#frevholiday2025

[lemurious]

Frev Holiday Event 2025

in case you were looking for some inspiration from our favorite revolutionaries to get through the winter.

writing, art and anything-goes prompts from the wonderful @alchemyfire and myself, starting tomorrow. no need to strictly follow the day or the prompt.

may they be a tiny spark of companionship and creativity to brighten a single day, or the whole month.

[secondjulia]

Accuracy notes at the end 🙄

"Maxime, it's—"

"Florelle!"

"Wait, it is not—"

"You are ill!" 

"No, well, it's not—"

"But why can't the doctor come here?" Maxime's voice is strained with panic. "Are you going to a hospital?" He shivers at the appalling idea.

"No." Saint-Just grips his shoulders gently trying to convey strength and confidence. It's an effect which, in the interest of honesty, he immediately ruins with his words. "Well ok, technically, it is a hospital. It's in the complex; I'm not 'going to the hospital', it's just that the doctor's office…."

This isn't making things better.

Maxime's hands are twitching into fists. His wide, fearful eyes are scanning Saint-Just up and down, searching out the problem.

Saint-Just should have, perhaps, foreseen the complications of announcing I have to go to the doctor. Maxime had had cordial and trusting relations with Doctor Souberbielle, but medical problems had always been a source of well-founded anxiety.

"All is well," Saint-Just says. "It's only a routine—"

"Florelle—"

"It's nothing to worry about, I promise. It's just for Botox." 

Despite the fact that Maximilien Robespierre can have no idea whatsoever what he's talking about, Saint-Just gives the requisite awkward laugh. 

"It paralyze the muscles," he explains in response to the quizzical expression, "So it can relieve some, ah… pain."

"You are in pain?"

"It's…"

He wants to deny it.

More than two hundred years after Fleurus, Saint-Just still wants to be the silent, uncomplaining soldier who can face anything.

He's used to joking about his Botox appointments with the gym bros, but he's also spent the last century trying to have a healthier relationship with… everything. He tries to be open and unashamed when he can be. One of his buddies has started getting the shots for dystonia in the hand, and another confided that he's been getting them in his jaw so he doesn't crack his own teeth at night. As much as Saint-Just old, battle-fired heart still wants to be the stoic soldier, he can see the advantages of openness and honesty.

"Only sometimes. Not right now." He sighs. "Migraines. It's something about the tension. Oh, I don't know, actually. No one really knows what causes it. The shots are preventative."

"Oh." Maxime does not look relieved. One hand comes up to clutch at Saint-Just's, which is still resting on his shoulder. "I will accompany you. In case you should need assistance."

A spark of relief ignites in Saint-Just's heart.

Reflexively, squashes it.

Maxime shouldn't have to face the impersonal halls of modern medicine, the colorless linoleum that squeaks underfoot, the gathering of impatient patients, strangers waiting to be seen by kind but rushed professionals.

He already looks so frightened.

"You don't have to," Saint-Just says, defying his own desire.

Maxime swallows; his jaw clenches; his searching eyes do not look even slightly relieved. The hand covering Saint-Just's is trembling. 

Well, maybe — ok, maybe Saint-Just is just being selfish and letting his own spark of relief flare into life but also maybe — the best way to ease Maxime's fears is to show him that nothing bad is actually happening.

Now that he thinks of it, why shouldn't he have company on his errand? No soldier fights alone. Even in battle, he'd had Le Bas.

Saint-Just smiles reassuringly and turns his hand so he can grip Maxime's properly. "Ok."

***

The staticky sound makes Robespierre flinch.

"Sorry about that!" the neurologist says. "I get so used to it, I forget how loud it is!"

Saint-Just, too, forgets how loud the EMG machine is. Every time. Three or four months pass between appointments, and he pushes the experience out of his mind, along with that horrible sound of his own muscles firing, the electrodes on his neck betraying every flinch, every—

The needle punches into his neck.

Tense and silent — no matter what the stupid machine says — he holds himself still and stares at the shiny, spotless floor. 

It is not a blade.

It's not grapeshot.

It's not musket fire.

But his trembling heart doesn't seem to distinguish between the types of metal that threaten his neck.

A hand squeezes his. Saint-Just glances up from the gleaming floor, meets Maxime's frightened eyes, and realizes that — far from easing any fears — this may be a far more terrifying ordeal than to witness than to endure.

