Hi, so here is another story from me, it's a pre-series story which is a new one for me but I am really looking forwards to it and I hope you do to.
I have constantly alluded in other Waltons stories that in my personal headcannon Ben Sr (John's brother) was a homosexual. I have also alluded to John knowing about it, the Waltons was filmed in the sixties, somehow I think things would have been very differnt if it was filmed today so this is my headcannon. Ben Walton survives and Waltons Mountain gets some much needed LGTBQ love.
If you don't like that, don't bother reading.
This is going to be short and sweet this story about ten chapters.
Disclaimer-Nothing is mine except Bradley and maybe some interpretation on the births of John-Boy and Jason...and the rest of them.
Historical references are my own.
Please Read and Review.
Boots With My Father's Name.
AU-In which Ben Walton (the first) survives the war and comes home…with his husband. Yeah…John's not sure how he's gonna explain this one.
Chapter 1-Decommisioned.
John's not sure how he can explain this one…he just knows he wants his brother home.
It's not like he hasn't always known. Let's be clear John knows…Livy knows and after a day at prayer she had come home put the baby on her hip and said clearly that she firmly believed that love was love and the good Lord would understand that too and though they must obey man's laws it was really God's compassion that must rule their life and so providing she didn't have to explain it in a court of law she was fine.
John doesn't want to tell anyone this but he's fairly convinced that, that was the night Jason was conceived. He's pretty sure anyway.
He knows the second he sees Ben in the bar on that one weekend they were sent off the front with the blonde man with a moustache that he was going to be trouble. To be fair he didn't care, has never cared, all he wanted was to go to sleep but he finds that as he is wrapped in a warm hug and is introduced to Bradley McCarthy that this man is different. Granted there is not a lot of opportunities in Charlottetown and it's non existent on Walton's Mountain but he knows that here in France Ben can be himself. Knows that his big brother has something in this man next to him who looks at John as if he knows only too well that John is never going to see the world the same again.
He sits for a few beers but then he goes to sleep upstairs and he hears his brother and he knows that this might be more of a passing fling. John might turn his back on the activities and wonder why on Earth he hadn't bunked with Tip (because he knows Tip would tease him for not bedding an army whore) and he sees his brother hold the other man's hand and clutch at him as if Bradley McCarthy is the one thing that is keeping him going and Ben is Ben…he doesn't allow himself a second of weakness and John can see it written on his face in that stolen moment before he tells himself that he couldn't look.
So that's how he meets his brother's…what…lover? And John doesn't know if there is gonna be more of them. Ben never talks and John never asks the same way Ben had never asked him if Livy had been pregnant when he had married her, just wrapped her in a big hug and said welcome. He doesn't know if this is the newest one. He and Ben had been separated by a year before he was able to get to the front and it had taken a lot of time and a lot of Tip wining for them to get to the same place Ben was…John doesn't know what his brother has been doing.
So he sleeps on it and when he wakes up his brother is there with a smile.
"Heya Johnny"
And John doesn't have to tell Ben anything about the horrors of France, the pain of what he has left, the terror of what he is going back to, his fear that he will never see his home, his parents, his wife, his children again, or worse that he will go home but he'll be so broken that he won't want to stay or worse that they won't want him too. He doesn't have clean hands anymore, he's killed a hundred men and watched a thousand die and he's seen gas and limbs torn off, eyes gone and held men begging for their mothers who have been older and more sophisticated than him. Tip makes it out that it's all whoring and drinking but John knows that it's not.
'The American Experience' Tip had called it. John had never been more disgusted in his best friend than he had at that moment.
Ben looks at him and then he sighs.
"Oh Johnny Boy" he says and then he opens his arms and John crawls into them and cries until he can't cry anymore.
He knows at some point the door is opened and he knows it's Bradley the man from Wisconsin but there's a look between his brother and his lover and then he goes.
The day they go back to the front he is offered a cigarette from the other man and he takes it. Ben is off speaking with his Commander and for a second the two men stare into the distance.
