#it has been AGES since I wrote for the monster haus au

[dexondefense]

I am not sure if this can be done in 500 words BUT..would love a Zimbits where Bitty meets Bob and Alicia

I have owed you this for almost six months so I just sat down and did it all in one go and there are 5000x mistakes but here we go. I love Alicia.

For the Monster Haus AU, featuring JötunnJack and Bob, Witch Bitty, and Demi-goddess Alicia.

“You’ve met them like, at least ten times Bittle.”

Bitty resisted the urge to roll his eyes the entire way back into his skull. This was not the first time this exact argument had been had over the past week, and as neither side seemed ready to concede or accept any credibility in the other’s argument, it was highly possible it would be had again before they reached their destination.

“Yes, Jack, but not as your boyfriend,” Bitty explained for at least the fifth time. “And not at your house. Like, your actual house that you grew up in.” Bitty frowned, doing his best not to play with the edges of the Saran wrap covering the top of his latest masterpiece. At least, it had better be a masterpiece. He had been working for days on his newest recipe of chilled pie. It was a chocolate and pecan cheesecake, with just a hint -or possibly a full cup- of acceptance and positive charm added in.

Bitty was certain it was not enough.

From the diver’s side Jack huffed a small laugh, the window fogging for just a moment as his cold breath passed over the glass. “You’ll be fine, Bittle. They already love you.”

Bitty heaved out a breath, preparing for another volley of arguments but Jack reached over the console to grip his hand and for just a moment he forgot what he was going to say.

The fact that Jack had taken his hand was only part of the reason. A very small part of the reason, actually.

“Mother of God.”

Bitty had known Jack lived in a mansion up in the woods of Quebec. He had known that. He had also known, through multiple stories of Jack’s childhood home, that just as much of the structure was made of ice as it was of wood, but accepting the reality of an ice castle existing anywhere, much less a place where he would one day come across it, was much different in person than in theory.

“Well, my mother’s mother was a god, so…grandson of a god, really?” Jack teased with a half smile, his dark eyes bright as they pulled up the driveway.

It was hard to look at, Bitty decided quickly. The sun was bright on the ice, reflecting the world back at him, wonky and distorted. It looked like a sprawling woodland manor that was slowly being infected with a plague of ice for the past few decades. Perhaps infected was a harsh word, it didn’t seem the house minded the encroaching cold very much.

Jack heaved their bags on his shoulder as Bitty closed the passenger side door behind him, eyes locked on the impossible structure rising up before him. It was a lot of take in, from the high wooden logs that made a fortress of the front, to the icy spirals that rose up above what may have once been a roof to continue in their own design of ostentatious towers, like icicles flipped upside down. On one side of the house, the woods continued on in a never ending line, the trees enormous and snow dusted, and something deep in Bitty’s gut told him they were not safe to travel alone. The other side of the property opened up into sprawling field of snow. Bitty could just make out two creatures that looked like horses with far too many legs pawing at a frozen lake before a movement on the porch drew his attention away.

Standing between two columns made of sheer ice stood Bob and Alicia Zimmermann. The door behind them was enormous, far taller than necessary even for a frost giant, with elaborate sigils carved into the old wood. It looked like the entrance to Valhalla itself, with two gods waiting to take him home.

The jarring fact that he had referred to Vallhalla as home in his head almost overshadowed his nervousness at re-meeting his boyfriend’s parents. Examining his religious priorities would have to wait.

“Hello!” Bitty greeted, lifting the pie in his hands in a vague gesture of offering as he grinned up at the Zimmermanns, trying not to let his nerves eat him from the inside out. He had baked muffins of pure confidence that morning, and he could feel the spells fighting a battle with his anxiety in his gut. Or maybe that was the bananas. He really hoped it was the confidence. 

“Hello, Eric!” Alicia grinned. Her smile was wide and white, and the sweater she wore looked old and comfortable. So much about her reminded Bitty of his own mother, though he thought both women would be flustered to be told so. Despite the imposing fortress behind her, everything about Alicia was warm and inviting.

Except her eyes.

“Don’t look her directly in the eyes,” Lardo had told him over a year ago, when the Zimmermann’s had come to visit. “I’m not kidding man, don’t do it. Try to look at the lines instead.”