The needle stabs his left shoulder, somewhat less painfully than his neck, but Saint-Just still has to clench his hands to quash the impulse to swing around and attack the threat.

Maxime's hand is trembling.

"Are you ok?" Saint-Just asks softly.

"I don't like to see you hurt."

"I'll live."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, lethal complications are quite rare."

"But there might be something else — you know that Barnave—"

"Royalist scum," Saint-Just growls.

The neurologist shoots him a confused look as she moves to the other side.

"Yes, quite," Maxime says. "But he did know about medicine. Did he… Have you, ah… seen him recently?"

"He has not emerged since his business with Sanson."

"Oh. Well, I suppose that is good. Quite the point, certainly." 

Guilt sparks in Maxime's eyes, and Saint-Just wonders if he still has mixed feelings about their own coincidental survival. Well, it's not like he can ask now, but he may have to broach that topic—

Another holepunch to the neck.

He squeezes Maxime's hand.

Saint-Just draws in a shaky breath. 

He has wondered sometimes — he is wrong, he knows this, but he isn't as confident as he once was and has not entirely shaken off old ways of thinking — he has wondered if the pain is punishment for his failure. He does not feel guilty over Tallien's and the other's actual accusations. He and his friends weren't guilty of what they were accused of. There was no conspiracy! No tyrants! (If there were, they'd have to include all those who played the largest roles that Thermidor!) But, even more than two hundred years later, Saint-Just cannot entirely shake the shame of having failed.

Distracted by his thoughts and unprepared, he hisses at the next stab.

Maxime's trembling hand squeezes his.

"It's almost done," Saint-Just says. "Right?"

"Yep," the neurologist confirms. "Just a bit more in the temple and forehead."

These hurt less. Or, well, maybe it's just that they just lack that alarming feeling of metal slicing into his neck. 

He gives Maxime a reassuring smile. "How about pancakes?"

"Hmm?" Maxime blinks as confusedly as if he'd proposed naming Collot d'Herbois president for life.

"There's a lovely place just down the road."

"Oh, yes, well if you feel up to it."

"I like the blueberry ones." Saint-Just rubs his thumb soothingly against Maxime's palm. "But they have a lot of other fruit, too."

***

Saint-Just pours a waterfall of hot blueberry syrup — complete with actual stewed blueberries — over the giant pancakes already practically iced with butter. He's already feeling much better.

Maxime sips nervously at his coffee. His eyes still dart warily over Saint-Just as though expecting disastrous effects from this new procedure.

Saint-Just puts the syrup down and dismisses the urge to grab his fork. Instead, he covers Maxime's hand with his.

"We're safe," he reminds the deposed deputy of the National Convention.

Maxime swallows and looks down at his cinnamon orange pancakes. A heartbreaking shadow crosses his face, and his voice is quiet. "I still have trouble believing it."

"Me, too."

"But you have… adapted?"

"Eventually. But I've been trying for about a hundred years. You're new to this."

Maxime nods. 

"You will adapt, too." Saint-Just reaches out to sweep a chunk of bleached hair behind Maxime's ear. "I promise. At least you don't feel like you're in Hell anymore, right?"

"No." Maxime gives a small, apologetic laugh. "Certainly not. This is all quite nice once one gets used to it." He begins to cut small pieces off his giant stack of pancakes. When he speaks next, his voice is so low, it's almost inaudible. "But there is still pain. Disorder. Fear. Sometimes I wonder if it would've been easier to have let the guillotine have the last word."

"Easier, maybe." Saint-Just finally takes up his own fork and slices through his pancakes like a blueberry-drenched Austrian front line. "But not better."

"Do you really think so?"

"I know it. It wasn't the guillotine that tried to have the last word; it was Tallien and Collot and Billaud and the rest of them!"

Maxime nods, but there is still a shadow behind his eyes. 

"And I don't fucking care if it's better or not, actually," Saint-Just growls. He drops his fork and reaches across the table again, this time to bury his fingers in Maxime's hair and cup the edge of his jaw. "I don't care if it's all painful and terrifying and a huge damn mess. I like being alive. With you."

Maxime smiles, and his shadows seems to quail under Saint-Just's ferocity. They have not been chased off entirely, but their forward momentum has, perhaps, been stalled. 

