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anotherhumaninthisworld · 4 days ago

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robespierre family dynamics... what were augustin and charlotte like? how did maximilien act towards them? wasnt charlotte into horse riding, and didnt her brothers discourage her from doing that? wasnt augustin known as the more goofy, lighthearted version of maximilien? oh! and why was augustin nicknamed "bonbon"?

(these are questions mixed in with random facts ive heard about the robespierre family... since you know a lot about frev, im hoping to get some more context and clarification on some of these!)

To start off with Augustin’s nickname Bonbon: Élisabeth Duplay Le Bas confirmed in a note written around 1847 that it stemmed from the fact Augustin’s middle name was Bon. Interestingly, we actually have no recorded instance of Maximilien and Charlotte using the nickname, even if it can be assumed that they did.

As for the family dynamics, pre-revolution we more or less only have two sources to rely on — La Vie et les Crimes de Robespierre, surnommé Le Tyran: depuis sa naissance jusqu’à sa mort (1795) by Le Blond de Neuvéglise (abbé Proyart), who was an acquaintance of the family and teacher of Maximilien, and Charlotte’s Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères (1835). For both authors, the primary point is not necessarily to tell the full truth, but rather to denounce/rehabilitate (or if you want, vilify/glorify) Maximilien, and as a consequence, the pictures they paint are radically different from one another (and perhaps not always to be treated that literally). According to Proyart, the child Maximilien ”was tyrannically harsh towards his brother and his sisters. As he spoke little, he found it bad that they spoke more than he did, he did not grant them common sense; nothing they said was well said. He missed no opportunity of mortifying or humiliating them; he lavished on them, for the smallest of subjects, the reproaches of rudeness.” Charlotte on the other hand writes that her older brother ”loved us tenderly, and there were no caresses he did not lavish on us.” She does however subscribe to Proyart’s description in some sense, as she right before this states: ”since [the death of our parents] he saw himself, in the quality of eldest, as the head of the family, he became poised, reasonable, laborious; he spoke to us with a sort of imposing gravity; if he joined in our games, it was to direct them.”

Following what more reliable sources can tell us about the early family dynamics (see this post for a more complete timeline), we know the siblings lost their mother on July 16 1764, when Maximilien was six, Charlotte four, Henriette two and a half and Augustin one (according to Charlotte’s memoirs, he was still with a wetnurse when this happened). Shortly thereafter (unclear exactly when) their father cut contacts with his children. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, she and Henriette were then taken in by their two paternal aunts, while the two brothers got looked after by their maternal grandparents. They did however make sure that the children got to see each other every Sunday. On December 30 1768, the eight year old Charlotte was enrolled at Maison des Sœurs Manarre, “a pious foundation for poor girls” situated in modern day Belgium, which she presumably left in 1778, aged 18. On October 13 1769, eleven year old Maximilien left for the boarding school of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, from which he graduated on May 15 1781. Henriette was sent to join her sister at Maison des Sœurs Manarre on May 3 1771. She died in March 1780, it’s unclear exactly where. As for Augustin, he presumably studied at the college of Duoai until October 11 1781, when he got to overtake Maximilien’s scholarship to Louis-le-Grand. It can in other words be concluded that the siblings (with the exception of Charlotte and Henriette) didn’t see much of each other for the majority of their childhood.

From 1781 to 1789, Maximilien and Charlotte live together in Arras, first on Rue du Saumon, then on Rue Teinturiers, Rue des Jésuites and finally Rue des Rapporteurs 9. In 1787 they are joined by Augustin who has finished his studies at Louis-le-Grand. The information we have regarding the family dynamics for this period continue to be very lacking, we still more or less only have Charlotte’s memoirs and Proyart’s La Vie et les Crimes de Robespierre… to rely on. According to the former, Maximilien worked much, from six or seven in the morning to seven or eight in the evening, spending the rest of the day with his friends or family. Charlotte nevertheless also remembers that he was often rather distracted in these gatherings — ”when we played cards, or when we spoke only of insignificant things, he retired to a corner of the apartment, ensconced himself in an armchair, and gave himself up to his reflections as if he had been alone” — something which she and the two aunts often reproached him for. She still insists that ”he was naturally gay; he knew how to be pleasant, and sometimes laughed until he cried” and that the same aunts would often tell her: “Your brother is an angel; he has all moral virtues, he is made to be the dupe and the victim of the vicious too.” Charlotte notes that she and the aunts ”spoiled [Maximilien] by a crowd of those little attentions of which women alone are capable,” but also that she often had to decide for herself what they were having for dinner, Maximilien responding he had no idea when she asked him what he wanted.

As for Augustin, Charlotte writes that he had less aptitude for study than Maximilien, and was sometimes reproached for ”his idle tastes” by his big siblings — ”we exhorted him to create some occupations for himself; sometimes our remonstrance made Augustin withdraw into himself; he put himself to his work with an ardor to lively to be durable; enclosed in his chamber he passed many days with books; but he could not long support this constraint.” Regardless, Charlotte concludes by describing the bond between the three siblings as strong — ”never had a family been as united as my two brothers and I.” An image that Proyart doesn’t exactly agree with, here is all he has to say regarding the family dynamics during the same period:

In his domestic affairs, [Maximilien] was neither less despotic nor more amiable than in his external relations. He treated with equal harshness and heaped the same reproaches on both his brother, who could deserve them, and a sister, who did not deserve them. The first was twenty-five years old, and he still addressed him with a brutal "shut up, stupid beast." At a time when his sister, although economical with her time, earned very little from the work of her fingers, he did not grant her even the necessary supplement for the most modest maintenance.

When Maximilien in 1789 set out to get elected for the Estates General, Proyart claims that Augustin helped in the campaign: ”Robespierre the younger went from village to village, seeking votes for his brother.” In an undated memorandum presumably written in March 1795, Armand Joseph Guffroy, an associate of the three siblings, claims that Charlotte also helped here, selling for her brothers the capital of her 400 livres income to help them get to Paris, and this in spite of ”the prediction of an aunt.”

In her memoirs, Charlotte claims that the siblings wrote to each other frequently during Maximilien’s time as deputy of the National Assembly: ”[Maximilien] gave me the most emphatic testimony of friendship in his letters. “You (vous) are what I love the most after the homeland,” he told me.” However, we have zero letters conserved from Maximilien to his brother and sister, as well as zero from Augustin to his sister. Both brothers did however write several letters to the family friend Antoine Buissart while away in Paris (we have a total nine from Maximilien between 1789-1792, and eighteen from Augustin 1789-1793). In said letters, they often tell Buissart to say hello from them to his wife Charlotte, but never ask about their own family… We do however have signs of Maximilien having corresponded with at least Augustin. One can be found in a letter from Maximilien to Buissart dated May 1 1790, where he mentions that he’s ”sending you a letter for my brother,” not daring to address it to him directly ”out of fear that my name would incite aristocratic hands to violate the secrecy of the letters.” The other sign is in a letter from Augustin to Maximilien dated April 10 1792 where there is to read: ”You are mistakenly complaining about the bad address I sent you.” These letters from Maximilien have then either gone missing or gotten destroyed.

Throughout 1790 we also have a total of nine letters from Augustin to Maximilien, most of them undated. These are entirely business related, and can’t really be used to say much about the dynamics between the two brothers, other than the fact Augustin was utterly loyal to his big brother. In one of the letters he complains that Maximilien is hesitant to publish a response to Briois de Beaumetz who in an open letter had accused him of having charged the people of Arras with failure to pay their taxes — ”This is an insult you are doing to your greatest friend.” He also doesn’t hide his fears of the risks Maximilien’s position puts him in: ”I tremble, my friend, when I think of the dangers that surround you. […] Farewell, I embrace you with tears in my eyes,” sentiments he repeats in a later letter, though this time with some resolve added in: ”I cannot hide my fears from you, dear brother, you will seal the cause of the people with your blood, perhaps these people will even be unfortunate enough to strike you, but I swear to avenge your death and to deserve it like you.” Augustin was also ready to give his brother political advice: in one of the letters he suggests dropping his motion for the marriage of priests, since it causes too much uproar: ”[the motion] is well within my principles, but few people are at the same level! You would lose the esteem of the peasants if you renewed this motion. This weapon is used to harm you; people only talk about your irreligion, etc.”

As for Charlotte, we have one letter from her to Maximilien dated April 9 1790, in which she mentions a local whip-round that she and other ”patriots” have occupied themselves with, a falling out she’s had with the journalist Thérèse Merchand — ”I took the liberty of telling her what the good patriots must have thought of her journal, and what you thought of it. I reproached her for her affectation of always putting infamous notes for the people, etc.” — and which she ends by asking him to ”to send what you promised me. We are still in great trouble” and to see if he can’t find a place in Paris for her and for Augustin, ”because he will never be anything in this country.”

That the two younger siblings were in dire straits back in Arras is also confirmed by two letters from Augustin to Maximilien from 1790. In the first one he writes that “We are in absolute destitution, remember our unfortunate household,” in the second one he reports that ”my sister has payed your rent. She has very few things left. She begs me to tell you this. I don’t know what to become, I don’t find any resources.” That Maximilien helped them out economically is confirmed by Souvernirs d’un déporté (1802) by Paul Villiers, who claimed to have served as his secretary in 1791. Villiers recalled that Maximilien at the time sent half of his fees to ”a sister he had in Arras, whom he held a lot of affection for.”

While Charlotte wouldn’t see her older brother again until 1791, Augustin went to visit him at least two times during the lifespan of the National Assembly. The first visit came in September 1789, as seen through letters from Augustin to Buissart dated September 3 and September 10. Through the second letter we learn that Augustin and Maximilien had gotten into some kind of argument prior to the latter leaving for Versailles, but that they had now made up — ”My brother has righted his wrongs against me.” Through the address given on both letters, we see that Augustin moved in with Maximilien on Rue d’Étang 16, a place he shared with three other deputies from Arras before the National Assembly moved to Paris in October 1789. It is unclear if Augustin was still with his brother when this move took place. We do know he was back in Arras by at least April 1790. In June the same year he writes to ask Maximilien to supply him with the means to go to Paris for July 14, in order to compensate for the lack of ”patriotic enjoyment” in Arras. We don’t know if he got his will through here. He was however back by his brother’s side again by September 1790, as revealed through a letter from the same month from him to Buissart. Augustin seems to have been ready to go back to Arras by the end of the year but gotten hindered by his brother, as revealed through letters from him to Buissart dated dated November(”My brother has delayed my departure, I will not announce it anymore; I will arrive, I will embrace you, everything will be forgiven.”) and December 13 (”I thought you would have received me at your home today instead of receiving my letter the day after tomorrow; but my brother did not allow me to leave and I’m staying in Paris for the week.”) Though the first letter we also learn that Charlotte would not appear to have been so fond over Augustin having left for the capital once more: ”A thousand things to my sister, she must be very cross with me, but she easily forgets, that consoles me, I will try to bring her what she wants.” Augustin nevertheless appears to have stayed in Paris until at least March 1791, as seen through a letter from him to Buissart the same month. Maximilien’s secretary Paul Villiers gave the following portrait of Augustin during the stay: ”…a miserable lawyer, without means, false, drunkard, base and villainous; he did me the honor of esteeming me and borrowing money and linen from me which he then never returned.”

On September 30 1791 the National Assembly was closed down, and a few days later Maximilien settled for Arras for a short stay. According to number 289 of the journal La Feuille du jour (October 16 1791), Augustin, Charlotte and ”many other young ladies” traveled to Baurains to meet him, dressed in fine clothes and equipped with music and a so-called ”civic crown,” but were forced to return empty handed when no Maximilien appeared. This was something the people of Arras could not stand for, proposing that Augustin serve as substitute for his brother and be given civic honors in his place. Augustin did however manage to shut this project down with the words: ”No, I refuse, they would make fun of me almost as much as they would of my brother.”

Recounting this episode in her memoirs forty years later, Charlotte does however claim that Maximilien had written to her about his arrival beforehand, recommending her to keep it a secret. She still writes that she and Augustin went to meet him on the way and had to return empty-handed, but that they were accompanied only by the family friend Charlotte Buissart, and were quite surprised to on their return to Arras see ”a considerable crowd; already the rumor of Robespierre’s arrival had spread in the city, whether by some indiscretion of Madame Buissart’s, whether because our servant had understood the reason for our trip to Bapaume, and had divulged it.” The next day, Charlotte, Augustin and Madame Buissart did however set out again early in the morning, and this time Maximilien eventually did appear: ”Finally, we held him in our arms, and we tasted the ineffable pleasure of seeing him again after an absence of two years.”

