn't say but it was when he got too hungry to ignore seeing as it was the only time he let himself eat. Beau didn't want to go anywhere where he may have to converse for no reason and that included a convenience store or a supermarket, he didn't want to make small talk. Mel's diner was the only place he dared to go and he wondered if it had something to do with the meek waiter who was always the one taking his order. In some odd way, the boy with the blue eyes reminded him all too much of his love but, at the same time, found he was completely different. Jude was quiet, soft, shy yet Five was outspoken, stubborn and lacked any dependency at all. The contrast intrigued Beau.

Beau gave a short smile, "Thank you," He spoke softly as though he was trying not to frighten the poor boy with wide eyes and rosy cheeks, one that flinched at every sudden noise and pouted when he thought no one was looking. It was like the boy was the epitome of the word melancholy.

Jude blushed and his mouth twitched, a grimace of a smile quickly taking over before he scurried off to busy himself once again while Beau silently ate. 

Life had become terribly dull for Beau, a routine set out before him that was short and to the point, simply keeping him alive. He supposed that was how most people lived back in the sixties, living day to day waiting for the next and praying something changes their bleak ongoing years. It was rather sad, that was probably why Rosie was usually flittering around striking up conversations and creating illusions to entertain him. A bored mind was a scary place after all.