Hi, so here we are-back again! Apologies for the delay but with work and needing some personal time to get my head straight I had to take a bit of break. I am back though so please enjoy.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

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Boots With My Father's Name

Chapter 5-Ahead Of The Game

Ben and Zeb have a long talk as truths come to light.


It's a good thing that Ben was not hiding this and that Zeb knew what he was looking for because otherwise his son was liable to get himself killed.

Not that Zeb agreed with that shit but you got the impression...

Anyway...

He steps out to take his first coffee of the day while Esther is making eggs and pancakes and finds his son there on the porch eyes closed naked from the waist up drinking in the sun with an expression of the most peaceful that he was loathe to interrupt it.

But then again...call him a bastard but he wanted this conversation out of the way and fast.

"S

Ben sighed a little but didn't open his eyes.

"Pa"

"John is asleep"

Ben's mouth twisted in amusement.

"Wonderful. He'd need it after last night"

Zeb shot his son a look that Ben was too out of it to realise. Granted he and Esther had spent much of the night talking but they had both known...and heard that John and Livy had been reunited...in the loudest most biblical terms possible.

When this was over he really did need to sit down and speak to John and remind him that this was a respectable house and the walls were paper thin and he didn't need to know that his son could moan like that.

Ben caught his expression and grinned taking a drag of his smoke.

"Just saying Pa. I knew John was fast but I didn't need to know that he could moan like a French whore who'd just seen the hard cash"

Zeb opened his mouth and then closed it. To be honest he was too tired and too pressed on the issue at hand to rise to the bait.

Ben took another drag of his smoke and then threw it in the bushes. He sighed.

"I suppose asking you to quit would be pushing it?"

Ben snorted already looking for his lighter.

Zeb supposed that answered that question.

He sighed and then...

"May we talk? Man to man?"

"About?"

"Bradley"

Ben paused his entire hand still for one second and then he reached for his lighter. He couldn't light it Zeb realised watching him...he couldn't light the lighter because his hands were shaking but then eventually when Ben gave up the fight he sighed and stared out over the yard.

"Go on"

"I know...Ben your mother and I know...what you both are"

Ben smiled but there was no joy in it, it looked like he was gearing up for a fight. Zeb felt his heart hurt for the boy that he had raised who had rapidly become a man. With John he'd seen it happen because with John there was now two small children of his own...with Ben it was a totally different scenario. He didn't know how to read him anymore. War had taken the boy and broken him and put him back together and then here was the man...evidence right in front of him.

"And what do you think that you know Pa?"

"I know...son I don't know what the technical term is but I...aren't you...Friends of Dorothy?"

Ben turned to look at him then frowning.

"Seriously?"

"Fine" Zeb snapped. Sassing was one thing but this was entirely enough. "Your card carrying members of the homosexual life partnership club is that it?"

"It's not a club—"

"BENJAMIN"

"But yeah" Ben said finally. "To the other thing."

Zeb paused.

"I need you to say it"

"Why?"

"Because I just do son, please, please humour the old man and just say it"

There was a pause and then...

"Bradley and I are husbands"

The term threw him off kilter for a second.

"Beg pardon"

"Pa you just..."

"I thought you were lovers...i did not realise that you were...that you were anything more than...did I miss a law change somewhere?"

Ben snorted.

"No" he said flatly. "It's just what we are. Same as you or Ma, same as John and Olivia. I know he's it for me, he knows the same about me. So why shouldn't we give each other in private the same labels that the others have?"

Zeb could think of a few reasons why not and maybe it showed on his face because Ben lit a cigarette and dragged out a puff of smoke with a sardonic smile.

"Oh don't look like that, it's only in private. I am not stupid. I know more than you do the risks of what happens if we are caught. So does he. He's had his fingers held to the fire once before...nothing bad but enough to get a taste of what could happen"

Zeb didn't know what to say to that.

"Is there...some kind of ceremony?"

Ben turned to stare at him face creased in confusion.

"What?"

"I mean...do you...say vows before God or something?"

Ben blinked.

"No vows" he said quietly. "We just...said them to each other"

Zeb had a sudden image of what Esther would make of that and had to look away.

"I'd like you to say something before God" he said quietly. "Give this union half a chance..."

"For fucks sake—"

"Ben!"

"Pa! I don't have to ask God's permission to love him—God sent him to me"

Zeb didn't know what to make of that but Ben apparently was on a roll.

"I was that close" he said using his fingers to estimate. "That close...John wasn't with me, I didn't know if he was alive or dead, I just...I saw it. I saw it coming and I knew this was it...and then he was there...and he pushed me down and I lived and I lived because of him. So I don't have to stand in front of anyone and say that this man is it for me. He knows it, that's all that matters."

"Very romantic" Zeb said trying to forget the image of his son's battered body scattered over some goddamn forsaken turnip field in France.