For Maximilien’s stay in Arras, Ghislain Morel, clerc of the priest Joseph Lebon, told the following anecdote (cited in La Terreur dans le Pas-de-Calais et dans le Nord. Histoire de Joseph Le Bon et des tribunaux révolutionnaires d'Arras et de Cambrai (1864) regarding a dinner the two brothers attended at his master’s house:

All they talked about was reforms and upheavals. The guests seemed to be preparing the plans that two years later they carried out. Robespierre the younger was a man of peace, who only asked to dine quietly; when he saw Maximilien and Lebon lose their temper, he exhausted himself in efforts to calm them down and bring them to other thoughts.

In late November 1791, Maximilien did however leave for Paris once more, to never see his hometown again. The following months we find three conserved letters from Augustin to Maximilien dated November 1791, December 14 1791 and April 10 1792, all entirely about politics, as well as a somewhat more personal one dated March 19 1792 from Augustin to Maximilien’s host Maurice Duplay:

Patriot Dupleix [sic], I learned indirectly that my brother is indisposed; I am worried; let me know about his situation as soon as possible. Send me also the cartridge that I asked my brother's friend to look for in his papers. Tell my brother that my sister is convalescing, and that I will send back Mme Witty's book in a few days. Don't waste a moment, send answers right away. My worry is at its peak. Nothing prevents me from flying to Paris. Also send me some copies of the speech on the war that your friend gave and the observations of Pethion [sic] and Robespierre. I embrace you and your family.

On September 16 1792, Augustin was elected to fill a seat in the National Convention, representing Paris. This time, Charlotte was not left behind when he once again set out for the capital. The two moved in with the Duplay family on Rue Saint-Honoré 366, where their brother had been lodging since a year back. The family, which consisted of father Maurice, mother Françoise-Éléonore, their three unmarried daughters Éléonore, Victoire and Élisabeth, son Jacques Maurice and nephew Simon, appears to have been on great terms with both of the brothers. This is what Élisabeth in her memoirshas her husband Philippe Le Bas tell her that Augustin had told him:

He praised you, told me that he had the friendship of a brother for you, that you were cheerful and good and that he liked you best of your sisters, that your good mother was excellent, that she had raised you well, as housewives, that your household was perfect and recalled the golden age, that everything there breathed virtue and a pure patriotism, that your good father was the most worthy and generous of men, that his whole life had passed in goodness. He told me that his brother was very happy to be among you, that you were a family to him, that he loved you like sisters and regarded your father and mother as his own parents.

In Histoire de Saint-Just député à la Convention nationale (1860), Ernest Hamel also publishes a testimony from Élisabeth’s son Philippe, revealing that Augustin, together with Simon and Jacques Maurice, once visited the house of saloon hostess Jeanne-Louise-Françoise de Sainte-Amaranthe, ”and this escapade was so severely criticised by Maximilien that, despite all the attraction of such a house for men, the oldest of whom was barely twenty-nine years old, they were careful not to return there.”

As can be seen above, Augustin also seems to have gone under his nickname ”Bonbon” within the Duplay family.

Charlotte on the other hand wrote in her memoirs that she got along well with Élisabeth and Victoire, but not so much with their mother and Éléonore. For the first, she writes that she ”looked constantly to put me in bad standing with my older brother and to monopolize him.” She also brings up (as she is not alone in having done) the claim that there existed marriage plans between Maximilien and Éléonore. Charlotte however, argues that only Françoise and Éléonore actually wanted this, her brother being too ”overwhelmed with work and affairs” to have time for either mistress or fiancée. She writes Maximilien ”told me twenty times that he felt nothing for Éléonore; her family’s obsessions, their importunities were more suited to make feel disgust for her than to make him love her,” and that he even told Augustin to marry her instead, to which he would have replied: “My faith, no.”

Charlotte also insinuates Françoise was bullying her: ”If I were to report everything she did to me, I would fill a fat volume. […] [Élisabeth] often came to wipe away my tears when Madame Duplay’s indignities made me cry.” This ill treatment is however contested by the same Élisabeth, who in her memoirs instead reports that her mother ”regarded Charlotte as a daughter” and ”never refused her anything that could please her.” She does however imply that Charlotte did eventually fall out of favor with Françoise: ”At the time (April 1793), my mother liked [Charlotte] a lot, she still had nothing to complain about,” but without elaborating on why exactly…

Though Charlotte doesn’t write it outright, we might imagiene the feud between her and the Duplays was fueled by the fact she, who for the past ten years had had her own household to run, now had that role taken away from her by Madame Duplay. Another theory, that we’ll get to later, is that there was a political dimension to the feud, namely, Charlotte blaming the Duplays for Maximilien’s radicalization.

If information regarding the relationship between the three siblings and their hosts is far from lacking, it is more scarce when it comes to the dynamics between the siblings themselves at the time. But it can be observed that no general disagreements between the two brothers can be spotted as Augustin took the step from dealing with local politics as a lawyer in Arras to national politics as a deputy of the Convention in Paris, and that he in large parts seems to have kept the protective attitude towards Maximilien already seen in their correspondence. We know Augustin was moved by the open attack on his brother by the ”girondin” Louvet at the Convention on October 29 1793. Later the same day he exclaimed to the jacobins: ”I am somewhat ashamed to be speaking before you, because the brother of Robespierre should be calumniated, and he is not. […] I heard men say that he would perish by their hands. Another one, whom I asked if he wanted to be the executioner of my brother, responded: ”He has been the executioner of a lot of others.” After this, it is possible to believe innocence will never be victorious!” And he ended by assuring them that Marat must be innocent of the charges currently directed against him as well, ”because he is persecuted by the same enemies that persecute Robespierre.” Augustin nevertheless also seems to have shared his brother’s 1, unwillingness to compromise and 2, belief that ideals are worth more than single individuals, when, five days later, a jacobin proposed trying to reunite with the ”girondins,” he was firmly opposed and exclaimed: ”Citizens of Paris, be calm, let Maximilien Robespierre be sacrificed (cries of no! no! from the citizens in the tribunes). The loss of a man doesn’t entail the loss of liberty.” Finally, on December 31 1792, after having summarized the Convention session of the day for the jacobins, Augustin is recorded to have ”complained about attacks against his brother contained in the speech of Vergniaud.”

In Observations de Jérôme Pétion sur la lettre de Maximilien Robespierre (December 1792), Pétion insinuates Augustin getting elected to represent Paris in the National Convention must have been due to nepotism: ”your brother might be a brave and loyal citizen, I’m speaking neither for nor against him; but you must admit he wasn’t known to ten people.” Something which Maximilien hastily refuted when responding to Pétion a little while later:

As for my brother, he was known to the patriots of Paris and the Jacobins, who had witnessed his civic-mindedness; he was presented by members who, since the beginning of the revolution, have enjoyed public confidence; it was discussed solemnly and publicly, following the usage adopted by the electoral assembly; he was attacked more sharply than any other candidate; and were it true that one had counted, among the guarantors of his incorruptibility, the loyalty of his brother to the cause of the people, would one have to conclude with you that this choice was the fruit of the cabal, and that the electoral assembly, the purest that has yet existed among us, was a collection of intriguers and imbeciles?

As for Charlotte, Élisabeth Duplay writes in her memoirs that the two often visited the Convention together, where they sometimes met Augustin. On February 2 1793 the three siblings also had dinner with Rosalie Jullien, who the next day left the following portraits of them in a letter to her son. I would guess the idea of Augustin as more lighthearted than his brother has much to thank Rosalie’s description:

I was very pleased with the Robespierre family. The sister is naive and natural like your aunts, she arrived two hours before her brothers, and we had some women’s talk. I got her to speak about their domestic morals, and it is just like ours, simplicity and sincerity. Her brother had as little to do with the tenth of August as with the second of September. He is as suited to leading a party as he is to catching the moon between his teeth. He is abstract like a thinker and dry like an office man, but gentle like a lamb and gloomy like Young. I see that he does not possess our tender sensibilities, but I believe that he wants the best for mankind, more for the sake of justice than for the sake of love. Besides, you don't have to do more than look at his face to determine that never has nature given such gentle features to such a beautiful soul. Robespierre the younger is livelier, more open, an excellent patriot, but with a common mind and a contented temper which make him an unfavorable noise to the Mountain.

The siblings eventually move from Rue Saint-Honoré and into an apartment on Rue Saint-Florentin. No author has been able to identify when exactly this move took place. From what the different sources indicate, I personally think it’s most likely Charlotte and Augustin moved out before Maximilien, somewhere in the summer of 1793. Shortly thereafter, on July 19 1793, Augustin was was tasked by the Committee of Public Safety with going to the Army of Italy. Augustin set off a few days later together with fellow representative on mission Jean François Ricord. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, it was when she learned that Ricord was bringing his wife Marguerite for company that she asked Augustin if she too could join on the journey, something which the latter ”joyfully agreed to.”

Again according to Charlotte’s memoirs, up until this point ”nothing had altered the vivid harmony that reigned between us [three siblings].” Charlotte does however claim that it was during this mission a rupture took place between them that they would never recover from. The start of this episode, she writes, came when she, Augustin and the Ricords, after a while of having traveled from town to town with counter-revolutionaries constantly after them, finally settled in Nice for a longer period of time. There, Augustin and Ricord made frequent outings to different divisions while Charlotte and Marguerite occupied themselves with making shirts for the soldiers during the day and went for walks and horseback rides in the countryside in the evenings. This latter activity soon proved to be troublesome, as ”several journals paid by the aristocracy” back in Paris started accusing the two women of acting like princesses with their equestrian outings. As a consequence, Augustin vetoed further horseback rides after receiving a letter from Maximilien regarding the issue, and Charlotte promised to abstain from riding from then on (this is the horse controversy you were talking about in the ask) But not long after, while Augustin and Ricord were away, Marguerite, who according to Charlotte ”was the most frivolous and inconsiderate person in the world,” proposed the two should go on yet another ride, and Charlotte, after trying in vain to remind her of what her brothers had said, hesitantly joined her. ”During the entire ride, I was sad and had a heavy heart, because I was so affected by disobeying my brother.”

When Augustin reproached his sister for the ride three days later, Charlotte called on Marguerite to testify that it had been her idea. But Marguerite, instead of telling the truth, not only enforced the lie that it was Charlotte that had wanted the ride, but also added that she had taken her with her against her will. Charlotte was so stupified she couldn’t respond, but Augustin chose to believe in it, much to her distress — ”My brother knew I was incapable of lying. Why then did he not want to believe me?” After this incident, Augustin stopped speaking to Charlotte and started keeping a certain coldness towards her, a coldness which grew bigger everyday since Marguerite ”didn’t cease to speak ill of me to my brother and invent thousands of lies to make me lose his friendship.” Charlotte for her part cried a lot over Augustin’s behaviour when she was alone, but ”was resoluted to hide my pain and to not show it, especially to my brother.” She claims she didn’t understand what was causing his behaviour at the time, but chose not to ask for an explanation for it since ”I saw him so occupied, so burdened by work, that I couldn’t bring myself to.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when Marguerite a while later suggested to Charlotte that they should go to Grasse together to see a friend of hers, something Charlotte agreed to do. But hardly had they arrived when Marguerite came forward with a forged (so Charlotte writes) letter, telling Charlotte it was from Augustin and that he urged her to return to Paris as soon as possible. A shocked Charlotte obeyed and set out for the capital the following morning, ending her journey somewhere in the fall of 1793 (we don’t have a clear date as to when here either). Marguerite in her turn went on to slander Charlotte even more to Augustin, saying that the reason she had so abruptly left for Paris was because she didn’t care about him, and that Charlotte had caluminated both of them. According to Charlotte, Marguerite was seducing her brother, who for his part ”believed it essential to his honor and duty” to respond to her advances. If there is any truth to that interpretation or if the story is actually such that Augustin and Marguerite were having a mutual love affair that Charlotte became an annoying witness to I will leave unsaid…

It is after Charlotte’s lone return to Paris that I think it’s most likely she got Maximilien to leave the Duplays and come live with her on Rue Saint-Florentin. According to her memoirs, the argument she used to persuade him was that, occupying such a high rank in politics, he ought to have a home of his own. ”Maximilien recognized the fairness of my reasons, but for a long time fought the proposal that I made to him to separate from the Duplay family, fearing to distress them. At last I succeeded.”

On December 18 1793, one day after the siege of Toulon, Augustin writes to let Maximilien know he’s coming back to Paris. We have two conflicting reports regarding his short stay in the capital. According to Charlotte’s memoirs, Augustin had swallowed all the bad things Marguerite Ricord had told him about his sister, and was therefore ”outraged” against her upon his arrival in Paris, refusing to see her during his stay and not even putting his foot in the house, choosing instead to lodge with his colleague Record (unclear to me if she means Ricord, which would be strange given the fact they were not given a leave at the same time). He did however make known to Maximilien that Charlotte had compromised him and Marguerite, and even though her older brother never spoke to her about it, ”I saw that he was unhappy with me.” Charlotte herself writes she was still completely unaware of what had caused Augustin’s change in attitude towards her, but that ”the purity of my conscience” stopped her from asking either brother for an explanation of why they were treating her like they did.

