Standing Outside the Fire

@dorian | Anicka's Outfit

They were somewhere that a year ago, she never would have thoguht that they were going to be. There was no way to think that they would have been parents together. That they would have this life that they had now. That Issa was going to be alive. That Dorian was still going to be on the wagon. The last year had brought hell, and it had brought holy water, and she truly believed that they could get away with both. That they could survive with both. And she thought that tonight they could celebrate that. She had remembered that it was Dorian's birthday a couple of days ago, and she had talked to Talia, and she had agreed to host everyone here. It was just them, the adults anyway, and Pippa. Lester and Rosalind's kids were in school, and she thought that it was easier for them to come to them when they had three young ones to accommodate. 

She hadn't demanded it, not by any means. If Talia wanted to do it, Anicka would have packed the kids up and gone over there. She knew that she was the one that wasn't really a member of this family yet. There was a ring on her finger, but she would be the only one in attendance tonight that didn't carry the Nott surname. Not yet anyway. Two months... They were getting married in July, and July seemed a lot closer now than it had before. She was still pretty set on a beach though. She thought that that was appropriate, even if no one but the two of them realized how appropriate a beach in the end of July really was. Ironic, was a good word for it. But she wasn't going to explain it either. 

That was something that she very desperately didn't want to do. She wanted to keep it under wraps that they were getting married in the first place. They had managed to just slide the children into the monarchy and no one had asked too many questions when they were that far down the line, but marrying him... Anicka knew that that was going to be a little bigger of a deal. Where she sat in the line of succession meant that they had to have Josef's approval, which he had given, but it also meant that if anything happened to her bratr... She would likely have to go home. She would have to take the spot that Sylvestr wasn't going to want. She would have to be queen... And that meant that her husband would be Prince Consort, or... If she chose, King. 

Getting married, and sneaking that by the public was something that she thought that she was just going to have to hold on to as much as possible. HOME wasn't published in the Czech Republic, or Slovakia, and she knew that she wasn't giving rights to their wedding to anyone but herself. The only photographer she wanted there at all was Thea. Anicka didn't want a spectacle. She had done that once before. She wanted quiet, and simple. His family. Maybe hers. Anicka didn't need to be a princess on her wedding day this time around. She just needed him. And she needed to walk away from that priest, Lady Nott. That was all she needed, all she wanted. To be his. And him to be hers. 

But tonight was not about them. Or the dress that she had started working on in the attic. It wasn't about the fact that they had expanded this family when they hadn't been expecting it. It was about Dorian. And the fact that it was his birthday, and Anicka had realized halfway through making dinner that she had made a menu that was altogether rather unique. Half Czech, half Greek... It was something that you didn't see very often... And of course, a cake. And cupcakes. Because for as much as Anicka would always claim that Pippa loved cupcakes, everyone knew that if vanilla cupcakes showed up on the table, it was because they were Anicka's favorite. She had asked the little girl what kind of cake they should make for her Strýc, and so she thought that at least that part Dorian would like. She heard Kreta go and open the door, and she smiled when she looked up from the salad to see the guest of honor standing in the door of the kitchen. "Ahoj bratře." She shook her head and repeated herself in English leaving off the endearment that had slipped out the first time, "Hello." 

Life is not tried it is merely survived

Outfit

Pulling up to the house in his Daimler, Dorian pushed his aviator glasses onto his head. It was going to be a long night. Especially because he knew they would want to celebrate.

Dorian hated birthdays.

Well, at least, he hated birthdays until this year.

They were always reminders of another year gone…another year lacking accomplishment or esteem. They were just a reminder that he was a disappointment to his family. He was the wrong Lord Nott. He was the Lord Nott that everyone kept at arm’s length. He had been a drunk, a user, a screw up. He had been all those things and more.

But this year, on the eighteenth of May, twenty-eighteen, he felt like something different entirely.

