Chapter Text
“And you’re absolutely certain you want to do this?” Frenchie asks, straightening Stede’s collar. “Not the marrying Captain Edward thing. I know you want to do that. But you realise Izzy is probably going to stab you, right? Roach is running a book on it.”
“What are the odds on me surviving until the wedding breakfast?”
“Twelve to one, last I heard.”
Stede grins. “I’ve definitely survived worse odds than that in the past. Do you think there’s time for me to put some money down?”
“Well, you’re getting married in-“ Frenchie checks the mantle clock Izzy had looted from a Spanish sloop in the entirely misguided hope it would encourage Stede and Ed to spend less time making love “-three minutes. So maybe.”
“Capital!” Stede opens the desk drawer where they keep the petty cash, and after a moment’s thought, takes out two half crowns. He’ll replace them later, out of his winnings. “Here you go.”
“And am I putting them on you surviving or dying, Captain?”
“Surviving please, Mr French.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“And Frenchie?”
“Aye, Captain?”
“If Izzy finds out you’ve been gambling, he’ll suspend you from the crow’s nest by your thumbs and leave you to bake.”
Frenchie goes rather pale, but he just nods and says, “Aye, Captain,” again, and leaves.
He probably shouldn’t have done that, Stede reflects, given he has inside knowledge, but Roach losing £3 on the bet seems to him a much better deterrent to gambling on board than anything Izzy might come up with.
Still, he makes a mental note not to tell Ed about it until he’s given Roach some time to stew, just in case.
There’s a knock at the door, and Olu’s voice calls, “Ready, Captain?”
Stede gives himself one last look over in the glass to make sure everything’s lying just so and nods to himself. He’s chosen an outfit all in white, in part because that was how he began the journey that brought him here, and in part because Izzy has refused to wear anything that isn’t black, and the contrast appeals to his sense of the dramatic.
It’s possible that Izzy is rubbing off on him. Just a little.
“Ready, Mr Bukhari.”
The crew had carried the chairs up from the dining room and set them up on the deck, a space between them to form the aisle.
Stede has one very clear memory of the first time he was married, of standing in front of the gathered guests waiting for Mary to arrive, feeling horribly conspicuous and very, very alone.
Today, he opens the cabin door, and there’s Ed waiting for him, as resplendent and colourful as any peacock in the fine frock coat he had had made especially for the occasion, with ribbons braided into his beard, smiling at him exactly like Stede is the person he has decided to spend the rest of his life with.
The crew rise as Ed slips his arm through Stede’s, and Frenchie begins playing. (Stede had suggested Love Divine, or the Prince of Denmark’s March, but Ed staunchly refused to have any hymns, even instrumental ones, and Frenchie had never heard of the march. Not having music at all seemed rather grim, so in the end they’d settled in a hornpipe, which is at least fittingly nautical).
At the other end of the deck, Izzy is waiting under the white sun canopy that had been the closest thing to a chuppah Stede could come up with without giving the whole game away. (Ed had had to get Izzy spectacularly drunk before he’d tell them anything about how a Jewish wedding goes, and he wouldn’t talk about it at all with Stede there, so he’s had to do his best based on what Ed had relayed to him the next morning. It’s possible some of it got rather garbled, as Ed was also fairly spectacularly drunk, but Stede has done his best).
Izzy had grudgingly allowed Stede to pick out a new shirt for him, but since he insisted on it being black with “none of that frilly bullshit”, the only thing noticeably different about his appearance is a simple black yarmulke, and the fact that he’s polished his cane to a mirror shine. (On a less solemn occasion, Stede would have a joke to make about that...)
Lucius had been much more enthusiastic about the prospect of new clothes, and will be conducting the ceremony in a new green suit with a cream shirt and cravat, although the secrecy over Izzy’s involvement means that there isn’t very much in the way of conducting to be done.
He’d expected to be nervous, but as he and Ed walk down the aisle, there’s nothing in his heart except a fierce defiant joy. This, this moment, is everything he became a pirate for. This is the freedom he’d been seeking, the love and companionship he hadn’t known he’d been missing.
Stede had been rather worried the vows he’d written were rather over the top, but Izzy had grudgingly agreed to let Stede use him as a test audience, since it was relevant to Ed’s happiness, and had reassured him that they were “disgusting. Ed’ll love them.”
Sure enough, there are tears in Ed’s eye when Stede is done, and Stede’s feeling rather like crying himself.
Ed opts for something rather simpler, but no less heartfelt, his voice rough with emotion as he vows to follow Stede to the ends of the Earth, to fight by his side against all enemies, and to love him until his dying breath.
“The rings, Mr Hands?” Lucius asks.
Stede tries to be discreet about turning to watch the crew’s faces when Ed says, “not quite yet, Mr Spriggs,” and takes Izzy’s hand.
