Beaureguarde

Beau had a relatively normal childhood. His mother--who was young at the time she had him, only 19-- moved to Olathe, Kansas, straight from Ireland. She had to learn English on the fly, as did his father, whom wasn't much older at 21, who was Dutch, and ALSO wasn't the best at english. Beau himself was then born into this weird little family as a first-generation American--huzzah! And he was the terror that all little rock-headed boys are. As they said, 'A Redheaded Mother Guarantees a Brat' and Beau, while not a selfish child, was most certainly a troublemaker. He learned his parents languages first, but picked up on English quickly during kindergarten, and also picked up on being able to cause trouble. He was....destructive, to say the least. He did a lot of table flipping, chair throwing, drawing on walls, telling the teacher he'd 'tie her shoes' as if that was some sort of a threat. But the very first time he saw a first grader push over one of his kindergarten classmates, he realized all of his extra energy had a purpose in life. And that was how he got suspended from Kindergarten--consider that a record.

He LIKED standing up for others--older OR younger. He'd fight anybody that tried to hurt someone else--and the first few years, he was a small little ginger freckled pansy. But he learned. And by 5th grade, not only was it well known that bullying anybody around Beau would land you being bloodied and bruised, but IF someone was bullying you, you told him, and he'd 'take care of it'. 5th grade was also when he met his best friend, a transfer student named Hammond. Hammond was about 4 years younger than Beau, but incredibly intelligent and so he was in the 4th grade instead of 2nd like he should have been. Beau had noticed Hammond doing something odd--counting his pencils and making sure they were in sets of three, and only sitting at his desk after he'd tapped it 9 times exactly. Beau wandered over, sat on his desk, and had blatantly stated "HEY LITTLE NEW KID. YOU'RE WEIRD. YOU LIKE THREES? I DO TOO. WE SHOULD BE FRIENDS."
Hammond had given him a blank stare and only responded with "....Okay."
Ah yes, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. A friendship in which Hammond learned that he was the voice of reason. The entirety of middle school was spent with Beau going "I'M GOING TO DO THE THING!" while the quiet, reserved, and far more generally sane Hammond would suggest "Okay, yes, but have you tried NOT doing the thing?" and when that failed, "You're going to break your leg/arm/face/body and when you do, I'm not going to help you" and when THAT failed, he would simply reply with "when you die, I'm going to kick your coffin'. All of these usually just resulted in Hammond visiting Beau at the hospital after his stitches...or cast... or other various health issues... But only visiting to say the dreaded 'I told you so'.

High school started a new chapter in his life, though-- as a 6'10'' grey-eyed, chiseled-jawed, somewhat buff redhead, he had his pick of ladies to date! .....And men, if he really wanted to. Which he did! He wasn't exactly picky, and would admit to being pretty promiscuous in his high school and college years. He'd also picked up that Hammond was....different. He never dated anybody, he never even said anybody was pretty, and while his blue-eyed, black-haired friend also had his fair share of admirers, he'd seemed more violated than flattered. 'Asexual' wasn't a thing, and 'Autism' most CERTAINLY wasn't. Not that it would have mattered to Beau if he'd known then--Hammond was his best friend, and he loved him. He'd kill for him. Hammond had never said he'd shared the same sentiments...at least up until college ended, and at 21 years old, Beau decided he was going to do a thing.

"We're both going to die." was what Hammond said when he and Beau decided to draft themselves into the military. Rather, Beau decided he was going to, and Hammond decided that Beau would die if he didn't go with him and make sure he didn't keep doing stupid things. As a result, the inseparable duo ended up in the army at a very volatile time in history-- the year 1969 seemed to have something quite important going on. Known as the Vietnam War. Good job, Beau.

In any case, the war had already been going for a while, but Beau wasn't one to easily let himself be taken down, so he decided that he wanted to be a Marine. Hammond, who had, of course, followed Beau into the military, if only to make sure the idiot didn't get himself killed, had decided to remain close. And it was a good thing he did. Beau was not exactly the most...discreet of people. Nor was he the most careful. So it was likely just a matter of time before he got injured--badly.

Whereas MOST people would have decided 'Hmm, that whole 'grenade exploding and killing those 4 people PROBABLY killed my friend too', Hammond displayed his actual batshit insanity and walked--not ran, WALKED-- across the open field to go and pick up Beau, only to toss the larger man over his shoulders and carry him back to the medics, at which point he stated very calmly,"You save him, or I'll kill everybody here."


This was also how they met Cassian, who happened to be a very young field medic at the time, who was nearly solely responsible for saving Beau's life and allowing him the small range of mobility that he has. As a result of this, these three all survived, though Beau made it out both earlier and somewhat more worse for wear. Hammond finished out his entire stint, as did Cassian, but almost immediately, they all got back together once all was said and done. However, something seemed to have fundamentally changed inside Beau, and not exactly for the better.