He had turned his life around nearly a year ago when Malcolm had found him and dragged him back from Romania. He hadn’t had a drink since then. Dorian had grown closer with Pippa — and he liked to think that he was becoming a right proper uncle to her (He even had a few more kids that would call him uncle now that Anicka had given birth). He had saved Cami… (at least, that was what he was telling himself. He couldn’t help but feel like sometimes, keeping her cooped up in the apartment like that, it was more like holding her hostage). He had mended bridges, gotten into a better place. He was even talking with a sponsor. Dorian was better.

Or he was on the path to better.

He had a lot more to live for now.

Standing in front of the door to Nott Periousía, he wondered if he would actually enjoy himself tonight… “Wotcher, Kreta. I’m here for—”

“Your birthday party of course!” The little creature seemed overly excited and Dorian forced himself to smile, though it was hardly more than a thin line on his lips. Kreta led him inside and continued past the kitchen, but Dorian stopped, spotting Anicka hovering near the food.

He raised an eyebrows. “Here I was thinking you’d have the House Elves do all the cooking. But who am I kidding…” He joked before he moved forward and gave her a relatively awkward side-hug. Sometimes, he wasn't exactly sure where they stood. A part of him remembered a distant memory - the first week he had been back from Romania...Dorian shook his head as he pulled back. “Thanks for hosting, Nika. Guess I owe you. Looks like you did a number.” His eyes moved over all the food that was being prepared and his stomach gave a grumble. Perhaps he was hungrier than he knew. "Medici's not...around here anywhere, is he?" He held up a brown paper bag which contained a bone he had picked up before driving over. A peace offering, as it were.

Standing Outside
The Fire

This was not the way that she thought that her life was going to turn out. Anička couldn’t say that she had ever thought that she would have someone that she could love like this. She hadn’t thought that she would ever be accepted into a family like this. But she had thought that it was worth the effort. She was trying. Because she had children that were a part of this family. She had children that were going to carry that name, Izák especially, for the rest of his life. He was a Nott. They were both Notts. And she wanted them to have everything that they could possibly need or want. She wanted to do right by them, and soon she would carry that name too. Anička would keep that name for the rest of her life. She would be Anička Nott for the rest of her life. Because she wasn’t going to give that up. He was it. He was the one. And she knew that their lives had waited this long to put them together for a reason. She believed in God. She believed that there was a plan. That this was when they were supposed to be together. That this was when their children were supposed to be born.

Those were things that Anička believed, and those were the things that she should have given up believing in a long time ago. They had tortured her. They had put her through hell. And yet, they had never put her through enough to break her of that. To shake that faith that she had, that things were going to go her way. That things were exactly how they were supposed to be. And for a long time, they had been hell, but it was a hell that she would put herself through all over again if it meant that she kept those children safe. Her children. Anička would do anything for her children, and this time last year she had learned that he would do anything for her. He had killed her father for her. He had assassinated a king, to keep her safe, and that was not a little thing. There was no repaying him for that, but she would spend the rest of her life trying. She would raise their children. And she would help him raise Pippa, and she would do everything that she could think of, to show him how much she loved him. How much she cared. Because she wanted him to know she was in this. That she was in this for the rest of her life.

And she thought that he knew. She thought that he knew how much she was going to give to this family. To his family. But offering to do this was just extra. Offering to make dinner for all of them was something that she could do with her eyes closed for the most part. Anička had a large enough family that cooking for the Notts was something she could do in her sleep. There weren’t all that many of them. And even if Caerus and Rhea, and she supposed Remington would have been invited too at that point, had been home from school, it would still have been less people than she was used to. The five of them only counted as three, because the twins didn’t eat anything yet. Talia. Lester and Rosalind. Ophion. And then the guest of honor tonight, Dorian himself. Anička had that many people in her immediate family. She had five grown children, and she had a son-in-law. She knew that she wasn’t going to be cutting down on family members any time soon.