Maurice André Gaillard, who had known the siblings before the revolution, did on the other hand claim in his memoirs to have met Augustin when the latter made a stop in Melun on his way to Paris. Augustin, far from speaking ill of Charlotte, would then have told him that ”my whole family will be content to receive news from you. We often speak of you, my brother, sister and I, come and see us in Paris, public affairs shouldn’t hinder from cultivating old relationships.” Recalling a meeting he had with Charlotte five months later, Gaillard similarily has her say that both she and Maximilien got very happy when Augustin could deliver news about him, insinuating she and her younger brother were not on bad terms at all and that he, contrary to Charlotte’s memoirs’ version, stayed at same house as them during his leave.

We have one confirmed interaction between Augustin and Maximilien during the former’s brief stay in Paris, and it occurred on January 5 1794 at the jacobin club, in the middle of the flamewar between the journalists Hébert and Desmoulins. Augustin stood up to regret the quarrels infecting the club that were not there when he left on a mission five months earlier. ”I ask that Hébert, who has many reproaches to make, because it is he who is the cause of the movements in the departments, relating to worship [...] be heard in his turn. […] If Hébert has to respond to Camille, Père Duchesne can enter the fray with the Vieux Cordelier.” This comment did however earn him a rebuke from Maximilien, who immediately after declared: ”It is easy to see that the last speaker has been absent from the Society for a long time. He has rendered great services at Toulon, but he did not sufficiently consider how dangerous it is to still fuel small passions which clash with so much violence.”

Soon thereafter Augustin left for another mission in Haute-Saône, this time accompanied by his mistress Guillodon La Saudraie (by now it can provably be seen that he appeared to have a much bigger appreciation for such activities than his brother, something I suppose it too has controbuted to the image of him as the more light-hearted one). It wouldn’t be until June that he could see his family again.

Maximilien was for his part soon to return to the Duplays again. In her memoirs, Charlotte claims he moved back in with the family after Madame Duplay one day came to visit and found that he had fallen ill, whereupon she told Charlotte he would be better cared for at her house. The only period of illness in Robespierre’s last year alive that I’ve been able to identify is in February-March 1794, when he was away from public life for as much as a month, so it seems likely for this incident to have happened here. Charlotte claims that Maximilien first weakly refused to go, but when Madame Duplay ”doubled her instances or rather her obsessions,” he decided to follow her, telling Charlotte that ”they love me so, they have so much respect, so much goodness for me, that it would be ungrateful of me to push them away.” Élisabeth Duplay did for her part in a note written in her old age claim that Maximilien had in fact disliked living with his sister because her ”imperious character rendered him really unhappy.”

Charlotte was hurt by Maximilien choosing the Duplays over her. She writes she regardless of that often went to see him after he moved back, always being received in a ”disgraceful manner” by Françoise Duplay. Charlotte also often charged her domestic with bringing her brother jam and fruits that he liked. But one day Françoise sent the domestic and her jampots back with the words: ”Bring that back, I don’t want her to poison Robespierre.” (unclear if this is meant to be read literally or just as a joke about Charlotte’s cooking). Learning about this, Charlotte recalls she was ”stupifed,” but again chose not to tell Maximilien about what had happened since this would ”provoke a scene that could only be strongly disagreeable for him” and instead chose to ”devour in silence my grief and indignation.”

If Charlotte really was as reserved in front of her brothers as she portrays herself in her memoirs, she on the other hand appears to have been much more politically active in other places. In an undated letter probably from 1793 we do for example find her submitting papers to an unknown person and asking for a copy of ”the proclamation that you have given to M. La Jourdeai.” Charlotte seems to have been especially investigated in the situation in Arras, corresponding with both the Buissart couple, the daughter of a municipal officier, and administrator in the army Claude-Louis Bruslé de Valsuzenay, who in a letter to her dated April 25 1794 paints a grim picture of the repression currently carried out in the city under the leadership of representative on mission Joseph Lebon: ”While we were relaying I fulfilled your errand. What has been said of your country is true; for six weeks one hundred and fifty people have been guillotined and about three thousand imprisoned.”

Charlotte also visited Convention deputy Armand Joseph Guffroy, who was also from Arras and had been an associate of all three siblings, even if, according to Élisabeth Duplay, Augustin and Maximilien ”held a great contempt for him” since at least 1793. In his work Les secrets de Joseph Lebon et de ses complices (1795) Guffroy claims there was one affair concerning Arras that Charlotte got particularily invested in. It revolved around several members of the city’s revolutionary tribunal — the president Beugniet, public prosecutor Démouliez and committee of surveillance member Gabriel Leblond — who on April 19 1794 got arrested for not having voted for death in a recent trial (these would later be joined by Leblond’s brother, as well as a couple by the name of Danten). On May 4, all of them were taken to Paris to be transferred before the Revolutionary Tribunal of the city. While Guffroy since May 7 started mailbombing Maximilien denouncing and asking him to recall Joseph Lebon and receive declarations from the imprisoned, he writes that female relatives of the accused, alongside Charlotte and the aforementioned Charlotte Buissart, tried their best to approach him in person to tell him about the situation — ”Leblond’s sister, Demeulier’s daughter, Buissart’s wife, Robespierre’s sister, to whom he was almost invisible, took every means to reach him” (this claim is also confirmed through a letter from Guffroy to the Committee of Public Safety dated June 26 1794, where he writes Robespierre surely must remember what Charlotte and Madame Buissart have told him on this subject.)

Charlotte’s attempts to get her brother to listen to her might eventually have motivated her to move back in with the Duplays as well. That is at least the place Maurice André Gaillard portrays her as living at when in his memoirs recounting a meeting the two had somewhere in May 1794. During said meeting Charlotte would have again ”named with great bitterness, the prodigious number of very honest people dragged to the scaffold by Joseph Lebon,” before again raging against the Duplay family. By now, it would however appear like the relationship with Maximilien it too has much deteriorated, and Charlotte comes off as deploring of her brother’s role in ”the terror,” while nevertheless blaming all his negative changes on his host family:

When my younger brother passed through Melun, all three of us were living together; I still hoped to be able to bring back the older, to snatch him from the wretches who obsess over him and lead him to the scaffold. They felt that my brother would eventually escape them if I regained his confidence, they destroyed me entirely in his mind; today he hates the sister who served as his mother… For several months he has been living alone, and although lodged in the same house, I no longer have the power to approach him… I loved him tenderly, I still do… His excesses are the consequence of the domination under which he groans, I am sure of it, but knowing no way to break the yoke he has allowed himself to be placed under, and no longer able to bear the pain and the shame of to see my brother devote his name to general execration, I ardently desire his death as well as mine. Judge of my unhappiness!…

When Gaillard wants to see Maximilien to speak with him of an affair regarding 60 arrested judges from Melun (an affair on which Charlotte is quick at voicing her mind as well), Charlotte even suggests not mentioning her name to him. After Gaillard is refused at the Duplays’ door, Charlotte aims even more reproaches against the family, and hopes Augustin will eventually be able to get Maximilien to move away from there:

No one can approach my brother unless he is a friend of those Duplays, with whom we are lodging; these wretches have neither intelligence nor education, explain to me their ascendancy over Maximilien. However, I do not despair of breaking the spell that holds him under their yoke; for that I am awaiting the return of my other brother, who has the right to see Maximilien. If the discovery I just made doesn't rid us of this race of vipers forever, my family is forever lost. You know what a miserable state we found ourselves in, reduced to alms, my brothers and I, if the sister of our father hadn’t taken us in. It’s strange that you didn’t often notice how much her husband’s brusqueness and formality made us pay dearly for the bread he gave us; but you must also have noticed that if indigence saddened us, it never degraded us and you always judged us incapable of containing money through a dubious action. Maximilien, who makes me so unhappy, has never given a hold, as you know, in terms of delicacy. Imagiene his fury when he learns that these miserable Duplays are using his name and his credit to get themselves the rarest goods at a low price from the merchants. So while all of Paris is forced to line up at the baker's shop every morning to get a few ounces of black, disgusting bread, the Duplays eat very good bread because the Incorruptible sits at their table: the same pretext provides them with sugar, oil, soap of the best quality, which the inhabitant of Paris would seek in vain in the best shops... How my brother's pride would be humiliated if he knew the abuse that these wretches make of his name! What would become of his popularity, even among his most ardent supporters? Certainly my brother is very proud, it is in him a capital fault; you must remember, you and I have often lamented the ridicule he made for himself by his vanity, the great number of enemies he made for himself by his disdainful and contemptuous tone, but he is not bloodthirsty. Certainly he believes he can overthrow his adversaries and his enemies by the superiority of his talent.

Charlotte then helps arrange a meeting between Gaillard and Maximilien’s Committee of Public Safety colleague and friend Georges Couthon, so that Gaillard can discuss his errand with him instead. But when Couthon, once the conversation turns hostile, makes a move to call on his guards, Charlotte throws herself on him and holds him still while telling Gaillard to escape and go wait for her. Meeting up with him again, she claims that they both were fooled by ”the profound hypocrisy” of Couthon and that Gaillard would have been executed this very day if she had not intervened. But, not convinced that Couthon will stay put, she tells Gaillard to flee Paris and not to take the ordinary route, something which he also goes ahead and does. If Maximilien found out about this incident is something the anecdote leaves unknown, but we might imagine he wasn’t super happy with his sister if he did…

While all this was going down, Augustin was still away from Paris serving as representative on mission. Aside from letters to the entire Committee of Public Safety, he also penned down seven ones only to Maximilien during this one year long period. These are all entirely related to politics, with one exception, a letter that is undated but usually gets traced to May 1794:

My sister does not have a single drop of blood that resembles ours. I have seen and learned so much about her that I regard her as our greatest enemy. She abuses our spotless reputation to lay down the law on us and threatens to take a scandalous step in order to compromise us. We must take a decisive stand against her. We must make her leave for Arras, and thus take her away from us, a woman who causes our common despair. She would like to give us the reputation of bad brothers, her calumnies spread against us aim at this goal. I would like you to see the citoyenne La Saudraie, she would give you certain information on all the masks that it is interesting to know in these circumstances. A certain Saint-Félix seems to be from the clique.

What exactly Augustin is denouncing Charlotte for here is of course hard to know for sure. At first, a connection might be drawn to him having incorrectly come to believe Charlotte had ”caluminated” him and Madame Ricord, as Charlotte would have it in her memoirs. In said memoirs, Charlotte does however not make that connection, choosing instead to not mention this letter at all, making you suspect there could be something more serious it is alluding to… Indeed, it can be established that the Saint-Félix Augustin claims to be part of Charlotte’s ”clique” in the letter was a ”hébertist” since February 19 1794 held under loose house, and whose brother had gotten executed the following month. But regardless of whether the conflict between the two be personal, political or both, the fact Augustin could denounce Charlotte in this vague of a manner and expect Maximilien to act on it might tell us a bit on how the trust and power dynamics between the three siblings looked…

Augustin’s letter may be the reason (though it’s not confirmed) Maximilien on May 14 wrote the following letter on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, asking Joseph Lebon, the representative on mission to Arras that Charlotte according to Gaillard’s account repulsed, to make a short trip to Paris. He would however not appeared to have been affected by his sister’s feelings for him, instead telling him that the Committee of Public Safety is happy with his work:

Dear colleague, The Committee of Public Safety needs to confer with you on important objects, it does justice to the energy with which you have suppressed the enemies of the revolution, and the result of our conference will be to direct it in an even more useful way. Come as soon as possible, to return promptly to the post where you currently are.

Lebon quickly did as he was told. According to Guffroy’s Les Secretes de Joseph Lebon the following played out during his short stay in Paris:

Lebon returned to Paris for 24 hours. He spoke to the committee, to Lebas, to Saint-Just and to Robespierre. He was very diligent with the latter. His sister, worthy of the esteem of all good citizens, reproached him for his cruelty, he denied it, and under the pretext of making her an eyewitness, he brought Robespierre’s sister with him. Her brothers wanted to get rid of her: their correspondence proves it.

In an undated memorandum written after the death of the two brothers, Guffroy furthermore argues that it was Charlotte’s relationship with him that caused her fallout with them: …[The brothers] drove her out of their house because she did not think like they did, because she came to see my wife and because she saw citizens who were sincere friends of justice and truth.” A story that Charlotte’s going to somewhat subscribe to in her interrogation held July 31 1794, that we’ll get to later.

On May 17 Lebon reached Cambrai with Charlotte by his side, as announced by a letter written by Augustin Darthé two days later. From there, it didn’t take long before she was back in Arras again. If Charlotte had agreed to be escorted back to her hometown by a man she allegedly had accused of bloodlust a few days earlier remains unknown. Gaillard for his part claims Charlotte willingly went there in order to ”collect evidence of the massacres carried out by Joseph Lebon,” but that Maximilien ”devoted mortal hatred to her” because of it.

