AWAKENING, CHAPTER 1: CHEZ LeBEAU

A note about this story: I want to be clear about my intentions for this story. If anyone is expecting it to be a titillating slash story, you may be disappointed. Scenes of a sexual nature WILL occur to advance the plot. But my goal is to write an accurate, inquisitive story about what it would mean if one of our beloved heroes turned out to be gay, and how that would affect his options in life and his relationships. I hope this approach will be more interesting to people who don't usually read slash.

I will be using language that's authentic to the period, some of it ugly but it will be culturally appropriate. The word "gay" won't appear. In fact, correct words were mostly unspoken. As of chapter 21, only LeBeau and his brother have been bold enough to say "homosexual" out loud. Peter is still dying inside at the thought that this word describes him. This story is about the struggle of a character to live an authentic life.

Also, since this story is part of the "A Minor Problem" story arc, Newkirk IS young. I know people tend to fixate on the actors and not the characters. In this case, I hope you can focus on the character, imagine him as younger than the actor who portrayed him, and enter into the story I've created. To me, that's what fanfiction is about. I'm not trying to flawlessly recreate what a TV series showed us in the 1960s. I'm trying to ask new questions and see things in a different light. I'm actually not changing that much -I'm tweaking a few traits of one character and seeing what impact those changes have on everyone else around him.

PARIS, MAY 1946

Louis LeBeau fished out his keys as he strolled through the courtyard with an armload of groceries. The lunch shift at his restaurant was winding down, and dinner service wouldn't commence for three hours, so he decided to stroll home to the large flat in the Marais that he had inherited from his grandmère. He wanted to check on his guest—and personally escort him to his dinner shift as a trainee legumier. It might not be what his friend wanted to do with the rest of his life, but he was skilled with a knife, and he was under orders from his guardian to find a summer job if he was going to spend three months in Paris.

LeBeau climbed one flight to his floor, stepped over the threshold and smelled the crisp odor of English cigarettes. Yes, Pierre was home. He peered into the living room and saw a trail of coffee cups, socks and English books and newspapers. Definitely home, he thought, smiling and shaking his head. He turned right to deposit fresh bread, meat and vegetables in the kitchen, then headed back down the long corridor toward the bedrooms.

As he turned left again, he could hear the dripping from the shower in the large bathroom. "Pierre, I'm home," he called out. "Remember I told you that you have to give the hot water faucet an extra-tight turn? This is very old plumbing—you should be used to that!" He walked past his bedroom, and past Peter's next to it, and turned left into the large bathroom.

There stood Peter Newkirk, drying off, with the window over the bathtub flung open behind him, with the leaves and branches of the grand old Linden tree in the courtyard practically poking their way inside.

"Oh, you're still in here. I'm sorry, you should have closed the door and I wouldn't have barged in," LeBeau remarked. He looked up at Peter, who was avoiding his gaze as he wrapped a towel around his waist, and smiled at his young friend. "Did you sleep all day?" LeBeau asked him.

"No, of course not," Peter replied with a grin. "I went out for a long walk, got myself lost on these winding streets, and by the t-time I got back, I was a sweaty mess. I needed another shower. Paris seems a lot warmer in the summer than London."

"It is a bit warmer," LeBeau said absently, but his thoughts were elsewhere. "How do you get so much water on the floor?" he asked, looking around in amazement. "And do you always shower with the window wide open?" He stepped into the tub to pull it shut most of the way.

"No, I opened it after… sssorry about the mess," Peter said. "I'll clean it up."

LeBeau ignored him and began mopping as Peter stood by awkwardly, running a smaller towel through his hair. "How many towels do you need?" LeBeau asked with a laugh. "Honestly, Pierre, four? You're turning into an American."

"Colonel Hogan has lots of t-t-towels," Peter mumbled.

"General Hogan has lots of everything. Yes, I'm sure he has plenty of towels in the embassy compound, and he has a housemaid to pick up after you, too," LeBeau scolded, though there was a playful edge to his voice, as if he actually missed sparring every day about everything and anything.

"So do you," Peter replied with a bit of a pout.

"Twice a week, not all day, every day," LeBeau replied. He draped the wet towels over the side of the bathtub and turned to face Peter, a hand on his hip. Louis simultaneously sighed and smiled as he looked at him, bare chested and healthy looking. He was a handful; he always had been. But it was good to have him here and to see him looking so much better than he had upon their repatriation a year earlier.

"Pierre, you do know he sent you here to learn to stand on your own two feet a bit more, don't you?" Louis asked kindly. "You didn't grow up with people cleaning up after you."

"I did so. I have ssseven older sisters. I couldn't put a teacup down without having someone snatch it up to w-wash it," Peter grumbled. "But I'm sorry, Louis, I'll try harder. I know it's your ffflat and I'm a guest here."

"You're my frérot, not my guest," LeBeau said kindly, following his half-naked friend out into the hallway. He peered into Peter's bedroom and forced himself not to shake his head at the mess. "But you can start by making your bed, please. Then clean up those coffee cups in the living room and come help me make lunch for us."

Peter leaned against the door frame and watched as LeBeau disappeared down the hallway, and then went into his bedroom and sat down heavily on his rumpled bed. He was happy to be Louis's guest. He had missed him terribly for months.

But that was awfully close. He didn't think Louis would approve of his having guests at midday. And he was fairly sure that Louis would not be happy to learn that his guest was another restaurant employee.

Notes:

This will be a revised version of a story I am posting on AO3. Although the storyline will be the same, this version will not contain any details of a mature or explicit nature. There will be references to sexual situations, but nothing will be shown vividly. Publishing updates on this platform may lag by several days or even weeks, because I will need to "refit" them for this version.

The story picks up two years after the events of Peter and Anja. It will include flashbacks to the last months of the war and its immediate aftermath. Updates will come at a pace of around two per week. LeBeau and Hogan will figure prominently in this story, and Carter and Kinch will show up too, along with some of my OCs.

A special thank you to my collaborator Valashu for reading and commenting on endless drafts and outlines of this story. I also want to thank my beta, Abracadebra, for editing help and for encouraging me to enrich the story with background and historical details.

And yes, this story is slash, though not with another canon character. I intend to keep the other canon characters very much in character while I play around with this "what-if" angle for Newkirk. I understand completely that it's not everyone's cup of tea, so please understand that there is no need to point that out to me. (I get so many anonymous reviews and angry PMs about slash that it is not funny. It's very simple. If you don't like slash, why are you even looking? Don't read it.)