If she had all of her children, her fiancé, and Elliot, and Liam, around the table, that was eleven, and she wasn’t even really branching out. They had a big family. That was just how it was. Anička thought that tonight was better left small though. For all she knew, Dorian hated his birthday and didn’t want to celebrate it at all. She hoped that he didn’t mind that she had offered to do this at all. She chuckled when he gave her an awkward hug, and she returned it as best she could with one arm. Their size difference ever amusing, but she knew that she was smaller than everyone that would be here tonight, save for the seven-year-old, that she was honestly surprised hadn’t come running when she had heard her uncle come into the house. She supposed that she must have been off playing with Cooper somewhere, the only thing that could have distracted her from Dorian was that dog. “It’s no trouble really, eight people to feed is a breeze.” And it was, she could do that without a problem at all. She raised an eyebrow when he asked after her Rottweiler. Clicking her tongue in a pattern that he had been taught since he was eight weeks old, she waited for him to appear beside her from the pantry door where he had been laying. “Did you bring him bribery?”

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LIFE IS NOT TRIED
IT IS MERELY SURVIVED

❧

“Sometimes I forget you feed a small army on a regular basis,” Nika did, after all, have her fair share of children and family. The Mountbatten’s were not a small family and — on top of their extended family — rivaled some of the largest pureblood families that Dorian had ever known. There were days when this all felt so foreign. For years, Dorian had shunned his family for something that he didn’t want to think about right now. He’d chosen the darker path instead of his own flesh and blood. But it wasn’t like that anymore. “I still owe you. Don’t know the last time I had a proper birthday party. Wasn’t exactly all the rage when I was growing up.”

Over the past year, he’d grown closer with Nika, with Pippa, even with Malcolm. No longer was Dorian just a black spot on their family tree…he was actually acting like a part of the family. He wasn’t drinking, he wasn’t using, and he sure as hell wasn’t getting the family into trouble.

At least, until they learned what he’d done.

When they figured out that he had been the one that had helped a muggleborn escape his own brother’s business, it was probably going to be a different story. He could only imagine his mother’s laments about him. How could he? Why would he? Dorian didn’t know that he had a good answer — at least, not an answer that would appease them when the time came. He knew what he had done and he knew the reason that he had done it: Cami had saved his life all those years ago. But now, now that he had spent so much time with her, he wondered if it had more to do with the fact that she was a person, just like everyone else. Had she brought a new realization to Dorian? He was now questioning whether or not muggleborns even deserved the treatment they were getting. Weren’t they people, just like everyone else?

A part of Dorian wished that he could have said no to tonight. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to spend his birthday surrounded by his family. After all, he knew how many secrets he was keeping from them.

A part of him just wanted to be at home tonight with Cami…spending the night doing what they did best: binge-watching muggle TV and having a few sodas (in lieu of the drinks that neither of them particularly liked tempting themselves with) and pizza. Cami had become so important to him over the past few months. Originally, he had thought it was just a debt that he needed to pay. Long ago — another life, it almost felt like — Cami had been the one to rescue him from himself. She had been the one that pulled him out of the seven pits of hell and back into reality. When he’d seen her that day at Icarus Devices, he knew that he needed to do the same. But ever since he had broken her out of his own brother’s testing facility and brought her to his home, he had felt that it was more than just obligation. He felt that it was more than just a debt that he was paying to Camille. Their feelings had grown, since then. Dorian was fonder of her than he was of most people and it had nothing to do with her blood status. Dorian couldn’t give two shits if she was pureblood or muggleborn. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was what they had together.

Dorian paused, cracking a smile as he looked at her and held up the brown paper bag. “I am not above bribery. Especially for your dog.”

@ nika | 623

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Standing Outside

the Fire

“Only a small one.” Her children had never been ones to starve themselves, and she knew that Philip ate more than she and the girls combined in one sitting. Feeding the Notts was something that she could do. And she knew how to do that. She knew how to be a part of this. To belong to something like this. And she didn’t know a lot about Mirabella. She knew that they didn’t talk about her, but she wanted to outdo her at every turn. Malcolm was hers. He was the love of her life, and she wanted to make sure that they knew that she was never going to do anything to hurt him. She couldn’t. She would put every effort into making sure that they knew that she was in this. Today, that had meant offering to make dinner for all of them for Dorian’s birthday. “It wasn’t for me either. I don’t think I’ve ever had a birthday party actually.”