For Charlotte’s time in Arras, we learn through a letter dated May 23 that she seems to have worked as some kind of informant for one Solon, another enemy of Le Bon, visiting the Jacobin club of the town to hear what the word on the street was. In another letter, dated June 28, Antoine Buissart informs Maximilien that since a month back, he, his wife and Charlotte have been ”injured” by a certain Carlier, administrator of the department of Pas-de-Calais — ”You know that from this time on I am a conspirator in the eyes of the famous Carlier, and my wife and your sister two intriguers.” When Charlotte eventually set out for Paris again, Guffroy claims it was caused by Lebon’s ”cutthroats” having denounced her as an aristocrat to the Jacobins. Guffroy speculates that the pretext for this was that she had visited one Payen de Neuville la Liberté, ”an estimable farmer whom Lebon had guillotined, and brother of another Payen, member of the Constituent Assembly who had served as father and friend to Robespierre (Payen was indeed one of the men Maximilien and Augustin had shared an address with at Versailles in 1789) and who Lebon also had guillotined, for not having been at his constitutional mass.” In an undated decree he adds: ”without Florent Guyot, who brought her back to Paris, she would have been imprisoned [in Arras].” All historians mentioning this claim also dismiss it as slander, but this seemingly only on the grounds that they find Guffroy untrustworthy. Considering the two letters above, as well as the fact the execution dates for the two Payen brothers (June 21 and June 26) match up pretty well with the date Charlotte would have departed from Arras (we know through a letter from Buissart to his wife that she was back in Paris by July 1), and the fact Charlotte in her interrogation is going to claim she had almost fallen victim to the Revolutionary Tribunal, I don’t think it deserves to get entirely thrown away. If we also endorse the idea that it was Maximilien who on Augustin’s insistance got Lebon to bring their sister back to Arras, that would mean Charlotte was put in a position to be prosecuted indirectly because of her brothers.

If there is any truth to this, Charlotte does however not let any of that show in her last (and only conserved) letter to Augustin, who had come back to Paris just days before her. In her memoirs, she describes the situation between the two was the same as in December, with Augustin ”fleeing my presence” and ”telling anyone who would listen that I am unworthy of him, that I conducted myself badly with him, that I no longer deserve his esteem” while she herself was entirely clueless as to what she could have done for him to do that. On July 6 1794 Charlotte therefore sat down and authored the following letter to Augustin. She would later try to declare certain parts of it to be fabricated by her brothers’ enemies, but an encounter with the fac-simile of it proves that this is not the case:

Your (votre) aversion for me, my brother, far from diminishing, as I flattered myself, has become the most implacable hatred, to the point that the mere sight of me inspires horror to you; also, I must not hope that you will ever be calm enough to listen to me, which is why I will attempt to write to you.

Crushed under the weight of my sorrow, incapable of connecting my thoughts, I will not undertake my apology. Yet, it would be so easy for me to demonstrate that I have never deserved in any wise to excite this fury which blinds you, but I abandon the task of my justification to time, which unveils all perfidies, all darknesses. So, when the blindfold which covers your eyes will be torn apart, if you can distinguish the voice of remorse in the disorder of your passions, if the cry of nature can make itself heard, returned from an error which is so fatal to me, do not fear that I will ever reproach you for having guarded it for so long; I will only occupy myself with the joy of having rediscovered your heart. Ah! if you could read at the bottom of mine, you would blush for having insulted it in such a cruel manner, you would see there, with the proof of my innocence, that nothing can erase the tender attachment from it which ties me to you, and that this is the only emotion to which I relate all of my affections; without complaining about your hatred, what does it matter to me that I am hated by those who are irrelevant to me and who I despise? Their memory will never come to trouble me, but being hated by my brothers, I, for whom it is a necessity to cherish them, this is the only thing which can render me as unhappy as I am.

This passion of hatred must be atrocious, since it blinds you to the point of bringing you to slander me among my friends. Nonetheless, do not hope in your delirium to be able to make me lose the esteem of a few virtuous persons, which is the only good which remains to me, along with a pure conscience ; full of a just confidence in my virtue, I can defy you to detract it and I dare to tell you that, beside the good people who know me, you will lose your reputation rather than harming mine.

Thus, it is important to your tranquillity that I am far away from you, it is even important, as they say, to the chose publique that I do not live in Paris! I still do not know what I have to do, but what seems the most urgent to me is to clear you of the sight of an odious object, also, as from tomorrow, you can return to your apartment without fearing to meet me there. I will leave from today unless you formally oppose it.

My stay in Paris should not bother you, I take care not to connect my friends to my disgrace, the misfortune which persecutes me has to be contagious, and your hatred for me is too blind in order not to fall on everyone who shows interest for me. Also, I only need a few days in order to calm the disorder of my thoughts, to decide on the place of my exile, because, in the obliteration of all of my faculties, I am in no state to take a course of action.

Therefore, I leave you since you demand it, but, in spite of your injustices, my friendship for you is so indestructible that I will not retain any bitterness from the cruel treatment which you make me endure. When, [being] disillusioned sooner or later, you will come to hold the feelings for me that I deserve, when shyness does not prevent you from informing me that I have recovered your friendship and, wherever I may be, may I even be beyond the seas, if I can be useful to you in anything, know how to inform me of it and I will soon be by your side.

I send you the exact summary of the expenditures which I have made since your departure for Nice. Sorrowfully, I have learned that you have singularly degraded yourself through the manner in which you have spoken of this affaire d'intérêt. Because of this, I oblige you to observe that, in all of these expenditures, there are debts for the shoemaker, the tailor, a washtub, and powder, prior to my return from Nice, you will also observe that the money that was returned to Madame Delaporte had been lent by her to René during my stay in Nice, that the 200 livres given to René are for his wages which had not been paid to him in the last year, finally, you will also distinguish postage for letters, and if you still have any doubts after this, you can share them with me, I will elucidate them, I will give all of my remaining money to you, and it this does not match my expenditures, this can only be because I have forgotten a few items.

PS: You will observe that the polisher is not paid, nor [is] the locksmith who has made a key for your secretary.

PS: You have to think that, while leaving your apartment, I will take all necessary precautions in order to not compromise my brothers. The quarter where citoyenne Laporte lives, [to whose home] I plan to retreat temporarily, is the place of the entire republic where I can be ignored the most.

Charlotte presumably then left this letter in the apartment on Rue Saint-Florentin before moving in with her friend Madame Delaporte on 200 Rue de la Réunion. Her husband, François Sébastien Christophe Delaporte, had at the time just been appointed judge at the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, a position that would land him in prison for several months after thermidor. In the defence he then worked out (cited in Charlotte Robespierre et ses amis (1961)) he had the following to say regarding the Robespierre family dynamics:

I never had relations with any member of the former government, nor with Robespierre. My wife having gotten to know his sister took her into our home, when she was proscribed by him because of her feelings which were quite opposed to his. Certainly, one could not be the friend of this implacable man, when one welcomed his enemies.

According to Charlotte’s memoirs, she never saw Augustin again. She did however meet Maximilien one or two more times, but in the presence of ”several people” (she doesn’t specify which ones) making it impossible for her to speak to him about the conflict with Augustin, since, again: ”I knew both of them were entirely absorbed by the dangers threatening the public sake; I postponed every explanation.” Another person she sometimes met when walking on Champs-Élysées was her former courtier Joseph Fouché. After learning that he was Maximilien’s ”declared enemy,” Charlotte does however claim she no longer wanted to speak with him. In a letter written a few months after thermidor, she reveals that she was offered asylum at the house of Maximilien’s childhood friend Guislain Mathon, something that her brothers protested against, and it would appear like she did indeed not move in with him until after their death.

Charlotte would also appear to not have made the fight between her and her brothers’ known to her friends in Arras, as can be seen through a letter from the siblings’ step-cousin Régis Deshorties to Augustin dated July 18: “Charlotte Robespierre had promised to inform me immediately of your arrival to the capital. Not receiving a letter from her either on this subject or on any other letter of which she should have acknowledged receipt, I imagined (as several people had assured me) that you were going to come to Arras and that this was the reason for your sister's silence.” And Deshorties ended by asking Augustin to ”embrace Charlotte Robespierre and her girlfriends for me.”

If the relationship between Charlotte and her brothers had cracked down by now, Augustin’s loyalty towards Maximilien was as strong as ever. If we’re to believe the memoirs of Barère, some time after the passing of the Law of 22 Prairial on June 10, which had caused a lot of frictions within the Committee of Public Safety, Augustin entered the committee ”under pretext of giving an account of his mission to Nice; but instead of fulfilling this duty, he addressed me in a furious tone. ”You have maltreated my brother. We missed you on the 31st of May 1793, we shall not miss you on the 31st of May 1794.” He left still threatening us.” A month later, July 11, Augustin appears at the jacobins and ”complains that the lowest flatteries are used to create division between patriots: they went so far as to tell him that he was better than his brother: “But in vain,” he cries, ”would anyone want to separate me from him: as long as he is the proclaimer of morality and the terror of scoundrels, I aspire to no other glory than to share the same tomb as him!”

According to Guffroy’s Les Secretes de Joseph Lebon, Augustin, like his sister, also set out to help the four ”persecuted patriots” from Arras. Guffroy writes that he, following Augustin’s return to Paris in June, wrote a letter to him explaining the affair. Augustin, who ”soon seemed to want to seriously help and serve them” showed the letter to his brother and later also succeeded in organizing a few meetings between Danten, Demeulier, Leblond and Maximilien. Guffroy claims to have been present at one of the meetings where it was just Augustin and the ”patriots.” Augustin would then have reproached him for ”having sought to harm his brother” with a note in his journal where he’d written he had more humanity and sensitivity than Maximilien since he was a husband and father and Maximilien was not. Finally, on July 22 or 23, Augustin brought Leblond and another of the ”patriots” to the room of his brother, who starts a discussion with them. But Augustin soon makes the conversation revolve around other things than Arras, encouraging Leblond to ”tell my brother what it is you know about Carnot, against whom Duquesnoy has said that he’s going to bring papers and proofs on fifteen facts capable of guillotining Carnot fifteen times.” When Leblond instead starts talking about the despotism of said Duquesnoy as well as that of his brother, Maximilien gets mad and tells Augustin: ”Let’s go!” The two leave, but in the middle of the stairs Augustin turns around and tells Leblond: ”Damn beast, we should only talk about Carnot; why talk about the two Duquesnoys? My brother and the Committee of Public Safety have the biggest confidence in them… You’re lucky to be free… Duquesnoy!”

Finally, on July 27 1794, Augustin made good on his promise to share the same tomb as Maximilien from sixteen days earlier, when he with the following words asked to be included on the arrest warrant just issued against his brother by the Convention:

I am as guilty as my brother: I share his virtues; I want to share his fate. I demand an act of accusation against me also.

The two brothers, alongside Saint-Just, Couthon and Lebas, were declared under arrest by the Convention around 1:30 PM. Around 5 PM they were taken to the Committee of General Security and served dinner, before getting seperated and taken to different prisons between 6:30 and 7 PM. Shortly before midnight they had however been reunited at the Hôtel de Ville, Augustin writing and Maximilien and Saint-Just putting their signatures on a letter urging Couthon to join them as well. Not long after midnight the building was stormed, and two o’clock in the morning a severely injured Augustin was carried into the civil committee of the section of l’Hôtel de Ville. According to the medical report, the patient managed to state the following before the pain became too much:

Proceeding to learning of the causes of the accident, the patient told us his name was [Augustin] Robespierre; that he voluntarily threw himself from one of the windows of Hôtel de Ville, to escape from the hands of the conspirators, because, having been put under a decree of accusation, he believed his death inevitable; that he never stopped doing his duty well at the Convention, like his brother; that no one can reproach him for anything; that he regards Panis as a conspirator, because he once came over to him and declared that Collot d’Herbois does not desire the good of his country in order to deceive him; Carnot appears to him to be one of the conspirators, who wants to surrender his country...

The two brothers were eventually taken to the Conciergerie prison, before they six o'clock in the evening got driven to the scaffold. According to number 675 of Suite de journal de Perlet, released two days after the execution, Augustin was the second first to be guillotined, Maximilien the second to last.

In her memoirs, Charlotte recalled how she on July 28 had tried to visit her brothers in the Conciergerie prison but been refused, shortly after which she too found herself arrested:

On 10 Thermidor, I ran through the streets, my mind troubled and despair in my heart; I called out, I sought my brothers. I learned that they had been taken to the Conciergerie. I ran there, I asked to see them, I asked with hands joined; I begged on my knees before the soldiers; they repulsed me, laughed at my tears, insulted me, struck me. A few persons, moved to pity, led me away. I had lost my reason. I did not know what was happening, what became of me; or rather I learned it several days later; when I returned to myself I was in prison.