Perhaps Saint-Just is hypocritical to speak so resolutely when he does not always feel so in his own mind; but he knows that he is ordering himself to listen, too. That his fate is tied to Maxime's, and he wouldn't have it any other way, and fuck all those who thought they got the last word! This is his life — their life — enduring down through the ages and under the same skies in defiance of pain and fear and the whole chaotic mess.

"I like being alive with you, too," Maxime says. He blinks shyly down at his plate and smiles again. "Some things certainly are worth the trouble."

Notes

Uhhh... ok, I wrote almost all of this before I decided to google for accuracy lol. I get Botox for cervical dystonia & it turns out that maybe EMG isn't always needed for migraine injections? But someone on r/migraines said their neurologist used it, and some other sites about therapeutic Botox + EMG did mention migraines, so...? I dunno. Maybe it's not necessary for the face, but is useful for better targeting in the complicated neck muscles?

Yes I know that's a picture of a caduceus not a rod of Asclepius, but I didn't like the free rods of Asclepiuses on canva lol & some medical places also use the wrong one so I'm being accurate to them 😌

Poor Maxime, doomed to an afterlife of always eating oranges! I imagine him coming back as a ghost like You know I didn't even like them that much! It was ONE time the peels were on the table and that imbecile Fréron had to go telling everybody! Rest assured, Saint-Just's 21st-century penthouse is well stocked with a hearty variety of nutrients.

Origin Story All of my Revolutionaries in the Modern World stories My frev stuff on Ao3

[alchemyfire]

Snow

Frev Holiday 2025 prompt.

White flakes were falling to the ground and into his hair. As usual, he had forgotten his hat somewhere. Maybe at the Committee, or at home. He couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter now, because he only had a few steps left and then he would be greeted by the worried look on the sweet girl’s face and the warmth emanating from the room behind her. “Maximilien is waiting for you,” she said instead of greeting him, stepping out of his way. He just nodded and quickly ran up the stairs. He was surprised that everything had gone so smoothly today, without questions and without delay. She knew that she wouldn’t discourage him from visiting his friend anyway. When he entered, Robespierre seemed to be asleep. His eyes were closed and he lay motionless. That was why he was startled when he suddenly spoke. “It’s been snowing all day. Fresh snow… may cover the dirt in the streets, but it won’t cover the poverty and hunger that haven’t been eradicated, it can wash away the blood of the condemned, but it won’t cleanse the consciences of those who still commit crimes against the revolution. Will it even erase the traces of our footsteps… as if we had never been here?” Maxime opened his eyes and looked at him. Those eyes looked feverish and desperate. Saint-Just sat down next to him and took his hand. He squeezed it. “That will never happen, Maxime. I know how hard you fought here. I know what Hébert and Danton are doing, what they want. But I’m back and I’ll help you. We’ll save the revolution.” “You’re cold,” Maxime noted, withdrawing his hand. “I’m sorry, but it’s freezing outside,” Saint-Just replied, perhaps a little too harshly. He got up and went to the window. He looked out at the courtyard covered in white snow. It really seemed as if the world they knew was disappearing beneath its blanket. The snow reminded him of death. It reminded him of fallen soldiers lying on the battlefield. It was so quiet everywhere… “I’m glad you’re here,” Maxime whispered, closing his eyes again. He was so tired.

[saintjustitude]

I’m one day early but I can’t wait to share because I’m so happy that 1) I can draw again 2) I can draw on a tablet and 3) I can color on a tablet. (I watched a tutorial earlier and oh my god I had no idea it was this easy?? Yes, that means my Frev x Wicked art will get colored too.)

So December 7 is @aedislumen’s birthday and the Frev Holiday theme is “blanket”. So I drew Prieur in a blanket.

I kinda inspired myself from a sketch @josh-lanceero made a long time ago coz I still struggle a bit but it’s mostly based on looking at That One Unique Portrait and the guy in Un mètre pour mesurer le monde.

I drew SJ too also in a blanket so we can see that, even though they all suffer from Same Face Syndrome, they are still Legally Distinct Twinks:

SJ is frownier. Prieur has a buttchin. They have slightly different noses. Totally different.

I said I could draw again. I never said I could draw well.

[le-vieux-cordelier]

[Frev Holiday 2025: Day 1 and 2 Snow and Hope]

Snow.

People starving.

1789-1791

The bitterness of winter descended upon the land of France yet, the monarchy is ill prepared to match the demands of the French people, so the snow covers the walkways and streets of Versailles, even Paris is affected by it. The snow is overwhelming on an empty palace.