That wasn’t to say that her birthday wasn’t special. This year Malcolm had proposed, after all. But she had always made sure that her children had known how important birthdays were, and she had decided that she was going to do that for Dorian this year. Their relationship was unexpected. She hadn’t known what to think of him the first night that she had met him. Scared. Running from her brother. She had ended up here, and she had found Dorian instead of Malcolm. That had been the first night that she had every spoken to him. Met him. Because before that he had just been the brother that Malcolm had talked about. Lester, she knew. She had met him before. But Dorian had been a mystery until that night. At this point she thought that he was still a bit of a mystery, but she supposed that he probably thought the same of her.

Her past was not something that they talked about. Yes, she was a princess. But she was also perfectly content to live here in Nottingham and marry into this family that was most certainly not royal. She didn’t want what she had had before though. She wanted what she had now. She wanted her children. And she wanted Malcolm. And she wanted to be a part of this family. She wanted to belong here. And she had always done her best to impress Louis and Tatiana, but that wasn’t what she wanted from Talia. She wasn’t looking to impress her mother-in-law. She just wanted to be accepted by her, and she felt like she was. She felt accepted. And maybe that was wishful thinking, or something, but Anička wanted this. She wanted all of this, and she hoped that that showed. That they could all tell she was being genuine.

Anička would not hurt him. She could never hurt him. And she wanted to think that they knew that. “My dog loves everyone. He’s very sweet.” There was a smirk on her face, because they both knew that that was most certainly not the case. The Rottweiler had been purchased for the exact purpose of protecting her when she had been on her own, and now he knew who was accepted and who wasn’t, but that initial meeting with Dorian, he had been more than a little protective. A low growl emanating from his chest in front of the fire place that night had been enough to tell Dorian to back off. When Medici appeared at her side she clicked her tongue at him to tell him to sit. “See. Mild mannered and everything, bratr.” There was a teasing note in her voice, “You going to give it to him yourself? Try and win some brownie points?”

@ malý bratr - 625 - anička's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

LIFE IS NOT TRIED
IT IS MERELY SURVIVED

❧

It was humorous to Dorian to compare Nika’s family to an army, though they were hardly bigger than the Notts in the grand scheme of things. That was the trouble with British pureblood families. They expanded upwards and outwards. Especially those that cared so much for perpetuating the line, as his own family did. They connected in with other trees and before anyone knew what had happened, there were more people in the family then there were out of it. Dorian should have been used to large family gatherings, but he usually avoided them. This was, as he said, the first birthday party that had been intended for him and not as a meet and greet of all the higher powers of the family. Merlin’s Beard, sometimes the Notts felt like the Mafia to Dorian. “Maybe we should just share it, the two of us, then,” he answered, grinning at her. It would, at least, take some of the spotlight off of him.

If Nika had never had a birthday party, Dorian would pass along the message to Malcolm. She would be in for a treat. Mal would probably take her to Paris or have someone bake her an extravagant cake. Those were the sort of things that he saw his brother and future sister-in-law doing. They would spoil each other rotten, he knew.

Reaching up, Dorian ran a hand through his hair. Maybe he could have that with Cami…if things changed. Though, he wasn’t sure that they would. Dorian didn’t know what was in store for the Wizarding World after all of this. And truth be told, he wasn’t sure that he cared much beyond his selfish interests. If things changed and Camille’s life became easier, then Dorian had no reason not to support the change. His family, of course, would feel differently.

As Nika called for Medici, he shook his head and leaned his arm onto the table. She had a point – he was very well behaved. As Medici came and sat exactly where Nika intended, he found himself remembering a time when the dog hadn’t been all too thrilled to see him close to his future sister-in-law.

Dorian wasn’t sure that mild-mannered would be the first words he would choose for Medici. Still, things had warmed up between the pair since he had first met him a little over a year ago. Dorian reasoned that the dog had felt his master threatened and – while he didn’t think that was the case – Medici probably had good reason for feeling the way that he did. He had been recently off a bender in Romania, a little strung out on whatever was left in his system, and irritable. He’d been an intruder to Medici – an unfamiliar face in Malcolm’s home. All in all, Dorian was surprised that he had made it through the whole ordeal with all of his fingers. But now, things seemed alright. As the Rottweiler sat patiently, eyeing the bag that Dorian held, he felt himself smile. “See, I’m not so big and bad now am I, Medici?”