How much truth there is to this account can be questioned. If there is no way to know for sure if Charlotte had attempted to see her brothers in prison, she on the other hand doesn’t appear to have ”lost her reason” more than necessary for her to take on her mother’s maiden name Carraut and for her and her hostess to leave their lodging and take cover at the house of one citiziness Béguin on rue du Four, section du Contrat Social n. 482. There, on 31 July, they were arrested alongside several other women.

Brought before her interrogators the very same day (see this post), ”citiziness Carraut” admitted that she was ”Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte Robespierre, 28 [sic] years old, living on her income, residing with citiziness Laporte, rue de la Réunion n. 200, and this since about a month back.” When asked why she wasn’t residing with the Duplay family like her brother she responded that she had left since her brothers and Madame Duplay had asked her to, and that the latter also had ”reproached her for seeing counter-revolutionaries, among which was Guffroy, representative of the people.” As for her older brother, he ”resented her because she had the courage of letting him know the danger he ran by being sourrunded so badly,” his host family having taken on the quest to lose him. Asked about the fact her hostess’ husband was a member of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Charlotte responsed that she was unaware of it, but that ”she had known that, in the public spirit, her older brother passed for having appointed [people to] the Revolutionary Tribunal, of which she had almost been the victim.”

Finally, Charlotte was invited ”to declare if she had been aware of the infamous conspiracy that her older brother had been hatching and if she knew which were the men who frequently visited him.” Her answer was clear:

She responded that she loved her country so much that she had the courage to lament this diabolical conspiracy, that every time she had met him she had found the occasion to tell him that the men around him were trying to deceive him, that if she had suspected the infamous plot that was being hatched, she would have denounced it rather than seeing her country lost.

Charlotte ended the interrogation with implicating a man named Didier, who for a period of time served as secretary to her older brother, and who through that position had been appointed juror to the Revolutionary Tribunal.

At least three of the other women Charlotte had been arrested alongside of were they too interrogated on July 31, all three linking arms in insisting on the vulnerable position Charlotte had found herself in. Citiziness Béguin, Charlotte’s hostess at the time of her arrest, claimed that François Topino-Lebrun, juror at the Revolutionary Tribunal, had told a friend of hers to stop seeing Charlotte, ”given that Le Brun knew that all those who came to see citiziness Robespierre would be guillotined.” Like Charlotte, she claimed to know nothing about the conspiracy the two brothers were said to be involved in, ”she had however heard it said that if Robespierre came out victorious they would all be lost.” Citizinesses Girard and Canone did in their interrogation similarly reply that ”they did not know the people who habitually associated with the infamous Robespierre, that they had never seen him, that they only knew their unfortunate sister,” and that the reason they were arrested at citiziness Béguin’s house was because they had gone over there ”to congratulate [Charlotte] on the happiness she was currently enjoying when she was finally free from the infamous tyrants Robespierre who had never had another purpose but to sacrifice their sister.”

In her memoirs, Charlotte claims she remained imprisoned for a fortnight and got set free after her cellmate (a for her unknown woman) convinced her to sign a document, the content of which she didn’t read. No such document have however been found, and it might be suspected this is another attempt by Charlotte to portray herself as more loyal to her brothers than she really was… On the other hand, it seems like it would go against her goal to make her imprisonment shorter than it actually was, so that she only spent two weeks in jail is something I’m more inclined to believe. That would make Charlotte the one out of all of the women imprisoned for being related to a revolutionary I’ve been able to track so far that got out of prison by far the fastest. We might imagine she had her fallout with her brothers, as well as having contacts in the right places, much to thank for that…

Following Charlotte’s release from prison, we know through a letter dated November 18 1794 from her to her uncle that she stayed in touch with Antoine Buissart, who for his part already a few days after thermidor had hurried to abandon and denounce Maximilien and Augustin. Charlotte also appears to have kept contacts with Guffroy, whom the pamphlet Conjuration formée dès le 5 préréal [sic] par neuf représentans du peuple contre Maximilien Robespierre, pour le poignarder en plein sénat released shortly after Thermidor designated as one of nine deputies who since May 24 1794 had been planning on stabbing Maximilien to death in the middle of the Convention. This can be seen through an undated memorandum to the Committee of General Security where Guffroy can reveal that Charlotte’s health has deteriorated due to her many sorrows, that said sorrow is keeping her from making lace which she could use to make a living, that she owns nothing aside from her clothes, that her uncle has sent her some help, and that she at the moment is staying with ”one of our mutual friends.” He adds that he is ”well aware of the ingratitude and injustice of her brothers towards her, while she did everything for them in the just belief that they would not abandon her,” and ends by suggesting that the nation should ”offer her help so that she can procure furniture and a pension capable of sustaining her in the state of infirmity and languor to which grief has reduced her.” A while later, April 13 1795, we find a Committee of General Security decree signed by Guffroy and other enemies of the two brothers, proclaiming that ”wherever citoyenne Robespierre wishes to travel and retire, she deserves the confidence of good citizens and the protection of the constituted authorities, who are invited to lend her the aid and assistance that the purest and most civil good citizenship deserves and French loyalty must grant.”

The background to this is a letter dated March 14 1795 Charlotte wrote to the Committee of General Security to help her host Guislain Mathon who had come under suspicion. This is all she has to say about her dead brothers in it:

…One has assured me that citizen Mathon, commissioner of transports, has been denounced as having been a friend of my brothers, and I have no doubt that, whatever the pretext of this denunciation, I am the real cause of it for having accepted an asylum at his house since a few months back. […] I will not undertake the apology of Citizen Mathon. I will only tell you that, forced to leave my brothers, unjustly irritated against me, he had the courage to offer me an asylum with him in spite of their protests. He did not incite me into accepting it. I went to live with him when my misfortunes became greater and made me too burdensome to those who had first taken me in.

This is the last conserved written material we have from Charlotte for over 30 years. When we find the next piece, her testament dated February 6 1828, her image of her brothers had a however drastically improved, and she affirms that she has always recognized Maximilien as ”a man full of virtue” and wants to ”protest against all the letters contrary to his honor which have been attributed to me.” The story of how Charlotte following this moment reinvents herself into, as her friend Albert Laponneraye puts it in her funeral speech, ”[a woman who] shared [Maximilien’s] principles and his feelings, and had, like him, waged a fight to the death against the aristocracy,” might however be a topic for another day.

#robespierre #maximilien robespierre #augustin robespierre #charlotte robespierre #frev #frev friendships #long post

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pparadiselost · 2 years ago

Text

la maison.

noel noa x single mother fem reader noa finds himself falling head over heels for the sweet mom next door. warning(s): nsfw, alcohol, dubious consent (drunk sex), single mother reader, named son oc (irrelevant outside of pornmaking plot), creampie, breeding minors do not interact.

recently, noel noa has developed a bit of a problem.

he had fallen in love with his next-door-neighbor. which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t the most unique nor the most world-shattering of issues he could possibly have, but these once trivial feelings he had no time to waste on started taking root in his head, they began to spread like wildfire throughout his daily life.

the pro soccer player was mildly surprised to find out that the young man who had lived next to him in the quaint apartment he called home had moved out while he was playing overseas. noa didn’t think too much of it. he rarely ever grew close with the neighbors around him. he was often out of the house, gone for months to even years at a time playing for whatever country or club summoned him, and when he was home, he preferred spending his time alone rather than getting attached to people who he had nothing in common with.

but the two of you had gotten off on a completely unexpected foot.

“dada!” the squirming toddler in your arms squeals. you nearly drop the bag of groceries you were precariously balancing on your elbow, yelping softly as your son uses all the force he can muster in his tiny body to lurch towards noa. “dada, dada!”

“no, sweetie, that’s not your dad,” you gently remind him, unable to stop the sheepish smile that tugs at your lips. you expertly lean the little boy against your hip while you regain your grip on your groceries, flashing an apologetic smile at noa. “i’m so sorry about that. he has a habit of saying that to every man he sees.”

noa stands practically frozen in his doorframe. he’s seen his fair share of almost blasphemously beautiful women in his life: models, actresses, influencers… but nothing holds a candle to the way his heart thumps in his chest when his eyes land on you. every bit of you screams sweet yet battered to him, your eyes mild and gentle by the tugs of time and your body all covered with loose clothes to make sure your boy could hug right into every little nook and cranny that he pleases.

a perfect image of motherhood.

his dick throbs in his pants.

it’s lecherous. he doesn’t even know your name, and he’s getting turned on. hell, you might even be married, yet he’s lusting after you.

“it’s alright. i know how kids are,” he lies. he actually doesn’t know how kids are, but it’s enough to get you to laugh again. “do you live near here? i don’t think i’ve seen you around.”

“ah! i do.” you lift a hand to point at the door right next to his while your son tugs at your clothes impatiently. he keeps mumbling dada, dada in that gurgling voice of his, looking up at you and then stealing glances at noa. “we moved in fairly recently. i didn’t think we’d have a neighbor, because i thought the next door apartment was empty.”

his heart skips a beat, and noa coughs to clear his throat. “i see. my job requires me to be overseas a lot, so i’m out of the house often. i suppose, that makes us next-door-neighbors then. my name is noel noa. it’s lovely to meet you.”

he half-expects you to gasp and run off upon hearing his name, but instead your smile widens. “it’s lovely to meet you as well. my name is (y/n). this naughty little elf right here is honoré. do you wanna say hi to mr. noa, sweetie?”

you keep cooing at the boy, while noa breathes a sigh of relief. so you don’t recognize him to be a pro player. in some ways he prefers that. he wouldn’t want to scare you away. his mind races when he thinks about how he’s now next door to who he believes is the most fuckable woman on earth.

“alright, it was a joy meeting you. i’ll see you around then, mr. noa?” you offer.

‘noel is fine.’ noa nods, mumbling an agreement before you wave and disappear into your suite, leaving him dumbfounded in his doorframe. what was he even leaving the house for? he doesn’t remember anymore.

but god. temptation had fallen straight into his lap, and if the arousal churning deep in his gut told him anything, it was that his life was going to be trouble from now on.

…

noel noa has also come across a stroke of luck. his manager on the other end of the phone sighs and tells him that the next season has been postponed for a few months, mumbling on about some logistics issues between the professional leagues regarding budgeting and some new stadium being built. noa couldn’t care less: his job was to play soccer, and that was final.

the bottom line was clear. he wouldn’t be flying out and disappearing again, and for a few months, he was free to do as he wanted so long as he kept himself in tip-top shape and maintained his usual training.

a guilty part of him celebrates. it means he gets to stay longer with you, right next doors. he’s been running into you more often, and you’re always quick to offer up a small greeting and make small talk with him when time allows. noa tries so, so hard to be a good man and genuinely get to know you as a good neighbor should, rather than to look at you and be driven half-insane by how much he wishes he could drag you to his suite and fuck you on his bed.

honoré never fails to happily scream out “dada!” at noa when he sees the man, and you always correct your son with a stern voice. part of noa wants you to stop correcting him, his inner lust-demon celebrating slightly at the fact that your son is ready to accept him as his father. noa had been hesitant on full-on courting you, or at least, what he considered courting (lavinho never failed to make fun of him for having “the flirtation skills of a 13th century monk!”), having assumed that you had a husband.

but he notices the lack of a wedding band around your ring finger. could it be that you didn’t have a husband, after all?

not that it matters. noa knows he shouldn’t let himself daydream. he barely knows you, and the very least he can do is show you a modicum of respect rather than treating you like some hunk of hot meat on the dating market.

it’s dark outside when noa sits down in his bed, unwinding by himself after a long day of analyzing previous games and practicing by himself out in one of the nearby training fields. he hasn’t seen you all day, but he knows you’re home because he stole a peek at your apartment window while heading in. the lights are on, and presumably, you’re inside. it isn’t safe for a woman and a little child to be out and about when it’s dark, and noa wonders if he should offer to escort you if you ever need to go out.

no. he shouldn’t overstep. he really shouldn’t.

but what really throws him for a loop is what he hears through the thin apartment walls. at first he thought it was his phone, having auto-started a video, but nothing in his house could be capable of making that noise. noa sits still on his bed and cranes his ears, and then realization settles like cold snow on his body.

you’re singing. your voice is hushed, loving, and every now and then, noa makes out the whiny cries of a little boy.

he pauses.

dear lord. are you singing your son to sleep?

noa grits his teeth and stifles a groan when a rush of blood floods his groin, and his pants immediately start tightening up. he’s used up all of his self-restraint to not feel this way around you, yet the thought of you, in such domestic bliss with your toddler, turns him ridiculously on. his cock fucking hurts from how hard it is, pressing up angrily against his pants and demanding that he do something about it. his stomach throbs and swirls with need, with the desire to fuck something until he’s satisfied.

