Chapter Text
This year would be the last, Edward swore it. He’d sworn it every year for the last few years, but this year, he really meant it. As he walked through the warehouse where he stored the containers of banners and signs and costumes and the huge wooden facades and set pieces, he pictured all of it gone, and himself finally free. This year would be the last for Blackbeard’s Faire.
The faire had had a good run — six years, not bad for a little pirate-themed ren faire — and so had Edward — a little over two decades in the faire circuit, not bad for a middle-aged stuntman with a bad knee. And nothing had happened that meant either absolutely had to stop. The faire was doing well, getting more attendees and growing more profitable with every season. And Edward was getting older, but no less capable of performing the same sword fighting routines he’d been doing for years since toning things down some after his injury. He wasn’t in any more pain than he’d grown accustomed to, and in fact he was probably more on top of his health than he’d been in his dumber, younger days. He regularly worked out, he ate a vegetable at least once a day, and he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d partaken in any substance stronger than alcohol. Even then, he rarely drank. The consequences simply weren’t worth it these days.
But in spite of everything going quite well, actually, for once, for the most part, Edward was… tired. Perhaps not so much physically, but mentally and emotionally and in every other way one could be completely exhausted.
So that was that. This season would be Blackbeard’s final run, both for the performer and for the faire he’d named after himself, he decided. He’d break the news to his crew that afternoon at their staff meeting.
“You don’t mean that, boss. You say this every year,” Fang gently reminded Edward. No one knew Edward better than Fang, who had worked with him the longest and was the most sensitive and sincere member of his crew.
“Yeah, well, I mean it this year.” Edward didn’t sound very convincing, not to Fang and not to anyone.
“Does Izzy -?”
“No,” Edward cut Fang off before he could finish the question. “Not yet. I’ll talk to him personally, just… not today. Who knows how he’s gonna take it. Hell, maybe I’ll give the faire to him, let him run it. He’s been champing at the bit for that.”
The members of Edward’s crew that were present, Fang, Ivan, and Archie, shared a look as they considered the prospect of working under Edward’s anal-retentive right hand man, Israel Hands.
“...Or we could consider some alternatives?” Ivan spoke up. “Like you maybe not being the entertainment director for three other fairs and trying to run your own faire at the same time? Where is Izzy, anyway?”
Edward gazed into the middle distance, arms crossed, as he leaned against the stack of containers he’d dragged from the warehouse into the rehearsal-slash-meeting space. Ivan’s suggestion had touched a nerve. “Told him the meeting starts an hour later than I told you guys, meaning he’ll be here in, what, fifteen minutes, I reckon. And I’m gonna quit those other jobs too after the next season. I’m done with all of it. Packin’ it all in.” He spoke like he wasn’t bothered, especially that last sentence, which came out with no feeling whatsoever.
But Fang, after knowing Edward longer than anyone else, understood what was below the surface of Edward’s apparent lack of emotion: an entire raging sea of them. A storm. A hurricane. He’d known Edward long enough to hear him say he was thinking about packin’ it all in before, and not in the context of him merely considering quitting all of his jobs. Fang didn’t think it was that dire now, but it was still pretty heartbreaking to see him like this.
“Boss…” Fang was at a loss of words. His urge to help was at odds with his instinct to proceed with caution. This was his beloved friend Edward, but also his formidable boss Blackbeard, after all. “Remember what we talked about before, about not making decisions when you’re upset?”
“Not upset,” Edward spat out quickly with a sharp shrug of his shoulders.
“You sure? You seem upset.” As soon as Archie spoke — blunt and to the point, like always — Edward fixed his gaze on her. She didn’t shrink at all, but Fang did just a little.
“I do? I probably do.” Edward nodded. “I probably seem upset. Because I am. Because all of this, this ren faire shit?” He gesticulated vaguely.” It’s so fucking boring!” he shouted, not at Archie in particular, but just to get his rage out at the world in general. “It used to be fun! And it’s just… it’s not any fucking fun anymore.”
“Nooo, Blackbeard’s Faire is fun! Our show is fun. I mean, I think it’s fun,” Archie said with a grin. The newest member of Edward’s crew, she was also the least fazed when he had an outburst. “You think it’s fun, right?” She glanced at Ivan and Fang, who backed her up by nodding their heads and humming in the affirmative.
“Yeah? Glad you all do. No one else seems to give a fuck. You ever notice that the audience isn’t paying attention most of the time? They’re all on their goddamn phones. Or they’re giving you a dull stare because they don’t seem to realize there’s sword fighting happening with real metal swords right in front of their faces, in real life, not on a screen. People used to scream, cheer, go fucking mental! Now they just want wenches with their tits out, bagpipes played badly by hot men dressed like vikings, and enough booze to make the bagpipes sound decent. Things change, I guess. Young people want different things now, and I’m only getting older. Too old for this shit,” Edward sighed, and silence followed. It was hard to argue against most of what he said. Times had changed, as time tended to ever so cruelly do. “But hey, there’s a bright side,” he finally spoke up, sounding overly cheerful in an artificial sort of way. “We don’t have to butt heads with the Shakespeare in the Park bullshit anymore. Ned’ll love that. Bastard will finally get what he wants.”
For the first year of Blackbeard’s Faire, Ned Low and Shakespeare in the Park hadn’t been a problem. Shakespeare in the Park wasn’t a thing yet, and Edward was still on good terms with Ned. Ned was a part of the original crew, in fact. Then that first year ended, and prep for the next one began, and Ned had… opinions. He was a talented man, the best violinist Edward had ever hired, and his opinions weren’t exactly wrong: “You know what the faire is missing? Elegance. Culture.”
