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Jace should have known he was in trouble when Magnus walked into the Institute that morning with such a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
To her credit, Izzy was actually the one to notice it first. Magnus was there to help them locate a rare enchanted gem. ‘There are way too many of those,’ Jace thought. After being briefed on all the relevant information, Magnus started walking toward the Institute’s library with Clary to do more research. But before he could get halfway across the room, he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
“Slow your roll there, Mr. Bane,” Izzy said, now standing in the warlock’s way. Slowly, she dragged her fingers from his shoulder down his arm to reach his hand, and pulled it up to her face. It wasn’t until she started examining Magnus’ ring finger that Jace recognized the thin silver band adorned with various runes. He whipped his head around to stare at his parabatai, who was obviously fighting back a smile. “Is this what I think it is?” Izzy asked coyly.
“Oh my dear Isabelle, I’m sure you are already quite familiar with what this is. In fact, I believe you have seen it up close at least once before, am I correct?” Magnus asked, turning to Alec for the first time. Alec nodded and abandoned all attempts to hide his shit-eating grin.
Izzy let out a delighted laugh and threw her arms around Magnus, who returned her hug with enthusiasm, lifting her off the ground. Clary was beaming by the doorway, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and she rushed over to hug Magnus tightly when Izzy released him, muttering her congratulations into his neck.
Jace, for his part, was still gaping at his brother.
“Dude! What happened to asking over the Brooklyn Bridge next week?”
Alec shrugged at him. “Honestly, I’m flattered you had enough faith in me to believe I wouldn’t mess up the plan before it actually came time to do it.”
Magnus sent him an affectionate grin. “You didn’t mess anything up, darling. It was perfect. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Clary muffled an excited squeal under her hand.
Alec smiled back at him, before smirking at his brother and sister. “You guys need to work on your observational skills. Magnus was here for almost half an hour before either of you realized anything.”
Jace punched Alec in the shoulder in response, but Izzy just scoffed and waved her hand dismissively. “Enough of that nonsense, I want to hear about the proposal!” She turned back to Magnus and grabbed both of his forearms. “Tell me everything.”
After retelling the proposal story in detail to the group, making Alec blush several times and Jace gag even more, Magnus finally left to go to the library. Izzy followed him and Clary, intent on squeezing even more details out of him. Then the parabatai were left alone.
Jace turned to see Alec staring dazed at where the other three had run off, and he smiled in fond exasperation at his lovesick brother. “Hey Alec,” he said, making the man startle and turn to him. “I’m really happy for you, brother.”
Alec gave a small smile at the rare display of sincerity. “Thanks Jace,” and he pulled his brother in for a long hug.
Alec looked a little awkward once he pulled away. “Listen, Jace… I would hope that this should go without saying, but I’m going to ask anyway.” Jace furrowed his eyebrows in curiosity, but didn’t say anything to interrupt him.
“You’ll be my best man, right?”
‘Well, fuck.’
--
I mean, of course Jace said yes. He would have been offended if Alec had asked anyone else to do it. But Jace had a hard time expressing any emotions aside from sarcasm, arrogance, or flirtation. And this was a big deal. A really big deal. His parabatai was getting married. He had to make sure everything was perfect. Because he loved his brother, and even though Jace would be loath to admit it, he was endlessly appreciative of Magnus Bane for how happy he made Alec.
The only thing that really worried Jace was the speech. All of the other duties he was fine with. When it came to actually planning the ceremony, Jace knew that Magnus and Izzy would take care of the smaller details, and they wouldn’t expect — or want — him to give his opinion on any of it.
That just left finding him and Alec a suit and planning the bachelor party, both of which he was confident he could handle. Jace could rely on his charm and quick wit to get through any other speeches he had to make, but his speech at the wedding was a different beast entirely. He would need to be genuine and honest about his, ugh, feelings.
This was all too much for Jace to deal with at once, so he did what he thought was best — he procrastinated. He didn’t even think about the wedding until two weeks later, when Alec told him the ceremony was set to take place in two months.
“Two months?” Jace said, astonishment coloring his tone as he and Alec turned the corner of a dirty alleyway. “Are you sure that’s enough time to get everything ready?”
Alec smirked at him as he readied an arrow when a demon made its way out of the shadows. “Perks of having a warlock fiancé.”
When Jace returned to the Institute after their mission, he sat alone in his room for a long time and tried to quell his panic.
‘Well,’ he thought finally, ‘I’d better get started.’