his hand absentmindedly wanders to the waistband of his pants, and he guides his dick so that it springs free from its restrictive confines. noa doesn’t think he’s ever been this hard before in his life—his cock slaps up against his stomach, and the irritated tip is already drooling greedily. noa hisses quietly when the cold air rushes against his swollen organ, and he carefully wraps his hand around his dick.

you continue your singing.

noa wonders how you must look. he wonders if your sweet hair is damp from a shower, or if you’re getting ready to step into the bath once you put your son to sleep. he wishes he could bury his face in your hair and lewdly inhale, and he begins to slowly stroke his cock at the thought of your features.

maybe you’d hold your son to your chest. blood swells south at the thought of your breasts. the sloping curve that you always hid behind conservative clothes. noa isn’t sure if he wants to sweetly coax you out of them, getting you to shyly bare yourself for him, or if he wants to rip them off of you like an animal and savor the way you squeal and try to cover yourself up.

he wants to grope your tits. your gorgeous tits, made to hold a little boy close to your heart, once filled with milk to feed your son, all swollen and easily filling up his cupped hands. noa barely holds back a moan as he fists himself while daydreaming about your breasts.

he’d ghost his fingertips over your puffy nipples. he’d hear you cry out, sobbing out a “i-i’m sensitive there, noel-” while he teases them. he’d tug on them too, after a while, feeling your cunt grow wetter and wetter while he has his way with your body. he’d keep on circling his fingers all over your supple breasts, the dainty signs of motherhood filling out and fueling his own libido.

his cock twitches in his fist. he’s leaking pre-cum like a broken faucet. just the mental image of your fat tits has him acting this way, and noa doesn’t know what to do with himself. his balls tighten and contract, and your singsongy filling his ears overwhelms with lust.

he wants to fuck you. he wants to fuck you so bad. his length is fuming at him for not being buried into your delicate body. noa wants to fuck into you anywhere he can get.

your smaller hands, struggling to fully wrap your fingers around his thick cock. or your mouth, that canary-like voice of yours being put to good use by choking and slobbering all over him. or even your tits that he had been drooling over, slapping his cockhead over your sensitive nipples until you’re squirming and scrunching your face up the way he likes it. your plush thighs wouldn’t be too bad too, hearing your breath hitch and hike up an octave whenever his tip catches on your throbbing clit.

‘fuck- fucking hell, fuck, fuck…!’ he grits his teeth as his hands speed up, fucking against his cock as if he were a bull in heat. he hasn’t even had the opportunity to fantasize about your gummy pussy yet, and he’s already this close.

he’s too preoccupied taking his time fucking you with his eyes in his mind, stroking fervently to the sound of your muffled voice. he wants to cum, he wants to cum so bad, he wants to take all of his pent-up frustration and make it real and tangible that you’re the one who drove him to this ridiculous state.

he swears he’s going to fuck you. he swears he’s going to fuck his cock into you until your body bends and breaks to him, until you turn into a fucked-out shell of the sweetheart that lives next door. he’s going to get you fucking hooked on his cock so that you’re drooling and chasing after sex with as much as he’s going crazy for you.

horribly wet shlick-shlick noises echo around his bedroom as he thrusts himself all over his hand. his stomach twists violently, and his heavy balls contract painfully before noa cums all over himself.

‘shit. shit…!’

he grits his teeth and shuts his eyes, forcing down any noises out of fear that you might hear. the rush almost breaks him. ropes of heady cum splash all over his chest and abs, instantly drenching and burning into his skin. he strokes himself through his orgasm, the coils in his gut twisting against themselves, unfurling in and out as pure pleasure streaks through his body. god, this was so wrong of him to do, but noa would be fucking damned if he said he ever came this hard before.

his cock hangs from the pricks of overstimulation as he continues to stroke himself, coaxing out every second of his orgasm as he possibly could. shame immediately floods his body like ice water when his foggy mind clears bit-by-bit, yet he can’t bring himself to jump to his feet and start cleaning up.

noa sits defeatedly in his bed. his chest heaves as he catches his breath, wishing his cum was streaked all over you rather than his own body, and he swallows thickly. he feels horrendously guilty, yet in a twist of ironic fate, your voice keeps trickling through the thin walls.

noa doesn’t even have time to fully let the guilt hit before his dick is swelling up in his fist again.

‘one more round. just one more round,’ he bargains with himself, ‘just until you stop singing lullabies to your son.’

…

“i’m so sorry, noel,” you laugh awkwardly. “i really hope i’m not bothering you.”

“it’s no problem at all, really. this is what neighbors are for.”

you stand a few paces in front of him, and the exhausted smile on your face makes noa’s heart speed up dangerously. honoré is fast asleep on your back, strapped to you with a baby harness. in noa’s hands is a stubborn jar of sauce, which, according to you, absolutely refused to open no matter what you did or how hard you had tried to wrench the lid open.

noa firmly grips the lid, and with a small grunt, he easily pops the jar lid open. your eyes widen in awe as he flexes his muscles subtly, a few of the veins in his toned arms becoming visible. he notices you staring at him, and he gently screws the lid back on before handing it back to you.

“thank you so much!” you beam. “it stressed me out so much that i couldn’t get it open. silly of me to think that when i have you right here. classic case of mom brain.”

noa thinks he’s going to stop breathing. you’re beaming at him in such a lighthearted manner, and your words bring his brain to full halt for a split second. he manages a lukewarm smile, and he’s getting ready to wave you off and let you scurry back into your apartment complex before you pause.

“you know… if you aren’t that busy tonight, would you like to come over for dinner? i’m in the middle of cooking right now—well, duh—and i feel like it wouldn’t hurt to make friends with the person living right next door,” you offer up innocently. “you don’t have to if you don’t want to! i completely get it-”

“-i’d love to. when would you like me over?” noa doesn’t even need to consider his options. “should i dress up?”

“dress up?” you gasp. “you don’t need to do anything fancy like that! it’ll just be a nice home cooked meal, maybe a little wine, just as a sign of goodwill. i’ll still need about… let’s say an hour? that way i can clean up a little too… the petit rascal here has a knack for getting into everything.”

“an hour sounds good to me. thank you for the invitation. i’ll look forward to it,” he responds plainly. his thoughts are going a million miles per hour.

dinner. at your place. with you. just you and him.

lady luck must be on his side. not even playing in the world cup could compare to the amount of anxiety and anticipation bubbling up inside of him. you flash him a thumbs-up, unaware of the wrench you had thrown into his nearly nonexistent courtship plans. he stands a bit dumbfounded in the doorframe (not too dissimilar when he first met you) when you scoot back into your place, most likely jumping straight back to work in order to prep food and spruce up your home to take him as a guest.

an hour. noa decides that it’s enough time for him to groom himself a bit too. jump in the shower, douse himself with a nice perfume, pick out a casual yet still suave outfit. if time allows, he’d even run down to a nearby store to buy a bouquet of flowers. a nice little thank you present for the meal, but undoubtedly enough of an ambiguous gift to give it a slight romantic tinge.

noa was going to milk this opportunity. you had thrown him the perfect chance, and noa knew that once he fixated on something, he would see it through.

to his success, all things willing.

…

everything about your house suited you. your apartment complex wasn’t decorated too lavishly, yet it wasn’t barebones either. noa smiles when he sees all the pictures of your son you have framed against the walls, and your shelves are stuffed with picture books and other memorabilia of the toddler.

you had expertly put honoré to bed before noa had came around, and when he knocked on your door an hour later, you had buried your face in your hands and laughed like a schoolgirl that had been confessed to when he presented you with a bouquet of beautifully prepared calla lilies.

“you shouldn’t have!” you had smacked his arm playfully, but noa felt his chest swell with pride when you rifled through your closet to find a makeshift vase to place the flowers in.

dinner had been delightful. noa had eagerly wolfed down whatever food you served him, and you were more than happy to prattle on to him about how honoré had recently developed an affinity for blueberries and that you were debating between buying him legos or a toy truck.

of course, the wine flowed generously throughout too. you had admitted that you had saved the red wine for a long time, never having a reason to drink it since your hands were full with a baby and not really wanting to crack a whole bottle open just for yourself. noa could tell you were enjoying the drink, swirling the wine glass around rhythmically as the drink slowly stained your plump lips a deep shade of maroon.

how lovely. noa wondered if it would smear if he were to kiss you.

letting you chatter on without stopping you let him extrapolate a lot that he wouldn’t have known otherwise. it didn’t take too many sips to get you a little tipsy, and with a few questions to ease you up, you were practically an open book.

you had gotten pregnant with your son a few years back, and when you approached honoré’s dad with the news, the sleazebag had completely vanished from your life. as awful as it sounds, noa celebrates inwardly when he hears that you’re single. you admitted that you were lucky enough to have good friends and a somewhat stable support system who took care of you through your pregnancy, and you had honoré without too many complications. but one thing led to another, and you ended up moving here.

“i work remotely,” you murmur, stealing another mouthful of red wine. “it’s… not much, but it’s enough to provide for me and my little boy. i get to pamper him a fair amount, and working from home means that i don’t need to worry about a babysitter! it won’t be too long until i can send him to school, and at that point, i can probably look for a better paying job that i can commute to.”

“i see. if i’m ever around, i wouldn’t mind looking after honoré. you already have a lot on your plate, and if there’s anything i can do to ease the load…,” noa trails off. you sigh dreamily, shaking your head.

“oh, i couldn’t ask you to do that. but i really appreciate the offer.” you glance towards the nursery. “honoré has taken a liking to you though. he gets so excited whenever he sees you!”

the tension between you two is electric. noa feels like his heart is about to give out on him, and if the tension mounting in his stomach tells him anything, it’s that he should be thankful for having the foresight to wear loose pants. your house smells like you: sweet, light, a perfect aphrodisiac for the starved man.

this is the closest he’s ever been to you, the longest he’s ever talked to you. you keep batting your eyelashes at him, looking up at him with such pretty, tipsy eyes. maybe it’s the alcohol talking for the both of you, but noa finds it hard to even swallow. he sips tentatively at his own wine glass. his mouth keeps drying up, and he’s thankful that you’re so good at filling up his silence with your own little chit chat.

“if you don’t mind me…,” you start. you peek at him, and he stares back at you with his sharp golden eyes. “what do you do for a living, noel?”

“me…?” panic stabs at him for a moment.

should he be honest with you? you didn’t recognize his name when he introduced himself, so it was clear that you had no idea that the man right next to you was quite literally the world’s best striker. would that change the way you viewed him? would you be scared? repulsed? would you talk to him again if you knew?

“sorry-,” you’re quick to apologize. “that was too much of me. you really don’t have to answer me. that was entirely my bad.”

“no, i don’t mind.” he owes you that much. you had been nothing but kind and welcoming towards him, and all he did in return was go insane with desire. the very least he could do was come clean about who he truly was.

he shifts in his seat, and noa braces himself for the worst. “i’m a professional soccer player.”

you blink at him. “r-really? wait, that’s kinda cool! do you play for a local league or something?”

“i play as a striker for bastard munchen. it’s a german team. they’re one of europe’s most prestigious leagues, and they’ve sent players to the world cup.” his grip on his wineglass tightens just a tad bit. “i’ve played in the world cup.”

your jaw drops. “oh my god. you’re not joking with me, are you?”

he risks meeting your eyes. “do i look like the kind of man to joke around?”

you cover your mouth with your hand, unable to look him in the face. “oh my god… ohhhh my god…! i’m so sorry! i’ve been referring to you so casually, and- and-”

he raises a hand, and he shushes you. “what are you apologizing for? you’ve done nothing wrong. you’ve always treated me kindly. i don’t see why knowing my job would change anything between us. we’re still neighbors. and at this point, we’re friends as well, I'd hope.”

he sees you swallow back a sigh, and you take a deep breath and nod. “right. yes. this doesn’t change anything… it’s still a lot to just- to just take in, you know?”

“you take the time you need. and if interacting with me becomes too much, then i understand. the last thing i’d like to do is make you uncomfortable.” his heart wrenches painfully inside of his chest at the thought of no longer being able to talk to you. but you’d find out sooner or later, and if his cover was going to be blown, noa would prefer doing it on his own terms.

“can i ask you another question then?” you ask with your mousy voice.

“go ahead.”

“why do you live here then?” you hiccup. “shouldn’t a super talented soccer player like you live in a big mansion?”

“i could. but i don’t particularly want to.” noa notices that you’re working up the courage to look him in the face again. his stomach twists once more, the sight of your pretty face all conflicted throwing his brain into turmoil again. he clenches his fist, digging his nails into his palm to bring himself back to the same plane of reality that you were on. “i’ve never been interested in a flashy life. i prefer living quietly and doing as i’m told.”