"I met him three months ago" Bradley says casually. "You don't think twelve weeks is long but here it's a lifetime"
John knows this. The snow is sticking to the ground again.
"You know what we are?"
"Yes"
"I love him" he says flatly. "I don't expect you to understand but—"
"Did he tell you about how I met my wife?" John interrupts.
Bradley stares at him for a second and then.
"No he didn't"
"I eloped with her three weeks into our relationship because her family didn't like mine."
Bradley nods.
"Okay—"
"I get what love at first sight is" John says quietly. "You keep him alive, you get him back…that's all that matters. You hurt him or you sell him out and I will cut you throat to balls"
His Pa would chide him for such words but John is a soldier and he's also a hunter of game…he knows what he is doing with his knife.
Bradley sticks his smoke in his mouth and then.
"Fair enough" he says and he sticks out his hand and John shakes it.
Nothing more has to be said after that.
He doesn't expect to survive, he doesn't know if it's the bullets, the fever that sweeps through the trenches or the fact that Tip goes around acting like he wants to be killed. He doesn't think that he is going to get home. They fight the Second Offensive as it's called and he sees men shot down all around him, he think he sees Ben hit with a bullet but his brother ducks at the last moment when Bradley shouts at him and it gets his arm but just a graze and his cheek but just enough to leave a scar. John drags his brother back to the aid tent and watches as they piece back together what should be a dead man and watches as his brother's lover's heart gets ripped out.
Ben as an officer gets a tent to himself with one man and that man is nine times out of ten Bradley. John doesn't know if it's desperation, a combination of his brother's intense charm or the fact that he knows that Ben and Bradley's relationship is not the only one here. He knows that men are taking comfort wherever they can get them, knows that it's happening on the other side of the trench too and that everyone is too exhausted to care, it's the chaotic madness of war that makes it the way it is.
John's a country boy he knows land and he sees it being blown to hell and back and thinks that it's utterly mad that they are doing this for men that they've never met, for Kings and Presidents who don't bother to dirty their hands with it anymore. There's no pride here, no God…no God in the trenches and John standing guard as Bradley changes his brother's bandages with eyes that have seen too much knows that he will never set foot in a Church the same way his wife and mother do.
God right now can go hang.
"It's a scar" Bradley says softly as his brother drifts in and out under the influence of God only knows what battlefield drugs. "It's just a scar Benji, I don't care, I promise you I don't care, we can go after this and be together—"
Wait…what?
John waits until his brother is shipped back to an Aid Hospital in France until he confronts his brothers…partner.
"What the fuck was that about?"
Bradley is still staring into the distance as if he's seeing Ben in the distance long gone with the other wounded men that cannot stay and push for one last mad rush at the men on the other side of the trenches. For a second they both stare at each other.
"What do you mean?"
"Your taking him away?"
Bradley blinks.
"I love him" he says flatly. "He loves me. That limits me and him John. There's no white picket fence in our future, the world considers us illegal. America considers us illegal"
"I don't!"
"No" Bradley says evenly. "But you're not everyone John. You come from a small mountain and—"
"Nobody is going to care on Walton's Mountain"
Bradley cracks a laugh as if he cannot believe that here knee deep in the muck and the shit and the blood that John is being this naïve. It's November 1918 and the world is changing.
"John don't kid yourself, Walton's Mountain is the one place in the world where people will care…you think me and him can live out in some house in the woods and come to yours for supper? You think your Ma and Pa will—"
"Ma and Pa wont give a shit as long as he comes home. My wife already knows…Ike doesn't give a shit and the only other people that matter are the Baldwin sisters and they wouldn't get what the two of you are even if you stripped naked and put on a show in front of them! As for the rest of them…it's a small community granted but they look after their own and nobody is going to believe that you're a risk or a danger…you can just be…two war friends that rent…but if you take him…if you take him you'll break him, you'll break his heart because he will go. He will go if you ask him I know that much. And he will always long to come home. Don't…don't you want to come home?"
"I don't have a home" Bradley says quietly. "Not where I come from."
"Why do people know?"