Who isn't though is Camille Desmoulins, a one time lawyer at the Paris Bar, yet, the summer ahead faintly shines with hope which no one could say where a revolution comes from but today, Camille tightly clings to his thin coat, admiring the snow ahead and the reported failures of crops later on told by his companion.

A distant memory like all things, life plays with them all; although this could be the final truth, the women have brought the king and royal family into Paris—a prisoner of the people that have been ignored for centuries but no longer. They'd make La Fonde a precursor to the real tragedy ahead, and soon, the people would exact a terrible revenge, but today, Camille watches the inhabitants of his new home, a far cry from Picardy, but this was where the revolution stamped itself into. And now home to the Assembly, which had evolved over from the Estates General, to a new oath of which a revolution was forming.

By summer, 1789, infamous in all directions, he found a niche into this revolution, a talent in journalism in which the printer words would be pressed but destiny had them, didn't it?

Snow.

Memories fall.

Memories of a younger Camille.

Memories of younger ambition, younger dreams of a world that wasn't so cloistered off into strict classes. Memories of school years. Memories of Maximilien Robespierre.

Now, they were men.

Now, they were the heroes in books they've always read, they had the beacon of hope within their palms—destiny as Camille saw it. Hope. Providence. God.

Whichever came first. Whichever they sought.

The bitter snow.

The bitter starvation.

Observing all around, just taking in the proud stretch of Paris—and the home and the hope within the revolution. How foolish it had been that their king would have to answer to its people for grievances long held?

He was a deputy now.

He was elected but what remained wasn't the heart in the memories which held so steadfast to him—but his own hollowed out starvation of years of reforms and trying to reclaim such a broken system from within. So why couldn't they be the heroes of old Greek and Roman myths and succeed this time around? Could they be the heroes that Rousseau and other philosophers held this revolution to be even if they never lived to see it?

"Camille!"

A jolt back to the reality which was becoming steadily upheld, unhinged for him but which tasted more and more bitter like this winter, this snow even if they talked greatly of ideals of government; the people still starved. The people yearned for freedom from their bondage, as Rousseau had one stated in his most famous work: Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

Maxime, would know this better than anyone—he carried that book in his pocket but what they were crafted would be admired for years to come.

Right now they wrangled the king to be a constitutional monarch, but even that was failing quite spectacularly. Maybe destiny didn't allow them the pleasure of living in the present and saving everyone.

"Camille!"

Another exclamation of his name—a smile, a precious one in his good manners which he afforded himself in Paris at least.

Clutching at his coat's pockets, the events of this day wear him down, yet, he smiles harder at Lucile from whom appears, swollen yet, blissful. Pregnancy. A blessing.

A smile, broken at how they were still failing France, all of France.

"Come inside."

Newly married.

Newly minded happiness, which the snow and hope entangled vindictively against the backdrop of revolution, and dangled against the very gaze of a fated man. They were the heroes they once read about.

He couldn't ask about anything more even if he tried but the hearth inside beckoned him, tremendously and so with a slip of his hands which caught Lucile's memories cascaded gently around their kiss. The snow never letting up.

[icybloodtigrss]

The Spark

The letter I sent universes ago

You who sustain the Patrie

Even as it still staggers under this despotism

That can never seem to wash out

That time when I begged

Petition assistance

I had hoped upon stars

For a solitary spark

To unite our focused souls

I was only cognizant of your existence

As God is known by miracles

Yet miracles have been wrought

Through blood and words

We who must continue

To root out conspiracy

Like badgers digging to the hearts

Of those who dare to oppose

This incomplete Revolution

You did not just represent Artois

Or even just the great Paris

But all of humanity

And this ever threatened Republic

Just as I do not merely come up

From the humble Aisne

We must push back our enemies

And open this Nation to liberty

Or perish by their daggers

[secondjulia]

The Smile Fades and Saint-Just's Heart Cracks

Saint-Just stares at the little bottle and struggles for a reasonable excuse. But there just isn't any good reason why he shouldn't let Maximilien in on the secret of dry shampoo.

He swallows and his cheeks heat. "It's not the same exactly. You don't leave it in."

"Oh." Maxime just blinks bemusedly at the innocent little bottle as though it couldn't possibly threaten his virtue. 