“that does sound like you,” you hum in agreement. “well, as surprising as it is, i’m glad to have someone like you for my neighbor. and i promise i’m not saying it just because i know that you’re a professional athlete now!”

you giggle brightly, your lips curving to match the rim of your wine glass. you down the remaining liquid, giving a soft smack of your mouth to fully savor the notes. noa clenches his jaw visibly, and his nails threaten to break the thick skin of his palms.

you’re tempting him. you’re driving him insane. your lips are dyed and pretty, and noa has been staring at them all evening. his throat feels dry and heavy, and he forces the arousal pooling in his crotch to calm down.

he can’t be like this right in front of you. it was one thing to act like an immoral, debauched man in private, but it was another to be unable to control himself in front of you. he was better than this. he knew he was.

but the heart wants what it wants. and there was nothing more that noa wanted than to force you to your knees, to whip his hardening cock out of his pants and smack your slutty wine-stained lips with the tip. he’d force you to open up and stretch that cute mouth of yours around his girth, watch you struggle to take him into your mouth and whimper all over his cock. knowing you, you’d beg him to be gentle with you, to be quiet so that you wouldn’t wake up the slumbering angel in the next room over, and noa would have to fight every animalistic instinct in him to not fuck you until you’d be wailing the house down.

“is everything alright, noel?” you break him out of your thoughts. he shakes his head, clearing his thoughts before he faces you. he can’t stop the heat from flooding his face, but he’s quick to decide that he’d simply blame it on the alcohol.

he couldn’t keep doing this forever. something or other would give, and the last thing noa would want would be to do some unforgivable or stupid. it was torture, to have his body say one thing and his mind another, especially when you were quite literally within arm’s reach.

“i’m alright. you don’t need to worry about me. i can take care of myself,” he promises. you lean in closer, enough so that noa can feel your warm breath trickling across his neck. his heart threatens to stop, and he looks at you with hesitant eyes.

“are you sure?” your hand lands on his thigh, squeezing him gently.

oh. so that’s how things were going to be. what a goddamn minx you were, doing something like this with such disgustingly innocent intent.

“yes. i’m fine,” he presses his lips into a thin line. “would you mind passing me the wine bottle? i’ll pour us another glass, if you don’t mind…”

…

your mouth tastes delicious, like fresh wine and everything he had wanted to do to you since forever. your face is flushed, and your eyes are hazy, barely meeting his as you struggle to keep up with him through your drunken state.

“n-noel-!” you squeak out. his heavy body weighs you down, keeping you trapped between him and your squeaky bed. things are a blur, even for him.

one moment he’s pouring you more wine, and the next, the two of you are stumbling into your room, where he tosses you down onto the mattress like you’re a ragdoll.

“tell me you want it.” he rolls his clothed hips into yours, and you recoil into the bed with a choked whine. the sound goes straight to his dick. god, how long had he wanted to hear that? to hear the woman he had coveted for so long moaning underneath him?

you shake against his larger form. “w-want it- i want it, noel-“

“you want me to fuck you? you want your next-door-neighbor to fuck you?” he whispers. you shut your eyes as he kisses up your neck, his hands gripping your waist as his lips capture your earlobe. he sucks, his tongue lapping at your soft skin.

his imagination has nothing on how you actually feel in his hands. even through your clothes, he has no issues palming at your figure. you breathe out his name as his palms feel your curves, his fingertips dancing with the hem of your clothes.

you nod wantonly, not once fighting off his advances. “yes! yes, i want it- want you to fuck me- want my next-door-neighbor to have sex with me!”

“good girl,” he exhales. your breathing shallows as he coaxes your shirt over your chest and head, and you shudder as his eyes land all over your stomach and breasts.

your bra struggles to hold onto your chest, your full breasts pooling over the edge. you yelp when he yanks at your bra, snapping it off of you and letting your chest tumble out fully in front of him.

you instinctively try to cover yourself up with your arms, and noa grabs your wrists and wrenches them off of your chest. you mewl when the air nips at your nipples, causing them to perk up slightly.

“don’t you dare think about hiding yourself from me,” noa whispers. “you have no way of getting yourself out of this.”

you rub your thighs together, your cunt throbbing. when was the last time you had done this? you hadn’t had sex in years, not when you had your hands full with a baby and keeping yourself afloat. you were a mom, for fuck’s sake, with a whole baby to watch out for, yet here you were, pinned down underneath noel noa while he grinded his boner into your thighs.

his hands latch onto your chest, and his palms grope at your fat tits slowly. you moan out breathlessly when his calloused palms tease at your nipples, sending a jolt of arousal into your stomach. a wet patch forms in your panties, horribly turned on just from having your boobs squeezed a few times.

“god, you have no clue what your body does to me,” noa rasps. “do you have any idea how much i’ve dreamt about this? how much i wanted to touch those slutty tits of yours? look at you—your body was practically made to be fucked.”

your core twists painfully, and his fingertips pinch tentatively at your nipples.

“ah-! ahhh- noel-,” you buck your hips unconsciously, arching your back as he tugs at your chest. it stings, but it feels so good. even with the wine muddying your thoughts, your body responds to every little bit of attention noel showers onto you. you didn’t know you had it in you to be this lewd or to be this responsive.

you want more. it had been far too long since anyone showed you any love like this.

he slaps your tits before bringing his hands down to your pants, expertly undoing the zipper and hooking his fingers around the waistline. you let him wiggle your clothes over your hips and legs, leaving you almost entirely naked save for your drenched panties. it feels so terribly lewd, to lay there all bare for a man, even if you two haven’t technically done anything.

his hands squeeze possessively at your thighs. “i wanted to fuck you ever since the first time i saw you. ever since you told me your name, since your son started calling me dad. that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? if i became his dad?”

your chest tightens, and you bite back another lewd moan. noa ducks his head down and nips at your thighs with his teeth, and you flinch into his chest.

“you said it yourself. your little boy loves me,” noa murmurs. his tongue laps over his teeth marks, and you suck in a breath. your pussy twitches, clenching around nothing. your body wants more, wants to feel more noa more, wants him to take over your body and make you his. “nothing would make him happier than his beloved mommy to have a dad by her side.”

his mouth heads upwards, and he uses his strong hands to pry your shaking legs apart. you whimper, already feeling so exposed to the bigger man despite still having your panties on. he leans back, but his fingers ghost over your crotch. two fingers press up right against your pussy, and he rubs them up and down your covered slit.

his fingertips are damp. you’re obscenely wet, and watching you struggle to control yourself has noa’s cock straining for its life in his pants.

“or even better,” noa grabs at the waistband of your panties, “daddy fucks mommy pregnant and gives him a younger sibling that he can dote on.”

you throw your head back against your pillow. your mind spins with arousal and alcohol, and noa slips your panties off without any resistance. a strand of slick sticks to the crotch of your underwear, and noa’s finally rewarded with the sight of your bare pussy. he can see your hole fluttering and twitching on itself, desperate to be stuffed and stretched out with something.

god. your body is so attractive to him. he’s never wanted to fuck someone more in his life. with your full hips and soft stomach, motherhood has mellowed out and accentuated you into a woman noa just couldn’t resist.

he thinks he’s going to stop breathing.

“d-don’t look too hard-,” you stammer out. your body heats up and flushed at how intently noa’s staring at your defenseless cunt, knowing that your body’s begging to be penetrated and fucked.

“i’ll be so good to you,” noa vows. you’re frozen on the sheets, and noa nearly shreds the clothes off of him. your voice catches in the back of your throat when you see his toned chest and abs, the silhouette of the soccer player resembling more of a greek god than the man you had always known as your neighbor.

he pulls his pants down, and when he shoves his boxers off, you can’t help but gasp “oh!” at how big his cock is. he’s obscenely thick and long, and your pussy is both parts scared and aroused at the sheer size. god—you just know that he would stretch your walls out deliciously. his tip smacks his abs, and prominent veins run all along his length.

“you’re so big…,” you eke out. “it’s been so long since i had sex… i don’t know if it’ll fit.”

“i’ll make it fit.” noa rests his hands on top of your knees. “do you want me to prep you?”

you nod. “yes please…”

he reaches over and grabs your hips, and before you can fully register what’s happening, noa hoists your hips up into the air. you give a loud cry, and the bed creaks underneath you as noa ducks his head. his grip on you is firm, and his fingers press into your hips as he brings your drooling cunt to his mouth.

noa’s tongue circles your throbbing clit. your hands fly up to your pillow, gripping at the plush material. jolts of electricity shoot up your core, and your stomach twists with pleasure. your thighs subconsciously try to shut, but noa curves his hands to keep them spread open.

“nngh…! wait, noel, hold on-,” you sob. you grip your pillow, clamping your teeth shut as noa teased your clit with the tip of his tongue. your hips shake as you grind up into his mouth, each wave of stimulation making your pussy drool and throb for more. “ah- be gentle with me…!”

be gentle with you? dear lord, noa sucking on your clit like a starved man was him being gentle with you. he had jerked himself off countless times fantasizing about having you naked and in his arms like this, and it took everything in him not to break that dripping cunt of yours in half with his dick. his cock twitches and protests when noa ignores his own arousal, too preoccupied in trying to force an orgasm out of you.

you taste so sweet on his tongue. you mewl out his name over and over, and your voice sounds like literal honey to his ears. one of his hands snakes down from your hips, and while noa swirls his tongue around your nub, he circles your pulsing hole with a finger. he could die right there and then, and noa would die a happy man. drowning in your honeyed cunt, losing himself to the tantalizing sensation of pleasuring you like any devoted man would.

“oh! oh god, noel-” your pussy can’t stop leaking with slick as noa keeps teasing you. he slips a finger in without much resistance, and your walls eagerly latch onto him. noa groans against your cunt when he feels your wall twist and clench around his finger, greedily sucking him in.

god, noa thinks he’s going to go insane. his cock wants nothing more than to bury itself into your sweet pussy, and feeling you twitch and clamp up on his finger makes his dick grow hungrier. his arousal is almost impossible to ignore, yet noa continues to swallow and lap at your core while he fingers you slowly.

he slides in another finger, thrusting in and out of you carefully. you buck your hips, crying out so prettily for him. noa curls his fingers and presses his fingertips all inside your pussy, and he stays vigilant in looking for that sweet spot that would completely unravel you.

“fuck-! fuck, wait- please, i-i can’t-!” you plead. your pussy tightens up around his knuckles dangerously, and noa fucks his fingers up into the spot that made you clench up and mewl so loudly. you’re already moaning and trembling this much just from being fucked on two fingers and having your clit sucked. noa can’t get enough of the way your body twists and reacts to everything he gives you.

a third finger prods at your hole, as if to ask if you’re ready. you inhale shakily as noa pushes another knuckle into you.

“fuck…!” you’re immediately clenching up, and your pussy’s walls are rubbing all against his fingers greedily. you’re nearly in tears, just from being fingered, and noa fights his desire to break you. “it feels so good- you feel so good, noel…!”

he thrusts his fingers into you, and you reel visibly. he can tell from the way your pussy has been twitching and gushing all around him that you’re close, stretched to your limit just from three fingers. he doubles down on flicking his tongue all over your clit: letting you grind your hips down greedily against the broad of his tongue. your body shakes, and you can’t stop sobbing.

you’re almost there. you both know you’re almost there. noa focuses himself on pleasuring you fully, and he roughly fucks his fingers into you and curls his knuckles into your g-spot without any mercy.

“noel-!”

your cunt squeezes his fingers for dear life, and noa latches himself onto your clit as you nearly wrench yourself out of his grasp. heat shreds your body, and the tightening in your stomach snaps violently as you cum shamelessly all over noa’s hands and mouth. you cry out his name loudly again, your normally gentle voice sounding so lewd and desperate as your slick gushes all over his chin and palm.

“fuck…! cumming- i’m cumming, noel…!” your body twists in his hands, and noa continues to stimulate your cunt until you’re babbling incoherent noises. he pulls his fingers out of you slowly, feeling your pussy try to cling to his knuckles before he lets you down properly onto the bed again. you’re struggling to catch your breath, your wide eyes all hazy and drunken as you suck in shaky breaths.

noa has no issue swallowing down your cum. he sucks your juices off of his fingers, cleaning up his mouth and chin before he scoots closer to you. you let out such a pathetic moan when he spreads your legs out again, your body too pliant and weak to offer any resistance. the sight of your obviously overstimulated and squirt-slicked cunt makes some sick monster in him swell with pride.

he did that. he made you cum.

he grips his long-ignored and fully engorged cock, and he smacks it against your cunt lightly. you flinch, your hole flaring up as he rubs his dick up and down your slick pussy lips.

“are you doing alright?” noa asks. his hands grab your hips, and your heart flutters as he rubs soothing circles into your skin. you nod weakly.

“yeah- i can do it,” you promise. you glance up at him with such pretty fluttering eyes, remnants of tears clinging to your lashes as you swallow. “i want you in me… i want your cock in me, please…”

“alright. deep breath. relax for me,” he commands. you nod again, and you shakily inhale and try to loosen your muscles up.

it immediately burns when he slides into you. you grit your teeth, trying your hardest to keep your pussy relaxed as his thick cock invades your pussy and stretches your walls out to its limits. noa grips your hips tightly, and he groans lowly when he feels you clamping up around his dick.

