downplaying | (( i'm your man ))

CLAUDE Bérubé

and if you want a partner, take my hand
or if you want to strike me down in anger,
here I stand – I’m your man

Claude was born as the youngest child and only son to Laurent and Nanette Bérubé (née Deslys) and for the first decade of his life, he enjoyed a relatively normal and happy childhood, growing up in the Latin Quarters of Paris. However, the year he turned eight, his father met a woman from the Ivory Coast whom he fell in love with and eventually decided to follow to her country of origin, divorcing Claude’s mother and leaving behind his entire family, consisting of Claude’s two older sisters (Catherine and Céline), Claude and his mother. While growing up, Claude and his mother had always been close, Claude having been somewhat of a mama’s boy, but now that Claude was the only “man” in the family, their bond grew even stronger – a development that would come to an abrupt end once Claude hit puberty. Not that he was a difficult teenager, but it was in those years he began realizing that he wasn’t attracted to the opposite sex like most of his peers were, but instead took an interest in other boys. After a failed relationship to his ballroom dance partner, Liliane, Claude met the openly gay Gilbert Tremblay and the two started dating. The relationship soon became more serious and Gilbert had to reveal to Claude that he was a carrier of HIV. This didn’t deter Claude, but when he finally came out to his mother around the time when Gilbert began falling ill, she never missed an opportunity to openly disapprove of the relationship. Something that cooled the otherwise warm relation mother and son had shared. Meanwhile, Gilbert became increasingly more sick and was eventually sent to a hospice where he spent his last few days in the company of his family and Claude. After the funeral, Claude finished his bac with surprisingly good results, considering the context in which he’d been studying for it and was left at a crossroad. He felt no desire to stay in Paris, now that Gilbert was gone, but he had no idea where else to go.

Until that time, his only contact to his father had been the sporadic letters they had sent back and forth on birthdays and Christmas. Now the Ivory Coast suddenly seemed like the perfect refuge and for the first time in almost ten years, Claude picked up the phone and called his father. They made arrangements for his trip and after only a month of preparations, Claude quite simply packed all his things and left for Africa – left his sisters and his mother behind, like his father had done before him, but he felt no remorse, considering how his relationship to his mother was currently faring. The Ivory Coast proved a healthy climate for him and he thrived, so much that after only a year, he had settled in enough to find work at the local university’s library. He began reading about politics and journalism, began writing and his father soon noticed his interests which led him to secure Claude a position as secretary at the French Embassy in Nigeria – an opportunity that Claude wasn’t slow to accept. Once more he uprooted himself and moved, alone, to Abuja where he worked for a year before he was offered a promotion to personal assistant at the French Embassy in Senegal. Although he had already fallen in love with West Africa and although he already felt quite at home here, Senegal should prove to be the place where he finally found rest in the wake of Gilbert’s death. While working at the Embassy, he began frequenting the artistic milieu of Dakar, his own poetry taking on its own distinct style slowly and this was how he met Didier Faye who would later, upon Claude’s return to the city, become his lover. Didier was editing an anthology and when reading Claude’s poetry, wanted him to contribute to the collection which Claude did. At this point, though, Claude’s father started urging him to return home to Paris to get an education. At ease once again, Claude didn’t mind what he knew to be only a temporary separation and moved back to Paris where he began studying journalism at Sorbonne University. As he had promised Didier, however, when he had left Dakar – once he had finished his bachelor’s degree, he decided to take his candidate in Senegal and enrolled with Cheikh Anta Diop University.

Upon his return to Dakar, he and Didier began seeing each other privately, as friends at first – but they would soon initiate a romantic relationship while Claude attended university lectures and writing seminars, his skills within the field showing quickly. It was a complex life to lead, in a country where homosexual conduct earns you up to five years in prison, but they managed to keep their relationship discreet, known only to those to whom it didn’t matter and Claude considered it to be his personal way of maturing into adulthood, Didier teaching him a lot about himself and life in general. After two years of this sort of existence, however, Claude had finished his candidate dissertation, receiving good grades, and it was time for him to return to Europe and find out what to do with his life from there. Neither Didier nor himself nursed any illusions that either of them would manage to uphold a relation across that kind of distance, between Africa and Europe, Dakar and Bruxelles (where Claude had received a PhD scholarship), so they ended their romantic relationship on friendly terms, returning to being just friends – at times with benefits, when the opportunity offered itself. Everything brought in order, Claude said goodbye to Senegal, to Dakar and to Didier at the airport, taking a late-night plane home to Paris where he would be spending the summer, the degrees cooler and the cityscape cut in half by the Eiffel Tower.

Years went by. Claude finished his PhD in Bruxelles, got a job at Le Monde in Paris where he had been an intern while he had studied for his bachelor’s and where he would now come to work as a (West) African correspondent for the next decade. When he finally found that he needed a change of air and pace, he accepted a position as French correspondent at a local newspaper in Luxembourg and moved there, leaving France and Paris behind for the fourth time in his life. For the last time in his life, it should prove to be. In 2009, Claude attended a course on advocacy journalism where he met Vincent Fortesque whom he soon started dating and would later, in 2010, become registered partners and move in with. Around this time, he also went freelance, tiring of the tight schedule and the many one-hour notice trips that came with being a correspondent. Instead he began focusing on his passion, writing biographies. After a couple of years of this quiet living, Vincent got hired as publicity advisor for the Centre-Democratic Party, starting a close working relationship with the party’s leader, Jean Louis Duroc. A working relationship that would blend into their private lives and not only because of the high maintenance that Jean Louis and his party turned out to be. Soon he and his wife, Mireille, would begin coming by for dinner and thus, Claude was introduced to the woman with whom he developed a close friendship that would last for the rest of their lives. As they grew closer, he suggested that he write her biography – knowing that many before had asked her and all of them had received a polite refusal. Mireille, however, accepted the idea and for the next year and a half, they would be working on the book that should prove to become Claude’s most bestselling work ever…

Eventually, Jean Louis stepped down as State Minister which led Vincent to resign as well, Claude and he living an altogether quiet life as they grew older together.

Silver Wolf (modern AU) – fandom OC | downplaying