Everything I have is yours, Saint-Just had ordered sternly that first night, afraid that Maxime would reject any shred of comfort — the tiniest slice of fruit or soft sheets or unscented lotion. Saint-Just never had the heart to refuse him anything anyway. And it is a good sign that Maxime has grown comfortable enough in this twenty-first century penthouse to explore the hidden reaches of Saint-Just's bathroom cabinet.

And he wants…

"Let me show you," Saint-Just's lips betray him, because this is still a very, very bad idea. Surely there's a video that could do the job! In fact, Saint-Just is fairly certain he's made a video of dry shampoo specifically (if surreptitiously) geared toward the secret eighteenth-century man trying to figure out modern hair care. But he takes the little bottle from Maxime and pulls the stool in front of the mirror. "Sit. Here—" He grabs a fresh microfiber towel and drapes it over Maxime's shoulders. "I won't get any in your face so you needn't cover that."

Saint-Just's fingers tingle as they hover over the pale strands. He has already felt Maxime's hair a few times since the deposed deputy of the National Convention stepped into the present century, but it still seems too daring, like aspiring to a wicked, selfish indulgence—

Oh! But the anticipation is only making it worse! 

Saint-Just boldly plunges his fingertips in, raking the soft, platinum waves aside.

Modern products have given Maximilien Robespierre slightly more of a blond look than the typical stark white of eighteenth century powder. (The austere lawyer from Arras had, of course, never indulged in any of the frivolous colors of the Ancien Régime!) But Saint-Just had used only the best bleach and developer and all his considerable accumulation of modern hair care skill, and he'd gotten it as close to white as possible.

And he will do his best now, too.

It's such a routine thing. Hairdressing. Pausing neither for revolution nor fashion, deputy Robespierre had had his hair set and powdered every morning. Now, as the calendar zooms past the quarter-century mark — the twenty-first century — he sits calmly in this gleaming penthouse bathroom, blinking into the mirror at the little bottle in Saint-Just's hand.

"Um." Saint-Just's throat works as he parts Maxime's hair loosely over his right ear. "If you don't have time to wash your hair. Or, ah—" He swallows. His fingers comb lightly through the strands, which is only slightly oily; even in 2025, citoyen Robespierre is fastidiously neat and clean. Saint-Just's eloquence, on the other hand, seems to have been lost somewhere back in Thermidor. "Erm, or maybe you want to go a bit longer between shampoos or… well, you might also just want some extra volume or texture. You waft a bit onto the scalp like so." 

He squeezes the bottle gently and—

Oh.

The scent is a delicate, modern, chemical thing, but that texture! Oh! That is a thing of the eighteenth century! As the dust falls against the roots, his fingers card through the hair and he feels…

His mind bursts with phantoms.

His blood rushes—

"You work it through like so." His voice is dry and strained as he struggles to interrupt his own mind. More powder puffs from the bottle as Saint-Just's hand tenses around it. He uses his free hand to shield Maxime's face from any errant dust before returning his fingers to the rough parting, now pale as snow, and to that texture!

Saint-Just had powdered his own hair as a young man before abandoning the practice like so many others. In the modern age, he's used the stuff occasionally (the current bottle was an unsolicited free sample). However, the memories crowding his mind now are not visions of real life, old or new. They are profane images, his own waking dreams, crafted in the long, dull nights at the Tuileries or exhausted moments alone between the sheets.

His hands wrecking perfect curls…

Fingers scraping through powdered strands so forcefully that his every breath is stuffed with the scent… 

Saint-Just can still smell it, even over the modern stuff; together with the feel of it, its scent is fixed in his memory from those long nights of work and dreams. 

"Um." He makes another loose part over Maxime's left ear. Another puff. Saint-Just swallows. He struggles to speak with as little breath as possible so as to stem the flood of memory and fantasy — and the rushing blood it has conjured, all too real and present, undimmed by centuries. "You can brush it or, um—" Tiny breath. Swallow. "—massage it with a towel."

He sets the bottle down, grabs a luxurious wooden brush from the sink, and begins gently to wield it through Maxime's hair. His needy lungs suck in too much air as the brush stirs the powder. The modern scent entirely fails to stifle the breath of illusion rushing through him.

Long nights over ink and paper…

Maxime rubbing his eyes under his spectacles…

They needed rest…

Comfort…

Stop it!

Saint-Just's filthy mind grapples against itself as he tries to force himself to focus on this banal routine. He keeps his eyes on his work, not daring to approach Maximilien's gaze in the mirror and risk betraying his desire.