He had truly believed she had been joking, until he had met Alicia. She had all the appearances of a human woman, except the impenetrable blackness that rested where her eyes were supposed to be. They were outlined by jagged black lines that extended out across her eyebrows and down her cheekbones, like aftershocks on her face from whatever had happened to her sockets. Jack had told him she was born like that, but Bitty wasn’t sure he could believe that. He also wasn’t sure that if he actually did stare at her eyes, that he wouldn’t come out a different person for having looked too long.

It had been a while since Alicia’s eyes or Bob Zimmermann’s incredible height or pale blue skin had unnerved Bitty, but it was hard not to see everything in a very new and suddenly threatening light as he hoped very hard they liked him. Or still liked him, whatever the standing may be.

All of this took only a second to contemplate before Alicia was engulfing him in her arms in a tight and familiar hug. He had been right, he sweater was very soft against his face.

“We are so happy you two could finally make it up here for a weekend.”

“Yeah, we were beginning to think you two were going to elope without us ever having dinner together!” Bob teased, taking the steps in two easy strides to stand behind his wife. Jack made some noise of protest at the jest, but it was lost as Alicia overtook Bitty’s attention again.

“Oh, and what is this?” Alicia removed herself from Bitty, looking -or at least Bitty assumed she was looking- to the pie Bitty had carefully protected during the embrace.

“Bittle made you both a pie,” Jack told her before Bitty could speak. His hand was heavy and comforting on Bitty’s shoulder.

Alicia grinned, the heavy cracks around her eyes crinkling, like she hadn’t all ready known Bitty would bring a pie. Everyone knew Bitty would bring a pie to any situation, but her elation made Bitty feel like a weight had been taken off of his chest.

“It’s a chilled dark chocolate and pecan, Jack told me how much you love dark chocolate and I know Jack loves pecans and can’t handle anything too hot, and I thought Bob-uh, Mr. Bob, I mean, Mr. Zimmermann-”

When Bob Zimmermann laughed, it sounded like an avalanche. “Bob is fine,” he told Bitty, before leaning in conspiratorially. If Bitty hadn’t remembered to triple his warming spells, he thought he might have lost part of his face to frostbite at the proximity. “Mr. Bob is my father.”

And just like that, Bitty and Bob were laughing as Alicia and Jack groaned, all awkwardness dissipating. Bob clapped him on the shoulder and steered him inside and Alicia took the pie from his hands as she demanded to hear every detail of their trip.

The inside of the house was no less unusual than the outside, with slippery staircases that seemed to go no where, ornate armchairs that didn’t look like they were actually made for sitting, and the gigantic head of a moose with six eyes and branches for antlers mounted on the mantle above a roaring fireplace with scenes of battle playing out in the smoke.

Except Jack had told Bitty all about his childhood home. About playing hide and seek with his mother in the icy rooms that closed themselves off from time to time at the tops of the icy stairs. About curling up in those regal looking chairs to read any history book he could get his hands on. About racing those creatures outside with too many legs until he felt like he couldn’t feel his own.

All of those memories, those late night confessions and offhanded comments of Jack’s raced through Bitty’s mind as they retired to the living room after dinner. Alicia sat on a couch big enough for ten people, her bare feet curled under her and her black eyes reflecting the dancing firelight as she laughed at Bob’s antics. He was retelling old hockey stories, and as he spoke the warriors that battled in the smoke turned themselves into hockey players, skating above the fire on imaginary ice in a brutally close game. The moose head above the mantle twitched an ear, stretching its long neck down to mouth quietly at the animal cracker offering in Bitty’s hand.

Jack’s laugh rumbled in his chest, the warmth of his boyfriend pressed up against him cutting through any cold the mansion had to offer. Bitty wasn’t sure if Jack was laughing at his father’s story, or at Bitty’s awkward interaction with the living moose head, but he didn’t really think it mattered when he met Jack’s eye. It especially didn’t matter when Jack pressed a cold kiss to his cheek, and though Bob and Alicia both saw, neither said a word about it, but their smiles looked just a tiniest bit bigger.

Bitty decided then and there, pressed against his boyfriend as Bad Bob Zimmermann retold stories of hockey days with men made of smoke, with Alicia teasing him, and a sentient mounted moose head pushing against his hand for more treats, that if this was what Valhalla was like, where everything was strange and surreal, but everything was bright and full of love, than maybe it was better than Heaven anyway.

#monster haus au #check please fic #check please au #monster haus #kleoette #it has been AGES since I wrote for the monster haus au #I missed it #it's so weird #my writing