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 different 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Historical references are my own.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
Chapter 2-Real Tigers, Dead Lions
In which the boys return home and all is well...for a short time anyway. And Livy knows...she always knows.
She was watching her children when she saw him. She thought that she would always look for him and find him and as he came into view she felt her heart thud in love for him.
John was home.
Olivia was whole again.
She had Jason in her arms and he was playing with one of the wooden toys his grandpa had made him. John Boy at her feet was crawling around and then he saw the man in the distance and then clapped his hands. She did not know if John Boy would remember his father, did not know if he had been in his son's life long enough…God knows the one thing that John had been most afraid off when she had met him before he was shipped out, was that he was going to be forgotten by his sons and that they would never remember who their father was even though she had assured him that under no circumstances would she allow that to happen.
She watched trying to get herself under control and then she watched as two more men appeared in the distance. She knew one of them was her brother in law by appearance alone. Ben was the tallest out of the three and Ben always walked as if he was gearing for a fight hands in pocket, cigarette in mouth no matter how many times her mother in law had told him to stop or asked him why he would ruin his health that way. The third man she didn't recognise but she knew enough to know that it could not be Tip. Tip she had not heard of in the last few letters and though she did not think him dead she did wonder if maybe he had disappeared out of her husband's life which she was not totally sure she minded all that much.
Maybe it was because Olivia was a woman, maybe it was because she was a woman and she did not understand war but she did not understand half the stories that she told the children about the man John called a 'Legend'. Maybe because she had seen enough in the papers to know that it was not funny when seventeen hundred men died in one afternoon.
But then again…she had never been to war.
And somehow she didn't think that John was going to talk about it.
But she stood there one son at her feet and another at her hip and she knew that her boys had come home to her and then before she could stop herself she had another vision of herself in twenty years time wondering if God would return her own boys to her, John, Jason, and the others that she was sure she was going to carry.
As they came into the distance though she knew that they were come home at last.
Ben. John. And the other one whoever he may be as welcome as he was.
She turned to go into the house to tell her in laws that their sons were returned home but she saw out of the corner of her eye that Ben was holding the hand of the other man swinging it back and forth side to side. She watched as John turned his head and said something to his brother and then the hand was dropped and she understood suddenly who this third man was.
Olivia grinned.
She understood.
"Esther?"
Her mother in law was by the stove working on something and the frown on her face told Olivia that it was not quite right. She was beginning to learn that Esther was a perfectionist in the kitchen and that likewise with her needlework if she set her mind to it she did it until she got it right.
She looked up when she saw Olivia standing there Jason in her arms and she took note of the expression on her face and then dropped the wooden spoon. Her hands old and frail and suddenly shaking turned the stove off before supper burnt but her hands were shaking and her eyes were rapidly filling with tears. Esther never let them fall in her presence but she knew the same as it had been with her that there had been many shed in the privacy of the bedroom.
"Livy…"
"Three men coming up the drive, one of them is John, the other Ben…their home Esther, they've come home"
And suddenly the enormity of what that meant hit her and she nearly dropped Jason.
Esther watched her for a second eyes reading her face as if she was searching for any untruth and then she let out a strangled kind of scream. Zeb who had been coming down the stairs his hair rumpled from sleeping looked at both of them.
"What the devil are you two—" but he took in his wife's expression and then everything seemed to stop. She watched as if everything had slowed down somewhat at the looks on their faces and then Olivia cackled putting Jason in his arms and she turned and ran off to see her husband stepping up onto the porch and John Boy looking surprised as to why his mother had suddenly leapt out screaming and thrown herself into the man's arms.
John caught her around the waist as he always did and he shuddered as if the touch of her was all that he had needed to keep going. She burrowed his head in her neck and vice versa and the two of them clung to each other as John pulled back face wet and kissed her with the passion of a thousand lifetimes as Esther burst out into the scene put John Boy in his crib with surprising speed, dumped Jason in with him and then launched herself at her eldest son who had the sense to throw the cigarette into the weeds before his mother saw it.