He lays down the brush and takes up the microfiber towel. Ever so gently, he strokes it through the roots, nearly imperceptibly rubbing the excess powder away. The physical separation from Maxime's skin and hair is agony, but Saint-Just works diligently, only laying aside the towel when every visible grain has been patted away. Then he takes up the brush again.

The Duplays had been accustomed to the deputies sequestering themselves for long hours in Maxime's room…

Surely they could have lingered without arousing too much…

No.

Stop!

Saint-Just swallows against his involuntary, outdated fantasy.

The brush snags slightly behind the right ear. Saint-Just seeks out the tiny knot; he lifts it in one finger it while slowly, gently stroking through it with the brush; until each and every strand slips free. His knuckles brush against the warm scalp as he lets the hair fall through his fingers, making sure no trace—

Maxime's breath hitches.

The sound jolts Saint-Just's attention. His fingers go still at once, and his eyes snap to the mirror and the bright green gaze that meets his.

Avoidance has only made the problem worse, for Saint-Just's focus now rivets on Maxime's eyes under his green spectacles; he looks at Saint-Just as though he has seen or felt something shocking, and Saint-Just is utterly unable to break away, unable to hide own gaze, which feels obscene with craving, with the blood rushing under his skin and the flares of false memories lighting up his brain.

"I'm sorry." Saint-Just's voice is rough with self-condemnation as he lays the hairbrush aside. "Did I hurt you?"

Maxime's head shakes minutely, but his breathing is rough, and one hand is half-raised — nearly to his shoulder, as if about to seize Saint-Just's hand to stay his movements. "Never."

"Are you sure?" Saint-Just's fingers move again, seeking a tangle that has escaped notice due to his inexcusable distraction. "It's not supposed to hurt."

"No—yes, I am sure. It doesn't hurt."

Saint-Just looks back to the mirror, their gazes grasping onto each other's, and he feels naked; all the force of his will cannot conquer the desire that he knows must gleam there so close to the surface. He keeps himself perfectly still for another long moment, and then he takes a breath; he will step back, he will remove himself—

"Florelle…" 

Maxime's fingers make contact with the back of his hand. The heat of his skin matches Saint-Just's, and the soft touch is almost unbearable. Maxime's throat works. His green eyes glitter; things shift in their depths, an answering spark of—

Desire?

Oh! Saint-Just must be imagining it!

"Maxime…" He takes a breath, but no words come. He takes another. Still, silence. Saint-Just's voice could not be so thoroughly struck from him if Tallien strode into the bathroom and shoved him aside.

"You never used to hesitate to speak your mind," Maxime says softly. His hand shifts on Saint-Just's, cupping the back of his hand, nearly twining their fingers.

It means nothing. 

It must mean nothing! 

Nothing more.

Saint-Just has only grown too accustomed to cold modern life, where any touch must be something else. Like sharing a bed. Or bathing in the presence of another living soul. Maxime is not far enough removed from a time where men embraced and held hands and visited the baths and shared little inn beds, where touch was a simple human thing and, just like a man powdering another's hair, it was routine, unremarkable.

But that look.

Something shifts like a creature in the deep seas of Maxime's eyes. Something that Saint-Just never spotted when those spectacles turned upon the Convention or the Committee.

"It is only that…" Saint-Just's voice is hoarse, but he cannot escape the tides of Maxime's gaze, and it pulls the truth from him: "I've missed you."

Their hands move again, and it is impossible to tell who is guiding the action; their fingers twine fully now, still lifted over Maxime's right shoulder, their eyes locked in the mirror.

"I had no time to miss you," Maxime says, and a heartbreaking pain sparks in the depths. "But I did anyway. In those last hours."

"I was there."

"But we were already severed. Unable to even—" 

Maxime's eyes squeeze shut, choking off that mesmerizing, heartbreaking gaze. He bows his head, his free hand covering his mouth, fingers digging into his jaw — certainly feeling the phantom injury, but Saint-Just doesn't need the visceral reminder of how it felt when it was all over. Not when the blade fell, but when their allies had deserted them or been thrown out windows or dragged to defeat at their side. He'd sat beside that fucking table which served as Maxime's sickbed in the final hours, and even though Saint-Just's own jaw had been perfectly in tact, his voice had already been severed. They were surrounded by enemies taunting and dooming them; long before the tumbrils set out, they were deprived of any words for themselves.