“Elegance?” Edward scoffed. “We’re pirates, mate. It’s not fuckin’ Shakespeare.”
So what did Ned Low go off and do? Propose his brilliant idea to the town council and start up Shakespeare in the Park. And the performance dates? The same as Blackbeard’s Faire’s run, of course. The location? On the other side of town, as far from the faire as possible, because where the fuck else would it be?
To be fair, one could attend both, since the faire was during the day and the play was at night. The issue was that the talent pool of actors willing to perform at a ren faire and actors eager to do Shakespeare formed a Venn diagram that looked so perfectly spherical, and of the two options, Shakespeare was more impressive to put on an acting resume. More elegant. More cultured. With the events being held on opposite ends of town with the same performance days, not to mention overlapping rehearsals leading up to the run, it was hard for any actor to manage both. So Blackbeard’s Faire was pretty short on local actors to entertain in the lanes. It was pretty much just Edward and his crew.
“So about that-!”
“Archie, shh -”
“We’re gonna have to tell him, Ivan.” Fang put a hand on Ivan’s shoulder.
“Tell me what?” Edward smiled, a somewhat tense and unnerving smile, his eyes too wide and too bright.
With that gaze fixed on him, Fang swallowed hard before he spoke. “Well… Ned’s not running Shakespeare in the Park anymore. He got booted out.”
Edward audibly exhaled at the news. Once he had a second to process, he asked, “Booted out? But he started it, it was his thing.”
To which Archie explained, “Mutiny.”
“Mutiny,” Edward echoed, savoring the word and the thought. Ned Low got what he had coming. “So, no more Shakespeare in the Park? Blackbeard’s can go out with a bang, then. We can hold another audition, see if we can get more locals to add to the cast.”
“...Not quite.” It was Ivan’s turn to be brave. “What I mean is… There’s just no Ned. Shakespeare in the Park is still happening. The show’s still being cast -”
“And we’re in it!” Archie shared this news with great delight. Edward received it with much less delight.
“Mutiny,” Edward uttered, sounding not quite angry, but rather wounded. Betrayed. “How could you?”
“Well, my partner roped me into it,” Archie was, again, quite calm and lighthearted as she explained herself, “Because their partner got roped into it by his partner.” Edward followed, familiar with Archie’s polycule situation. “Not enough people showed up to the audition, I guess, so they have more parts to fill… so… I recruited these guys, too!”
Edward stood there for a moment quietly regarding his mutinous crew. “All of you? Really? And what about Blackbeard’s Faire? How can you commit to both?”
“Oh, the new director’s really understanding. A real sweetie, too. A gentleman, Edward.” The look Fang gave Edward. Edward knew that look. The he’s your type look. “He understands the situation we’re in, being cast in both shows. He’s working around our schedules for rehearsals, and he pushed the show times back an hour so we have time to make it across town after faire days.”
“Oh. How nice of him.” Edward had to admit, it was genuinely thoughtful. “Wonder if he’d reconsider rescheduling the show’s run to after faire season...” he thought out loud.
“It’s worth asking,” Ivan said with a small shrug.
And that’s what Edward decided to try and do.
The next evening, Edward showed up at the community center where the rehearsals were being held, about half an hour before Fang said the actors started showing up. In addition to that, Fang told Edward a few other things, details about this gentleman of a director — a professor, actually. He described a man around Edward’s age, blond, always well-dressed though with a somewhat unconventional taste in fashion, perhaps not the most organized to be a director, and definitely a bit quirky, but also unusually kind. The whole time, Fang had that same look he had before, with a gentle but knowing smile. He’s your type.
Edward ignored it. Or at least, he tried. The last time he’d allowed himself to believe someone was actually his type, it had only led him down a path to heartache — and sometimes a bit of self-destruction, as a treat. It wasn’t just the last time. It was pretty much every time he gave his heart away. So he insisted he was done trying. And Fang insisted, ever so subtly, that he not give up on love.
With none of that on his mind, fully focused on the goal of convincing the new director — Stede Bonnet was his name, according to Fang — to push back the run of Shakespeare in the Park, Edward walked into the community center and headed for the room Fang said they met in to rehearse.
There was a sign taped to the wall, printed in bold black ink on regular copy paper:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Rehearsals
and another piece of paper taped next to it:
And auditions! Many roles open! Please come right on in! :)
So Edward stepped inside.
There was no eccentrically well-dressed blond gentleman to be seen. There was no one in the room at all, just several metal folding chairs that looked like they were in the process of being arranged. He looked at his watch. Maybe a half hour early was too early. Maybe that was Izzy’s habits rubbing off on him, and he cringed at the thought. Maybe he ought to wait outside the room, or have a seat, or —
The silence was broken by the sudden, loud crashing of many large, metal somethings somewhere down the hall, and some shouting and cursing. Edward didn’t hesitate to dart out of the meeting room and towards the sound, towards an open door, and he peeked inside. It was clearly a storage room, with hand-labeled boxes piled up nearly to the ceiling on either side, a collection of yoga mats, folding tables, cleaning supplies, and most notably, a few stacks of metal folding chairs, or what had previously been stacks. Now it was just a pile of chairs, and beneath that haphazard pile, a man. Blond. Well-dressed, in a light aqua shirt — silk, Edward guessed — with a pattern embroidered in gold, and dark teal corduroy slacks.
“The gentleman director, I presume,” Edward murmured.
“You’ve heard of me?” Spoke a muffled voice from under the mess of metal chairs.
“Oh yeah. I’ve heard all about you.”