--
The only help Izzy had been was when she suggested he base his speech on the one he gave Alec months ago to convince him that proposing to Magnus was a good idea in the first place. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember any more of that speech than he did, and he was left with just the scraps. Tiny one-liners that were good, but they weren’t nearly enough to make a best man’s wedding toast out of.
When Jace went to Izzy again, she was even less help.
“You could talk about the time Alec helped Magnus heal Luke using his ‘virgin shadowhunter energy,’” Izzy suggested with a giggle.
“That would be pretty embarrassing, but it might also be a bit too gory for a wedding reception.”
“What about the time when Magnus and Alec showed up at the Institute together, completely unaware that they were wearing each other’s clothes?”
“Mom and dad might kill me.”
“Ooh! You could talk about that time when Magnus had to save Alec from a spider that crawled into his shower!”
“Pretty sure Alec would shoot an arrow through my heart before I got through the first sentence of that story, Iz."
This went on and on until Raj knocked on Izzy’s door to call the both of them in for a meeting. Jace was so relieved he could have kissed the man.
--
“Come on babe! You’re good at this stuff!”
“What stuff?” Clary asked as they walked through the halls of the Institute together.
“Feelings stuff — talking about feelings. You always tell me I need to do it more often!”
“Yes, and you’re never going to get any better at it if I just tell you what to say, will you?”
Jace groaned as they walk through the doorway of her room. He dropped himself face first onto her bed. “I’m begging you Clary,” he said, his voice muffled into the pillows.
“What do you want me to say, Jace? Yes, I love Alec and Magnus, and I’m happy that they’re getting married, but I still don’t know either of them very well. Magnus rarely opens up to me about his past, and I’m still pretty sure Alec doesn’t like me.”
“He likes you,” Jace said, lifting his head off the pillow to cast a reassuring look at his girlfriend. “He’s just not good at showing it. Magnus is the only person he ever looks remotely soft around.”
Clary’s eyes lit up with inspiration. “Hold on,” she said. She rummaged through some of her dressers before she found her sketchpad and a pencil and began to scribble quickly. Jace was confused, but he was too excited at the prospect of making some progress on his speech to interrupt and ask what she was doing.
After about half an hour, Clary looked up at Jace and turned the sketchpad around to show him what was on the other side. It was a rough drawing of Alec and Magnus holding hands and smiling at one another. Jace looked at Clary in bewilderment.
“See that?” She said, pointing at their faces. “See how happy they are? How comfortable they are together? Write something about that."
Jace sighed in frustration. He didn’t want to tell Clary how unhelpful this was, because he could literally just watch the real Alec and Magnus gaze at each other like that whenever he wanted, so instead he just ripped the page out of the book and left the room without a word.
--
Simon sounded almost too enthused over the phone when Jace asked him for help on the speech. That should have been a warning sign, but by that point Jace was eager to meet with anyone who had an idea of what he should say.
He was hit with a wave of déjà vu as he sat with Simon at the bar of The Hunter’s Moon while Maia shot daggers at him. Simon was apparently oblivious to the familiarity of the scene as he bounced in his seat, so Jace just nodded at him to go ahead.
“Okay, picture this,” he said. “You start with an anecdote describing how Alec looked at Magnus when they first met — ”
“Start again.”
Simon looked devastated. “But that’s so classic!”
“No, it’s cheesy. And besides, Magnus called Alec prettier than me when they first met. I’m not rehashing that. Try again.”
Still a little disappointed, Simon appeared to shake it off before he took a crumpled up piece of notebook paper out of his back pocket. “Alright, well this is a list of great quotes from ‘The Graduate’ that you could — ”
“Nope,” Jace said, getting up from his seat and walking away.
“Where are you going?” Simon called after him.
“Home. I should have known this was a bad idea.”
--
The other werewolves at the Jade Wolf gave Jace dirty looks when he sat across from their alpha, but Luke waved them away.
“Ignore them. They don’t still accuse you of murdering Gretel, if that’s what you were worried about. They’re just wary of most shadowhunters these days.”
“Alec doesn’t seem to have trouble with them.”
“Alec is engaged to Magnus Bane, who has done a great deal to help our pack.”
“I’m Alec’s parabatai. Surely that means something?”
Luke shrugged. “That’s not the reason you called me today. What can I do for you, Jace?”
Jace sighed and ran a hand through his gold hair. “I have to write a speech for Alec and Magnus’ wedding as Alec’s best man, and I’m completely stuck. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Luke was silent for a long time. It almost made Jace uncomfortable, but he resisted the urge to speak up, knowing the werewolf was thinking of how to respond. Finally, Luke looked him straight in the eye and began to speak.