Maxime's fingers slip away. He rubs his eyes and casts aside his spectacles. Then he lowers his hands and turns around on the stool. When he looks up at Saint-Just, his gaze shines with tears. "I was prepared for my own death. But I wasn't prepared to lose you."

Even as Saint-Just's heart pummels his chest, he tilts his head at this curious confession; the tide has snagged too hard on his truth, and he speaks with no argument, only simple fact, "You ought to have been, oughtn't you? I had gone away to war. A few times."

"Yes, but… Yes. That's true." Maxime sits silently with this contradiction for a long moment. Then, "I suppose I assumed your victory. I knew you would save us."

A small, surprised laugh bursts from Saint-Just's lips, levity sending fissures through the tension. "Really? But you were always so pessimistic!"

Maxime's lips twitch in the tiniest of smiles, maybe reluctant to yield to the broken tension. He nods. "Yes, yes, that is true. There were enemies everywhere." The smile fades, and Saint-Just's heart cracks. But then— "Perhaps it is only that I imagined your return in triumph so often that it seemed assured. The one good certainty."

He takes Saint-Just's hand again, and the touch is almost unbearable — the clash between raging desire and banal reality—

Maxime's free hand rises and tucks a curl behind Saint-Just's ear.

"I imagined you returning to me, too," Saint-Just says, more truth dragged from him. "I searched. For years, for decades I looked for you. I never stopped. I… never stopped hoping."

The hand that's clasping his tightens; the fingers that are still resting over the shell of his ear stroke his hair back from his face in a soothing gesture that would've been intimate even in the eighteenth century.

"Maxime, I wanted to see you so badly," Saint-Just blurts. He lets his fingers rake through that pale hair, the gesture dangerously close to bursting his self restraint— 

Oh!

Maxime's hand claws at Saint-Just's hair! The soothing fingers plunge into it. They tangle at the back of Saint-Just's neck, gripping, and he bows to this mirrored desire, lowering his head until his lips nearly close the blazing chasm between them. He has released Maxime's hand only to let both hands rake through that just-neatened hair, clenching in a mess at the back of the deposed deputy's neck—

Maxime pulls back; his head bows. "I cannot."

Saint-Just's voracious hands stop immediately. His teeth clench as if he could bite back the wildfire of desire that scorches him.

"I took your life," Maxime whispers.

Saint-Just's heart breaks. His throat works, choking on the blaze. A raging heat that, however hot, can never cauterize the wound that lies between them. For a long moment he can only shake his head before managing, "They took my life."

"For my part, my failure—"

"No." Saint-Just grits his teeth. He has born slander and ignominy and death, but he cannot bear this accusation — it has come at him again and again and again, relentlessly hurled through the ages, tearing at him from every direction, from fucking tenured academics down through Wikipedia and goddamn TikTok; he cannot bear to leave this wound festering on Maxime! His hand shifts, his thumb resting against Maxime's wildly beating pulse, his fingers still clawing the hair at the nape of his neck; gently but inexorably he turns Maxime's face up to his so Saint-Just can look him in the eye, can penetrate the shadow that ravages that gaze.

"I was never your acolyte; I was your friend. I was—" The puff of Maxime's ragged breath on Saint-Just's lips almost slices his voice from his throat. He swallows. "I was yours."

"I cannot take…"

"Maxime," Saint-Just groans. Oh, this stubborn, incorruptible representative of the people!

The Incorruptible's face leans closer, as though his strength is not great enough for his own arguments. "I cannot take more from you."

"Then—"

Saint-Just closes the distance and brushes Maxime's lips with his, first gently and then, when the response comes, when Maxime's hands tighten in his hair, pulling him closer, his lips moving in mirrored need, Saint-Just devours them; Maxime's ragged breath escapes as their tongues meet, his pulse flying wildly against Saint-Just's thumb, and they are both panting when the consuming kiss breaks, Saint-Just pulling back just barely enough to seize a breath and speak. 

"—let me take."