“fucking hell-,” he breathes out. “you’re so fucking tight-”

“t-too big-” hot tears prick at the corners of your eyes. “oh god, you’re going to break me!”

your pussy sucks him in and rubs all around his cock in a way that makes noa see stars. you’re so soft and tight, clinging and drooling all over his dick while his girth stretches and flexes your walls out. he keeps pushing past the resistance until he bottoms out, his balls resting heavy on top of your ass. you choke and gasp as he pushes your hips back even further, and he hovers over you, keeping you trapped underneath his thick legs.

a mating press.

“listen to me now,” he says. “i’m going to fuck you pregnant. i’m gonna fuck this pussy of yours till you’re pregnant again, and i’m going to give that little boy of yours a sibling of his own. you’d like that, wouldn’t you? have a baby of our own and form a perfect family…”

your pussy squeezes involuntarily, and even without you saying anything, he knows you’re turned on at the thought of being bred by him. a loud moan bubbles up in your chest as he slides his monstrous cock out of you before roughly slamming his hips down, forcing his entire length back into your tight cunt.

you barely choke back a scream. his cock has filled out every single bit of your hole, leaving you no room to comfortably take him. you swear that his tip prods dangerously at your womb, threatening to force it open so that he can dump as much of his cum into you as he wants.

oh god, you’re fucked. you’re having raw sex with your hot neighbor, and he’s talking about fucking his own child into you.

“god, you’re so fucking tight,” he groans. “can’t believe you had a whole baby with this pussy with how goddamn tight you are-”

you shudder as he thrusts in and out of you. every time he pistons his hips, he doesn’t waste a single movement. none of his thrusts are shallow; each one pumps deep and directly into your womb, clearly with the sole intent of getting you pregnant.

“haven’t had sex with anyone since- since i got pregnant with honoré,” you manage out. “fuck, fuck- you’re going too deep!”

irritation irks him in at the thought of some bastard getting to fuck you first, at the thought of another man getting to fuck that slutty pussy of yours. what kind of madman would even dream of letting you go, let alone throw you out so cruelly into the world? if he could, noa would keep you at home and lavish you with all the attention and love you could ever want. he’d pamper you, treat you like the goddess you are, make sure you know your worth and more. he can imagine it: buying you pretty clothes, taking you out to expensive dinners, spoiling honoré until the boy’s world is flipped upside down by his indulgent stepfather.

but when noa glances down to see you all spread out and submissive for him, your hole eagerly taking his cock and getting ready to be stuffed with his cum, he can’t help but gloat slightly. he’s the one who has you now, the one who’s going to properly sweep you off your feet, the one who’s going to make you his.

“don’t lose yourself just yet. i know you can take it.” he fucks his dick into you once more, and you moan, unable to stop the arousal coiling up in your core. he wants to make sure you feel it, makes sure you feel every inch and ridge of his cock rubbing against your insides. he doesn’t know when the last time you had dick was, and neither does he particularly care, but he wants your body to know that his dick is the best you’ll ever have. “get used to how it feels. i’m going to make you my wife—gonna give you a family of our own. that’d be nice, yeah? to have someone that can support you? so you’re not all alone with just your son?”

you can’t help but nod, your pussy quivering at the thought. you know you’re not thinking straight, not when wine stains your thoughts and your body’s overrun with lust. but for some reason, thinking about noa wifing you up, taking you to be his cute little housewife while he fucks his kids into you, chasing after honoré and whatever other babies he’s going to put in you, finally having someone kind and reliable to depend on…

you want it. you want it so bad.

your cunt makes it obvious from how much you’re clenching up around him, unconsciously milking his cock.

“you like that? you like the thought of getting married to me and having my babies?” noa eggs on.

“don’t tease me like that-,” you protest. you can barely keep up with everything happening around you. his cock keeps stretching you out, rubbing all over your slick walls and sending waves of heat up your core. arousal floods your gut, and all you can care about is how good it feels to have sex, to finally let loose and forget about all the worries in the world, to lose yourself to a man who wants nothing more than to be good to you.

“tell me it feels good. tell me you want it.” noa’s fingers dig into your thighs. your clit throbs, and you bring a hand to your crotch to rub at it frantically. you’re sniffling and sobbing pathetically underneath the pro player, already this cock-drunk and overwhelmed just from having cum on his mouth once.

“want it-,” you obediently repeat. heat floods your face and neck. he’s so possessive, but it turns you on so much. “want you so bad- want you to fuck me-”

“is that all?” his hips pound into you mercilessly, and you groan. his balls slap against your ass every time he fucks his cock into you, a constant reminder that you’re about to be bred by him.

“it’s embarrassing to say…” you can’t meet his eyes. noa hums disapprovingly, and dread pools in your chest when he draws his hips back all the way, until just the tip remains buried inside your indecent hole. “what are you doing…?”

you instantly turn to look at him, horror flashing across your face when you choke out, “n-noel, hold on, you can’t-!”

he slams himself all the way into you. you shriek, your core immediately burning at the ruthless stretch. his cock prods at your womb brutally, and a mix of pain and unbridled pleasure rips at your body. you’re instantaneously reduced to a crying mess, unable to form words as noa breaks your pussy. you swear you’re going to break into pieces, body left completely to the man’s mercy. he keeps drawing his hips back like that, his cock reveling in the feeling of being completely enveloped by your welcoming hole.

the room echoes with your cries, the desperate ah- ah- ah-! noises from you spurring him on to keep fucking you like a bull in heat. as much as he loves you, cherishes you, wants to keep you by his side, the sex is animalistic and unforgiving. your body feels bruised and battered as he bullies his length into you over and over again, stretching and molding your insides to adjust to his massively unfair size.

“say it!” noa’s voice doesn’t waver even once. “say it properly, or i’m not stopping until you pass out.”

you open and close your mouth dumbly, your mind too fogged up to think properly. you endeavor and push through, pursing your lips to form the words that noa has wanted to hear since the beginning. “w-wanna have sex with you more! wanna be yours- wanna be your wife-! wanna get m-married to you and- and have your babies!”

“yeah?” the blond man repeats. “you want me to be your husband? you want me to be honoré’s stepdaddy? you want me to father the rest of your kids?”

the dirty talk arouses you in a way you didn’t even realize was possible. you throw your head back, your back fully arched. you’re being so loud, too loud, and while you knew you should be quiet and good for your son’s sake, you can’t help but shamelessly beg for the man on top of you to fold you in half and fuck you pregnant until you’re nothing more than a stupid breeding bitch for your evidently soon-to-be husband.

“yes…!” you moan wantonly. “i want it all!”

he’s dangerously close. so are you, he can feel that much. you babble on and on about how you want him, how you want him to make you his, how you’ll be anything he wants you to be. what a depraved woman, he muses to himself, so desperate for love that you’d throw yourself at him once he gives you an opportunity to. he thinks it's awfully ironic, knowing that he did the same to you, and he’s glad that he has nothing but relatively good intentions.

minus the fact that he wants to get you pregnant.

his cock throbs and threatens to spill his cum into you. you’re teetering on the edge, aroused beyond your own comprehension by the sex and dirty talk, your sticky fingers playing with your abused clit. his hands reach for your tits, groping your sensitive breasts again.

he can’t wait to see you pregnant. your pretty chest, swollen up with milk for his baby, and your hips full and rounded out. your soft belly is stretched out, and you practically glow with warmth. he knows you’d be a good mother—he knows you’re a good mother. you dote on your son with so much love in your heart, and he knows you’d do anything to make sure that your family stays happy and healthy.

his heart swells.

“fuck-” he pumps his dick in and out of you at such an inhumanly fast pace. your pussy won’t stop coiling all around him, making sure to milk him for all he’s worth and intoxicating him endlessly. noa knows he hasn’t had that much to drink during dinner, but the sensation of fucking into your warm hole makes him feel like he’s had one sip too many. “gonna cum, love- gonna cum inside you and make you my wife…”

“do it-!” you encourage him. your voice is strained and high-pitched, and your thighs ache with the pressure of having him breeding you in such a demanding position. but he’s so deep in you, touching you in places you didn’t even know was possible, and the pleasure makes your mind go blank. “cum in me- please, cum inside me, noel!”

how can he refuse? you’re begging for him, asking him with such doe-like eyes and offering up that tempting body of yours.

it’s his turn to beg. “stay with me.”

you let out a loud squeal as he draws his heavy hips back one last time. your hole contracts around him, your desperate walls trying to drag him back inside, and he slams down into you as far as he can go. he knows he’s going to be hooked on your pussy, hooked on your body and the way it feels like you were made just to take his cock and get pregnant with his babies, hooked on all the ways he’s craved you with such an insatiable appetite since he’s laid eyes on you.

he lets himself go. with all the lust in his heart, enough to rival the sheer amount of love he has for his sweet, sweet neighbor.

he’s never cum this hard before. his balls tighten up painfully as he empties himself out inside of your cunt, and you moan out his name when you feel him pulsing inside your core. noa clenches his jaw, gritting his teeth together as the rush of his orgasm possesses him. you’re too much for him: too loving, too ready, too perfect, and noa would rather be damned than let you escape him.

it hurts to thrust into you so quickly, not having fully even finished riding out his climax, but he’s determined to shove as much of his semen into you. he needs you full, needs to know that you’ll be knocked up with his baby, and he uses his cock to force ropes of his hot cum into every inch of your womb.

your core tightens and twitches when you feel him cumming inside of you, all of the tension building up coming to a standstill in that moment. “fuck! fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck- noel, i’m- i’m cumming- i’m cumming, i’m gonna cum- noel…!”

your cunt wrings his cock, gripping onto his length furiously. noa has to double down, brace himself for the way your body refuses to let him go, as you cry loudly and cum all over him. your pussy keeps contracting and squeezing, your second orgasm immediately setting your nerves on fire and taking complete control of your senses. he can tell you’re instantly overwhelmed, your breathing turning irregular as you pant out for air, a slick ring of ivory froth forming at the base of his cock.

“s-so good-,” you slur out, your words melting into one another. you shudder when noa pulls out of you, whining in slight protest at the sudden feeling of emptiness overtaking your warm pussy. a strand of milky cum follows his dick before breaking, and like a broken dam, a rivulet of semen leaks out of you and drips down. it follows the curve of your ass before beading momentarily on the sheets, creating a pool of cum underneath you.

even noa didn’t realize he came that much. he blames it entirely on his intent to breed you.

he sits down wordlessly by your side, the two of you laying in the darkness in silence as you catch your breaths. noa debates getting up to fetch you some water or a towel, but before he can, you grab at his wrist and coax him back to your side.

“you asked me to stay with you,” you whisper. you sound so hushed, but noa would have to be an idiot not to pick up on the wavering tinges of longing in your words. “don’t go just yet… stay with me.”

he wipes some of the sweat off of your forehead, tucking some loose hairs behind your ear. he ducks his head down to kiss your face, just like how proper lovers would. you smile so brightly, despite your body still aching from the number noa just did to you. you’re an angel sent from heaven, this much noa is sure of. he has never been one to believe that sincerely in abstract concepts like soulmates and fate, but when he cups your face and rubs his thumb over the apples of your cheeks or your eyelids, he gets it. he truly does.

“don’t worry.” his voice is calming, and despite the fatigue ebbing over you in relentless waves, you can hear him loud and clear. “i’m not going anywhere.”

…

you’re fast asleep. noa’s aware that he should be asleep too, the clock ticking into the long and lonely stretches of early morning as he keeps you tucked into his chest. a firm arm holds you close to his heart, and your body slots against his like you were made to be held by him.

a missed call notification from his manager rests on his homescreen. he doesn’t want to pick up just yet. he doesn’t want to return to the real world, to his responsibilities, to be away from you.

a text message from his manager pops up, and he scans the preview with his usual eagle-like eyes.

‘sorry for calling you so late, noa. hope you’ve been doing well,’ his manager writes. ‘unfortunately, it looks like you’re going to have the next few months off as well. some material shipments got delayed, and without it, the stadium won’t be completed for a little while longer. your instructions are the same as last time: keep up with your exercise regime and do as your club tells you. other than that, you’re free to do as you want.’

relief floods noa’s weary body. he turns his phone over, blocking off the light before he pulls you to his chest even tighter. burying his nose into your hair, he holds you against his beating heart. thump-thump, your heartbeats syncopate to one another, and noa already knows he’s going to spend his precious time dedicating himself wholly to you and your happiness.

what he doesn’t see is the next text from his manager. not that it matters, noa has everything he could possibly want right now.

‘you sure are one lucky man,’ it reads. ‘make sure to take some time for yourself and relax, away from sports. breaks like these are rare.'

'you know what they say, noa. there really is no place like home.’

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #blue lock smut #bllk smut #noel noa #x reader #fem reader #my writing

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