(( affirmation ))

[downplaying]

CLAUDE Bérubé I believe you can't control or choose your sexuality. I believe trust is more important than monogamy. There are two, equally balanced sides to Claude. One side is the one that is brought out by the world at large – a calm(er) and more collected persona that fully matches his years in number and has earned him a reputation as a serious journalist with more than a decade of experience on his hands. This side is the one which causes him to bond so closely with Didier Faye, the Senegalese poet and his former lover, as well as with Mireille Duroc, the State Minister’s sharp-witted wife. Both of whom stimulate him intellectually and with whom he can share aspects of his personality that he could, but chooses not to impose on his partner. The other side to him is the side that he has repeatedly shown in the company of his male peers and in particular with his partner, Vincent – the charmingly flirtatious side that, in his own grounded manner, gives him the air of an overgrown teenager with a warm sense of humour and a penchant for puns. Despite being a relatively carefree and relaxed person, there are certain aspects to Claude’s characterisation that are less cheerful. Due to the way first his father deserted his family in order to move to the Ivory Coast and later, the way his mother distanced herself from him when he came out to her as gay, Claude has been left with some abandonment issues – further enhanced by how he has had several relationships end on bad terms due to infidelity. Claude hasn’t grown bitter from the experiences and doesn’t as such live his life in ceaseless fear that everyone will eventually leave, but he is aware that everyone might and it’s a knowledge he deals with on a daily basis, making him very much live in the present. At the same time, he has developed a very strong sense of duty as a result – a sense of duty that shows in his relationship to both his parents whom he has persistently stayed in touch with despite the way they’ve failed in their relation to him as well as in his ideologies in regards to his work as a journalist, especially as an African correspondent. One of the main reasons that Claude doesn’t become somewhat of a split personality is his partner, Vincent. Vincent has become the one (safe) place where these two different sides of Claude are combined into one person. The one place where Claude can be both serious and an overgrown teenager. Flirtatious and calm. There is no part of himself that he needs to keep hidden from Vincent, not even – or perhaps especially not – any of the aspects that he is sure will provoke or anger him. They handle their differences (mostly) like adults and in every way, they bring out the best in one another. A full functionality.

Silver Wolf (modern AU) – fandom OC | downplaying