Ben said nothing for a second and then.

"How did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That Bradley and I...that I am...I mean..."

"Son I have known since that travelling student—who was far to old for you by the way sucked face—and the Lord knows what else besides—behind the barn" he said testily.

He was a father...shoot him.

Ben watched him for a second and then...

"That was what you took from that...that he was too old for me?"

"Benjamin..."

"There's no need to use a stick Pa I just...I...really...you don't mind that I...that I like...men?"

Zeb sighed.

"I won't pretend that it wasn't a surprise because it was. But then I had time to think about it, and then there was a war and I realised in perfect clarity what I knew then and what I know now...that it didn't matter who you loved as long as they were legal and willing...that it didn't matter who you came home with as long as you came home. The God I believe in is infinitely wise and He knows our hearts. I know He knows that you have a good heart...I know he knows that you are a good man...I am confident I will see you and Bradley again in heaven when the Lord takes me home. And...and as for the rest of it I don't mind..."

He turned in a moment that he was absolutely sure that his hip would murder him for later on and grabbed Ben by the face dragging his son round to face him with an upper strength that he was not entirely sure he would have again...he was getting old...he was feeling old too...God knows what he looked like some days. This war had aged him...well...he supposed it had aged most father's of sons.

Mothers too.

"The only thing that I care about is that you are happy with someone that you love" he says clearly. "And if that is Bradley then that is fine, if that is any other man then that is fine. I won't pretend that I understand the world that you live in and I won't pretend that I like the dangers. But your my son...there is nothing you could not do to lose my love or my support."

Ben watched him for a second and then he nodded swallowing rather rapidly his jaw moving. Zeb ran a hand down the strong line of it and then pushed him away looking over his garden rapidly blinking. Without a gallon or two of the recipe in him he was not a sentimental man but now he found that he was.

He closed his eyes and then opened them again and found Ben staring out over the yard.

"You alright son?"

"Better than I thought I would be" Ben said turning to him and smiling. He reached out and grabbed Zeb's hand for a second.

"Thanks"

"Don't mention it son"

There was a pause and then.

"You said Ma knew?"

"Yeah"

"Oh"

"Oh she's more fine with it than I am. She talked herself into accepting it using religion"

Ben stared at him for a second and then.

"How did she—"

"Oh she's a very clever woman your mother" Zeb said shrewdly. "Trust me she found a way. Basically the God she loves is a merciful one...and she wants you to stay. That's the line in the sand for her Ben...she wants you to stay. She's been in a silent form of purgatory for the last eighteen months and she wants both of you back"

"John might want to leave" Ben said quietly. "He's got wanderlust for it, granted he might not but...but I never wanted anywhere else but here"

"Then you can have anywhere else but here" Zeb ruled. "You can have the shed...we can fit that out to be a proper little home if you and Bradley wanted it to be."

"And what would you tell your friends?"

"Ike won't care, the Sherriff certainly won't. Ep Bridges has just come back from France and he's in a worse boat than you two, the Baldwin sisters wouldn't know what you and Bradley were if you gave then a demonstration and even then I don't think they would mind...love is love...this is a small community granted but we look after our own and our family has a lot of sway here. Keep it private as you can this being 1919 and all but then...then again...why would our neighbours stick their noses in?"

Ben sighed and then.

"Yeah I suppose"

"Don't get me wrong your both gonna have to get out a bit and make sure that you play your cards right, go to dances and all that but I don't see why you can't carefully plan this through. You're not the first men in this predicament to live, long, normal happy lives in peace I don't think why you would be the last"

His words he could tell had an effect on his eldest who nodded slowly.

He took another drag of his smoke and then.

"Love you Pa"

"Love you too"

There was a pause and then the door opened. Bradley was there looking at the two of them.

"Mrs Walton says breakfast is ready"

"Son if your gonna stay here you better get used to calling her Esther" Zeb said. He knew his wife, that would be the first thing to go if she got her way.

"I don't...are we..."

"He knows" Ben says finally. "They both do." He shot Bradley a wry smile. "And he's fine with it"

Bradley's eyes widened for a second and he looked away and then back at Zeb as if he wanted confirmation of what he was seeing. Zeb wondered what had happened to this boy to give him such a jaded wide eyed look like that.

"I should warn you" he said standing up and wincing as his hip protested. "That if you break his heart I will throw you in the river with two broken legs"

"PA!"

But Bradley shot him an apprising kind of smile...and Zeb knew that he had understood.

"Yes Sir"

"Good soldier" he said and then he stopped inside to see his wife dishing up biscuits with a serenely smug smile she had not given him in the last eighteen months when the war had taken their two boys and had somehow through some miracle of God given them three back.


And there you are, see you for the next chapter.

Next Chapter-Esther has a talk with her new...what does she call him? Son in Law?