"No…no…I had a relationship before Ben. And when his wife found out he blew his brains out. She didn't say anything but we both knew…so I left. It was easier that way. I can't go backwards"
"Ben can"
Bradley watches him for a long second and then.
"Kid do you know the risk—"
"Cannot be worse than this" John says and then before he can say anything else there is a roar, a scream, a shout that rips through the trenches as men of all ages and states and sexuality, of religion and creed jump and shout and dance up and down.
Because it's November the 11th 1918.
And the Great War is over.
They don't go home right away. They demob in Paris and the civilians there throw open their homes and throw cash at them, beg them to come into their homes. John eats real food for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, stuffs his face with bread, tries champagne for the first time and gets a dreadful hangover and kips on the floor of his brother's hospital room until the warden tells him sternly that his neighbour would be happy to have him kip on the spare mattress in her room. Then he baths for the first time as she makes him tea and he cries in this old woman's arms as she mutters in French things that he hopes are soothing.
Bradley comes to see him one day as he's reacquainting himself with butter.
God how much has John Walton missed butter.
They sit in the garden and Bradley passes him a bottle of champagne and a box of cream cakes. John doesn't know much about cakes but he knows what the French do is superb and he's ate so much of those eclair things he might be sick.
Bradley lights up a cigarette and then.
"Tell me about your folks?"
"Why?"
"Because Ben wants to come home and I need to know it's safe. If your Ma and Pa can't handle this then I need to know because I love him enough to not put him at risk. And I love him enough to deny myself him. But he won't let me go and I'm selfish deep down and I don't want to go, so tell me why I should stay?"
"Because you love him" John says swigging down the fizz. "Because you love him and he loves you and my Ma and Pa won't care. Pa will go out chop some wood, go up the mountains and come back and threaten you not to hurt him. Ma will go to Church and find a way to deal with it but…just because were country doesn't mean were stupid Bradley, there's a very good chance my parents know Ben likes cock they just haven't asked him outright"
Ben smirks but says nothing and then…
"And your wife?"
"Please…she won't give a shit"
"Your children?"
"Why would they care?"
"It's a secret they would have to keep too John."
John puts down the bottle. The sun on his face is too nice and the peace after the noise of war is nice too.
"Ike Godsey runs the General Merchandise store and doesn't care about stuff like that as long as everyone is consenting and legal. The Baldwin sisters don't even know their making bootleg whiskey so you and Ben are a complete mystery. The Reverend is terrified of my mother. And there are lots of houses in the hills…find one and stay there…and come down to supper"
Bradley is silent for a long time and then.
"Okay...and how do they not know it's whiskey?"
But John has fallen asleep and he misses it.
Ben is well enough to go back with him and Bradley and Tip. They say goodbye to Tip as they land in New York.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish" Ben mutters as John watches his friend walk off into the sunshine. John rolls his eyes but hoists his bag higher on his shoulder. Ben bumps his shoulder against his for a second and then.
"Johnny…"
"Yeah Benny"
For a second the two of them stare at each other and John thinks in another version of this life he gets off this boat alone and makes his way back to the mountain alone and there is no Ben and no Bradley just rows of empty graves and good men rotting in some god forsaken turnip filed that someone can barely pronounce.
"Glad you're my brother" Ben says quietly.
"Right back at you"
That's Ben's way of saying all that he cannot say, that he's glad to be home, glad they are alive, glad that they can both be happy.
John grips his shoulder and thinks of his own boys and knows that he wants them to have this.
"I've always got your back Ben" he says quietly. "No matter what you always have me"
Ben nods eyes bright for a second and then he blinks and Bradley is back from the train stations with tickets that will get them back to Virginia and the three of them walk away from the dock joining the crowds of all the other men back from the war who have to go home and try and rebuild their lives safe in the belief that they have that this is the first and last Great War and that their sons will never follow in their footsteps.
And there we go, hopefully I'll update soon.
Next Chapter-In which the boys return home and all is well...for a short time anyway. And Livy knows...she always knows.
