#i think jace's relationship with his parents would be more strained post-shatterstar

[t4tozier]

consider: porter meets jace's family. would it be a mess or would porter flex the "paladin IS a charisma caster" so much that jace is like WHO are you

ohhh my god. those three levels of paladin are really pulling the weight here. okay okay this is my first time posting about jace's family in like. a relatively canon au so now i have to decide things.

ik i'm in the minority here but i feel like he actually has a pretty normal family? (normal being subjective of course) but i think he has a high elven mother, human or maybe half-elf father. i was pretty dead set on divine soul jace for a minute at the beginning but now i'm partial to wild magic sorcerer so i think he maybe got that from one of his parents and the other is a ranger. maybe elven ranger mom and wild magic sorcerer dad.

he's definitely an only child to me, so his parents were pretty doting, and it's a huge deal whenever he starts seeing anyone because they want to make sure the person is treating their baby right. when jace is in his 20s, he has a pattern of bringing people home to meet his parents and then, anywhere from a week to a year later, coming to them crying about how it didn't work out or he got tired of them or they got tired of him. and then there's a long stretch of time where they don't hear anything about jace's prospective partners.

so then, when he finally brings porter up to them, they're like. oh?? our boy has finally (maybe) settled down?? and he's like. you Cannot embarrass me okay. i Mean It. and they're like. well. we're going to embarrass you we're your parents.

and porter doesn't really know how to feel. he's met some partners' parents in the past, but not many, and most of them turned their noses up when they found out he was a goliath or a barbarian. so he's kind of on edge actually. and jace simultaneously is trying to comfort him being like no it's fine they're nice i swear and freaking out because he's like i haven't brought anyone home in over a decade they know this is a Big Thing i really need this to go well for everyone involved.

but it actually ends up being...okay?? they set up in the backyard so porter doesn't have to awkwardly make himself fit into their (modest, but not exceedingly large) house, and he brings them a nice bottle of wine that zara recommended and flowers and he is charming, so much so that it does throw jace a little, but it's not even that he's turning it up for jace's parents--he just genuinely is that charismatic when he's not being a dick. and he knows jace wants this to go well--and so does he, okay, he has feelings, too, sue him--so he does his best to be nice. but it's not even that hard, in the end; he bonds with jace's mom over her explorations into the mountains of chaos and only slightly humiliates jace with stories of his surges that his parents then proceed to top with talking about his surges during puberty.

as jace is saying goodbye to his parents that night, they both give him little thumbs up and are like you picked a good one. and jace flushes and goes off to the car as porter comes out of the bathroom, and jace's dad is like so. cliffbreaker. i expect to see a ring on that finger next time you two visit. and porter chuckles a little and nods and says, i'll do my best, sir, and heads out to the car where jace is wine-loose and smiley, and he reaches over to pull porter in for a kiss as he gets in the car and murmurs i love you against his lips and porter grins and kisses him harder before pulling out of the driveway so that he can show jace just how much he means it when he says i love you, too.