He leaned down and then, on second thought, stood back up and extended his hand and the bag towards Nika. He knew better than to tempt fate. Dorian supposed it had been a win enough that Medici hadn’t decided to growl at him…and had yet to make any advances. Maybe the bone bag would do wonders for their friendship. “The brownie points are yours to rack up.” He said, taking the bone out and handing it to Nika so she could give it to the dog at her feet.

“Maybe one day we’ll be mates, right Medici?” He wasn’t scared, that would be ridiculous. But Dorian was smart enough to admit that the growl Dorian had elicited just a few months back was enough to make him wary of doing anything to upset the pup. As Dorian settled back into normalcy, he noticed the house was relatively quiet…which was strange, especially for here. “Where’s the rest of the army?” Perhaps they had all decided not to show up for dinner – perhaps it wouldn’t be much of a birthday party, at all.

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standing outside the fire

Life is not tried

it is merely survived

Feeding her family was something that Anička took very seriously. It was the one thing that she had learned to do, that wasn’t princessly. Spending time in the palace kitchens had gotten her away from her otec. It had taught her a skill that she was going to need to take care of her family. And this was her family. The Notts were going to be her family. She wanted to do her best by them. To take care of them. Anička enjoyed taking care of all of them, and she had set her sights on doing just that.

She hadn’t wanted to upstage anyone. If Talia had wanted to do something for Dorian’s birthday, Anička would have stepped aside in an instant, but she didn’t think that anything was going to happen. She didn’t think that they were going to make a big deal out of it, and so she had just invited everyone to dinner. They could pretend that it was Dorian’s birthday, or not. But she thought that this would be okay. She thought that she could do this, and that no one would mind. Making a big deal out of birthdays was important to her. She wanted them all to know that they were loved. And Dorian was no exception.

Chuckling a little bit, she shook her head, “My birthday is in January. We’ll have to find someone else for you to share with.” It wasn’t that she thought that he needed to share, but it seemed that he did. Perhaps this had all been too much. Perhaps she shouldn’t have insisted on doing anything at all, but she wanted Dorian to know that she cared. That she was going to stick by this family, nad this arrangement that they had all seemed to fall into over the years. She wasn’t going to get in the way, she wasn’t going to stop whatever it was that happened between him and his brother. All she wanted to do was help. To love, and care, and be a part of this family.

And they were just as much her family now as they were Malcolm’s. Perhaps they weren’t married yet, but she had a ring on her finger, and every intent to marry him. They already shared children. They were already a family in every way but legally. And she thought that that was the one that mattered the least in the grand scheme of things. With Malcolm, her entire world was different. With Malcolm, nothing felt forced. Nothing felt like it was going to overwhelm her and drag her down. She was safe there. She was safe here, in this family that had taken her in, without even asking too many questions.

Perhaps Lester had had some. Maybe he had voiced his own opinions to Malcolm. But she had never felt unwelcome. She had never felt like she was an outsider in their family, and she thought that she had liked Talia from the second that she had met her. Liking his mother had surprised her, but she was glad to be in that position. Shaking her head a little bit she smiled, “I don’t think he ever thought you were all that big and bad. The night we met had a lot more to do with me, than it did with you being a threat.” They didn’t talk about that night, and she doubted that they would now. But she had wanted that out there anyway. “I think he’ll come around to liking you.” Her smile turned teasing for a moment, “I did.”

There hadn’t really been a time when she didn’t like Dorian, but she did worry about him, and she wanted what was best for him. No matter what that was. There were always going to be things that families didn’t agree on, and she thought that she could get behind supporting him if he was looking to getter himself in some way. Offering Medici the bone that Dorian had brought for him, she rubbed behind his ear once he had taken it, and she looked up again when he asked where everyone else was. “Malcolm is upstairs with Pippa. The twins are asleep. Your mother is on her way, and my kids are coming as they all get off of work.” Temperance was the only one that she hadn’t talked to, and she had to wonder if she was coming at all.

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