Maxime's breath hitches, stops, and then rushes back, nearly a gasp as he speaks, so close that their lips both brush against the name. "Florelle…"

"Maxime…"

"Please."

~~~~~~~

[I put the rest of it on Ao3 because tumblr doesn't like it when I get spicy & I don't want to be algorithmically exiled 😔 But also you can end here if you don't need spice. This is kind of the standalone/closed door part 😊 If you proceed, please read all tags & warnings!]

[Also this was the Frev Holiday prompt powder. I am absolutely adoring this fandom's prompts ❤️❤️❤️ They explode in my brain!]

Origin Story My Revolutionary Babes in the Modern World YouTube Saint-Just

[secondjulia]

1. reminder that breeches sometimes had laces! 2. follow up to Immortality of the Soul, but no need to have read it 3. ⚠️Warning for implied ghost sex, but not on the page; you can use your imagination or not as you like 🙂

She wishes she could help lace up his breeches. But her existence is still too limited, too stupidly bound to physical matter! For an instant, she reaches out from the warm cocoon of her quilt — but, no; her touch can gain no purchase on the ghostly essence, which now holds the soul of genius known as Maximilien Robespierre. 

He needs no help, of course; even more than a hundred and thirty years after his head fell, he remains pristine, perfectly powdered and clean and neat and fastidious as always. As he stands with his back to her and the bed and the cocoon of warmth, his ghostly hands run efficiently over the buttons and ties of his clothing. He always looks so put together. Such a… 

gentleman? 

Stanisława buries her smile in the pillow; she'd never call him any such thing, of course. Not to his face. But she can't stop it popping into her head. It's not some stupid aristocratic notion of the term, but something beyond status and wealth, something made of kindness and attention and care. 

A gentle man.

Her gaze follows his last few quick, practiced movements: his fingers dancing over the laces at the small of his back. His skin is nearly entirely covered, but there's something shockingly seductive about this spot, which no portrait or sketch ever captured and which no one ever thought to describe, even as they commented on his hair powder and shoe buckles. Oh! What is it about this little spot of fabric that hugs his body? A furious blast of jealousy burns her as she watches the way the laces securely cinch the Incorruptible's waist, as her fingers cannot. 

Yes, she is jealous of a bit of ghostly fabric! What absurdity! 

She also feels a bit lecherous watching the moment. 

Oh, is she a prude now? A little laugh quivers in her throat at that thought. The sound startles her — there's been so little to laugh about lately!

Maxime looks over his shoulder, his worried eyes seeking her out where she remains sheltered under the covers. "Are you alright?"

She nods.

“If I recall—" He makes a gesture as though to consult a pocket watch, before seeming to remember that this would be useless; they're not even on the same plane of existence, let alone the same time zone. "—it is about time to eat something. Isn't it?”

He's so kind, it twists her heart. 

Though he hasn't eaten anything since the ninth of Thermidor, he always tries to remember these things when he visits her. 

Stanisława contemplates the world outside her covers, and dread begins to creep in. “The bread is frozen and so are my fingers." 

She reluctantly exposes her hands to the frigid air and looks at the uncooperative joints; winter is not half over and they are already giving her pains. Fear strikes deep into her heart at the sight and sensation of her own hands, the thought of the cruel cold, and the desperate worries from which she'd taken refuge under this quilt.

The worries — well, worry, really, because they are all one, all the multifaceted problems of existence looping back to the same conundrum: how she can survive as who she is, as what she is, what she must be — by choice and nature — which is 100% a writer, when the world does not reward such labor with a living, when its only wage is poverty and pain and sickness and the enforced overtime work of begging… The worry rushes back, invading her cozy refuge under the quilt and bullying its way to her tongue. 

"What if I never write again?”

Maximilien sits back down on the bed; the murdered deputy of humanity looks down at her with a kindness she has never seen in living eyes. He runs one ghostly hand over her hair. She shivers, and he withdraws the touch, but she reaches out, brushing her own pained fingers against his despite the chill, despite the fact that his touch is nothing but a whisper.

“Spring will come,” he says.

“Not soon enough.”

His troubled eyes watch her. He looks like he wishes to lie comfortingly, but she knows too well that he was never one to turn away from the painful reality. Not even when it rushed upon him like an invading force.

“I wish I could warm you,” he says.

She nods. She wishes the same. “Can you just stay with me?”

"I think so," he says and lays down beside her again, slipping back under the covers even though he is always too warm, always dogged by the heat of Thermidor, a torment she can never share, though she would do so even if it meant following him to the center of Hell.

She doesn't know if spring will come for her. But for the moment, tucked under the warm quilt with Maximilien, she doesn't care. 

~~~Fin~~~

This was the Frev Holiday prompt cold. Better late than never ☺️

Ao3 link