The Swede screams, and Roach says something in a language that Stede doesn’t need to understand to know is composed entirely of curses, and Lucius says, “oh hell yes,” and laughing at one’s wedding isn’t exactly the done thing, but he’s just so delighted he can’t help it.
Stede had been expecting Izzy’s vows to be something strange and violent and, well, idiosyncratic, but he should have known not to underestimate him. Instead, they’re simple, and beautiful, and achingly sincere, as he vows, “Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and where you die, there will I be buried.”
“Stede helped me come up with a whole lot of vows,” Ed says, and pauses for a moment, clearly enjoying Izzy’s look of horror, before continuing, “but there’s only one that actually matters. I vow to keep you, Israel Hands, now and forever,” and Stede feels like his heart is going to explode from love and joy and pride at having had a hand in putting that expression of adoration on Izzy’s face.
Having a ring bearer would have upset the dramatic moment, rather, so they’re all carrying their own. Ed’s hands are shaking, very slightly, as he slides the ring onto Stede’s fingers, and even more when he holds out his hand for Stede to do the same.
The ring Izzy had chosen for Ed is just as simple as the engagement ring had been, a slender gold band, but Stede had been permitted to see it when Izzy collected it, and knows that there is an engraving in Hebrew on the inside, where no-one but Ed will ever see it.
When Ed pulls Izzy’s ring from the pocket of his waistcoat, Stede thinks at first it’s a sapphire, to match Stede’s own, and then the sun catches it and it blazes with scarlet fire, burning nearly as brightly as Izzy himself as Ed places it on his finger.
“By the power vested in me by, er, well, Blackbeard, I guess, I now declare you husband and husband, and husband and husband,” Lucius says, and pulls out the cloth-wrapped bundle Stede had given him to keep safe. “You want this now, right, Captain?”
It may not be the exact glass that Ed had been worried Izzy was going to stab someone with, because Stede hadn’t known at the time that he wanted to keep track of which one it was, but it’s one of the same set. The cloth it’s wrapped in isn’t that little piece of scarlet silk Ed had kept so long, but like the glass, it’s as close as Stede could get.
Ed kisses Stede, sweet and tender, and Stede thinks “this is my husband” and almost starts crying again.
He doesn’t kiss Izzy, just pulls him in so that their foreheads are pressed together, sharing a breath, a moment of stillness only interrupted by Wee John’s loud sobbing from the front row.
Stede sets the glass on the deck, and Ed takes Stede’s hand with his left, and Izzy’s with his right, and stamps on the glass so hard Izzy has to duck to avoid being hit by a flying shard that escapes the cloth.
“Are we smashing stuff?” Black Pete asks. “Hell yeah!” and before Stede can stop him, he picks up his chair and smashes it into the deck.
“I love weddings!” the Swede yells and kicks the chair out from under Ivan.
“Oh dear,” Stede says, watching the crew enthusiastically destroy their seats, “I’m not sure how the hora is going to work now.”
Izzy shoots him a sharp look, and says, “should’a known it was you who’d planned all this.” His gesture takes in the improvised chuppah and the broken glass, as well as the general scrimmage on deck.
“I know it’s not quite, well, not quite how it’s supposed to work, and I know you didn’t really want a ceremony at all, but I didn’t want it to just be the bits that mattered to me and Ed. This is your wedding as well.”
The smile on Izzy’s face is small, grudging, and, Stede thinks, completely genuine.
It still makes his balls creep, but he appreciates the effort.
“Does this mean you’re not going to put the broken glass in my dinner?”
“Not today.”
“And tomorrow?”
Izzy just grins, and Stede laughs, and Ed wraps one arm around each of them, and says, “reckon we’ll make enough off Roach’s book to buy new chairs?”
“You knew about that?!”
“‘Course I did. I’m Blackbeard. I’m making Iz wait till we’ve collected our winnings afore he puts the fear of God into him.”
“You do both realise we’re pirates, right?” Izzy asks. “We can just steal new chairs.”
“Good point. What’re we going to spend our winnings on, then?”
“Whatever the fuck we want.”
“Yeah? I like the sound of that.”
“I have an idea, actually—“
“I’m still not sitting for a poncy fucking portrait, Bonnet.”
Stede has gotten to know Izzy well enough, over the last couple of months, to know at least some of his weaknesses. “Even if it’s painted by the man who cuckolded me?”
“Doesn’t count. You’re so bent you were probably glad she was screwing someone else.”
“I was rather hurt, actually. Well, at least at first. I suppose once I got used to the idea, it was sort of a relief…”
“Told you.”
“I believe my children call him dad.”
“Hmm.” Izzy’s expression suggests that might be humiliation enough to tempt him. “I’ll think about it. But I’m not learning to use all your fancy fucking cutlery, and I’m not being nice to anyone.”
“Wouldn’t expect you to be,” Ed says. “I love you just the way you are, you miserable bastard.”
“Your miserable bastard,” Stede reminds him.
Ed grins and pulls both of them into a hug. “Mine.”