“When Jocelyn and I first fell in love it was taboo, as she was my parabatai’s wife. Even after she and Valentine had separated, our relationship was always frowned upon, because at that point I was a werewolf,” Luke said, a deep sorrow in his eyes as he talked about Jocelyn. It was hard for Jace to look at. “I know Alec and Magnus have faced similar challenges as a downworlder-shadowhunter pairing, in addition to being two men. I can only attest to how hard the first situation can be. I have great respect for both Alec and Magnus. Each of them had to be very brave and fight to stay with each other, and — ”
Luke suddenly stopped talking and perked up in his seat. Distantly, Jace could hear the faint sound of a howl. In a flash, Luke was up out of his seat and heading for the front door.
“Sorry Jace, got to go deal with pack business. Good luck on the speech!”
“Wait — ”
But Luke was already gone. Jace groaned and thumped his head on the table. He wasn’t really sure where Luke was going with that, but he had a sinking feeling that he had just lost his best chance at progress.
--
‘Why? Why are you doing this, Jace?'
Blowing out a frustrated breath, he rolled his eyes up to the dark sky covering Hotel Dumort. Jace braced himself, and then knocked once on the front door.
Conveniently, Raphael was the one to answer. Jace realized belatedly that it was probably because they were vampires and could sense who was on their property at all times. In all likelihood, they had probably all known Jace was standing out there for the last ten minutes, waiting for him to knock.
“What do you want,” Raphael said. He already looked done with their conversation.
“I need your help.”
Raphael raised one eyebrow. “Is it an emergency?”
“No, it’s for — ”
The door slammed shut in his face as an answer.
‘Alright. I should have expected that.’
--
“You want me to help you write your best man speech?”
“Yes.”
“For a wedding between the High Warlock of Brooklyn and my ex-fiancé?”
Jace looked at Lydia pleadingly. “Please? I’m totally lost here.” Lydia did not look impressed, and Jace huffed. “Come on, it’s not like you and Alec were ever in love.”
Lydia shrugged in concession. “Yeah, but I still don’t know him very well at this point. I can’t tell you what you should say to him.”
“But you two basically run this Institute together! You may not be best friends, but you must at least know him on a professional level.”
Either Lydia could see how desperate Jace was getting and decided to take pity on him, or he had just annoyed her enough to give in, but finally she sighed. “Alright, fine. All I can say is that Alec is one of the strongest, most honorable men I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, and he is obviously very much in love with Magnus. His feelings for him were obvious to me even way back when we were betrothed.”
Lydia watched as Jace furiously scribbled her words onto his notepad. “You’re actually going to use that?”
Jace shot her a look. “It’s the best stuff I’ve got so far. Believe me.”
--
Jace slumped against the walls of the Institute, sliding down until he was seated on the floor. One week. That was all that was left until the wedding, and he had made essentially zero progress on his speech.
He was trying to come up with a good enough excuse to give Alec as to why he wouldn’t be able to give a toast when a voice broke him out of his misery.
“Jace?”
Jace looked up to see Max at the end of the hallway, looking at him with confusion on his face.
“Hey buddy,” Jace smiled. “What are you doing here?”
“Mom brought me. Said she has some information from Idris for the Institute,” Max said as he made his way to sit across from his brother in the hall. “What are you doing sitting on the floor?”
“Trying to figure out what I’m going to do for Alec and Magnus’ wedding next week.”
Max chuckled at him. “Why are you so worried about that? Everything’s going to go great.”
“And how are you so sure?” Jace asked, his head tilted to the side in curiosity.
“Because Magnus and Alec were made for each other,” Max said, as if it was the surest thing in the world to him. He continued, “I’m really happy Alec met Magnus.”
“Me too,” Jace replied with a small smile.
“Alec did a good job of protecting all of us when we were younger. He still does,” Max said. “Everyone deserves to have someone in their life that will protect them no matter what, you know? And now Alec has Magnus to protect him.”
Jace stared at Max in astonishment. He always knew his little brother was much wiser than his age, but he had outdone himself this time. Slowly, all the pieces in his head started falling into place.
Max went on, completely oblivious to his brother’s epiphany. “So don’t worry, Jace. With couples as good as Alec and Magnus, everything is bound to work out.”
Jace smiled at Max. “Thanks bud,” he leaned forward to give Max a fist bump. “You’ve just helped me out a lot."