"John" she said over and over again when he pulled back and kissed her all over, her face, her neck, her eyelids and then back again into her mouth. "Oh John I didn't know It was…"
"Call it a surprise girl" John growled face shining as he kissed her again. "I've dreamt of this since the second I left"
She watched out of the corner of her eye Ben turn to hug his father. The older man was trembling somewhat and the only thing out of place was the third man who was stood to the side watching with an almost curious expression on his face as if this abundance of joy was new to him and Olivia the mother that she was first suddenly felt the urge to wrap him up in as much love as she could because heaven knew the world needed it.
John dropped her to the floor and then bent to pick up his son, John Boy watched him with an ease that came with knowing this man even if he couldn't place what his name was. Jason in the crib stared upwards as if he thought this new man was the most fascinating thing ever.
"Johnny?"
And then she had barely enough time to take John Boy out of John's arms before her father in law was hugging John pushing Ben into his arms as if he needed physical poof that both his boys were home.
Esther wiped her eyes on her apron and then.
"Thank you God" she said and Olivia fully agreed with her and she turned taking her eyes off the three men on the porch who were still locked tight in an embrace—the only weakness Zeb would give himself and she turned her attention to the third man.
He was in his own way rather good looking she thought. Perfect for Ben too. You see…even without John telling her Olivia knew what Ben was…she did not know the technical term only the unkind ones that she would never repeat but she knew enough to know that love was love and if Ben loved a little bit different than she did then so what? He was still the same man he had been before she knew he liked cock as much as she did and he was still the same doting uncle to the boys that he had always been. Certainly she believed that her God was a loving and merciful one who believed in love about all else and if Ben chose to love someone and that someone loved him back then she was certainly not going to get in the way of His plan for Ben Walton.
Besides, Ben had been the one that John had called before they had eloped and Ben half asleep had come to stand by his brother's side. That was where Ben was supposed to be, where he always was supposed to be. By his brother's side.
And now he had a life that he wanted to live and she was not going to get in the way of that.
"Hello" she said to the strange man. "I'm Olivia Walton"
"Bradley McCarthy Ma'am" he says and his accent is thick and he tips his hat which she likes immediately. "It's a pleasure to meet you. John said you were a looker but he didn't do you justice"
John who now has both of his boys on his hip comes to join her. With ease she takes Jason back onto her hip and he keeps John Boy.
"Thank you" she says easily and it's amazing how she can adjust to this part of herself again, of being part of a couple once more.
She watches him for a second and then he introduces himself to Esther who is so happy she probably wouldn't care if he introduced himself as the devil and then Ben comes down the stairs.
"This is Bradley Ma. I met him in France, he doesn't have much of a home to go to so I said he could come back with us and start up here, I said you wouldn't mind having him here until…plans were made" he says and she snorts because that's deliberately ambiguous if ever she heard it and totally Ben and her brother in law flashes her a smile.
Esther either doesn't understand or chooses not to because she wipes her eyes and is back to being her old self again.
"Of course" she says and she embraces the boy who looks slightly stunned. Olivia would giggle but she fears she would give the game away. "Of course you may" she says pulling back. "Any friend of my boys is a friend of mine"
John chokes a bit on his giggle.
Zeb looks at them both but doesn't say anything, again she doesn't know if he knows but if he does he doesn't say anything just eyes his eldest up for a second before nodding and sticking out his hand and then Esther and Zeb are dragging their boys back inside the house and it's Olivia and Bradley on the porch looking in.
"Don't worry" she says with a grin. "You'll get use to it"
He shoots her a look and then.
"Your making a huge assumption that they will let me stay"
"Once they know?"
"You know?"
"Course I do" she says with an eyeroll. "I don't know what it's like over there but here Ben wasn't totally perfect about it. Nobody would say anything cause here its' a hanging offence but I knew he had…tastes…when I married John. I didn't care all that much. I didn't care about it then and I don't care about it now. But I do know what it's like to be an outsider. You won't be an outsider for long…I do know that"
She pats his arm and goes back into the house and he snorts behind her and then follows her in and they both go to the men that they love who celebrate being back home and the truth is that Olivia would not have it any other way.
John is home.
Ben is home.
The year is 1919.
Nothing can go wrong for her or her family.
She knows that God too, knows this to be true.
And there you go, I hope you enjoy, see you soon.
Next Chapter-Zeb Walton has often employed the philosophy of don't ask, don't tell with his oldest. Now though he thinks he has to ask. Because God knows (and he says that reverently) Ben is not hiding this.