--
As Max predicted, the wedding went without a single hiccup. There was a brief tense moment when Maryse and Robert arrived, but neither of them caused any trouble. In fact, Jace would go so far as to say that Maryse never even looked displeased, and if that was enough for Alec and Magnus, it was enough for him.
The scene was beautiful. Magnus and Izzy worked well together, forming a venue that was both modest, yet elegant. The ceremony itself was also very moving — the vows Alec and Magnus made to each other were sincere.
Jace absolutely did not cry, thank you very much Izzy.
It wasn’t until later, at the reception, that Jace started getting nervous. Alec and Magnus were too lost in each other to notice him fidgeting, but Izzy kept casting him worried glances every once in a while.
“You okay, bro? Your speech ready to go?” Izzy asked.
Jace nodded and pat his jacket pocket where his notecards were stashed. “Yeah, I think so. Max was a lot of help.”
Jace and Izzy smiled at where their youngest brother was now talking to Magnus, who squatted down to converse at the boy’s level.
“I take it that means we will not be treated to the spider story tonight?” Izzy asked.
Jace gave her a deadpan look and shook his head in response. Izzy took a second to pretend to be disappointed before she smiled and dragged her brother onto the ballroom floor for a dance.
Eventually, it was time for the toasts, and Jace knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. It was do or die. He took a deep breath, gripped the stem of his champagne flute, and stood up to clink his fork against the glass, silencing the crowd.
“Um, hello,” he said, and he held back a cringe at his own awkwardness. “I’m not really sure how to start these things. So I will just say that Alec is the best older brother anyone could ever ask for.”
Many clapped and hollered in agreement at this declaration. Magnus smiled at Alec, who was blushing up to his ears. Jace looked down at Clary next to him, and she nodded in encouragement.
“He’s always done everything in his power to protect his siblings, even if it was infuriating to the rest of us sometimes. I used to give him so much crap for how restrictive he was, but now I know that he only meant to keep us safe.”
Jace looked down at his cards, one of his hands shaking slightly. He dropped that hand to his side and took a deep breath before continuing. “I love my brother. So, when I figured out that he was gay, I was really scared. Not because it upset me, but because I knew what it would mean if everyone else found out, and I didn’t know how I could help him.”
From the table next to him, Jace heard Alec gasp and he turned to see his brother gaping at him, Magnus gripping one of his hands tightly. Jace turned back to the silent crowd. “Alec will always sacrifice himself if it is to help someone he loves. I realized pretty quickly that my brother was not planning to be open about his sexuality. And while that might have made things easier for our family, it didn’t make me feel any better, because I knew it meant that Alec couldn’t ever be himself. He could never be truly happy. Alec was willing to hide who he was, repress all of his feelings, to make life better for me and my siblings. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do it, that it would be okay for him to be himself, but I didn’t know how. And then…”
Jace paused and looked up from his cards to share a long look with Magnus. Magnus held his gaze, giving him his undivided attention, as did everyone else in the room. “And then Magnus Bane came into the picture,” Jace said, still maintaining eye contact with the warlock. Finally, he glanced back down at his cards. “Magnus was the picture of eccentricity and confidence. He and Alec instantly had a connection. Everyone who saw them together knew it. Despite their differences, they just made sense. Magnus made Alec recognize the parts of himself that he had kept buried deep for so long. Even though he resisted at first, Alec knew that whatever it was he had with Magnus was worth any risk. And then Magnus got Alec to do something I had never seen my brother do before — he convinced Alec to put himself first for once.”
Jace tried to swallow past the lump that had formed in his throat. He felt Clary take the hand that was still shaking at his side. “It hasn’t been easy for them since they got together, and it probably won’t get any easier after today. But I’m not scared for Alec anymore, because he has Magnus in his life. Magnus,” he addressed the warlock directly, putting down his cards to stare at his brother’s husband again. Magnus met his gaze, and an unspoken understanding passed between them. “Thank you for loving my brother. Thank you for making him happy. Thank you for protecting him in ways no one else can.” With that, Jace raised his glass of champagne and said, “To Alec and Magnus.”
The crowd repeated his words and took sips from their glasses, some stopping to applaud Jace. He sat down heavily in his chair, and Clary leaned forward to kiss his cheek.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered in his ear. He smiled back at her.
Alec didn’t say anything to him when he came over after the speech. Instead, he just pulled him in for a long, tight hug, but it said more than a hundred words of gratitude ever could.
And when Magnus hugged him the same way once Jace separated from Alec, it was more than enough for him to know that he had done his job.