It starts with an excited phone call from Kurt.
“Walter, this is perfect! Rachel - you met Rachel - well, her dad just got divorced. Not like you, gay divorced, but, he’s sexy - don’t tell Rachel I said that - and you’re sexy - don’t tell Blaine I said that - and I spoke to him already and he said he’d do it, and I really think this could be perfect! Please say yes?”
He’d agreed, though in all honesty, after the whirlwind that was dating Kurt, he wouldn’t have minded a bit of a breather. But, wasn’t this the whole point of coming out? Why blow up your life and break the heart of your best friend if you’re not going to at least try to find a little romance when the opportunity arises?
Which is how he finds himself across the table from a handsome and age-appropriate man, on an actual date, for the first time in his life.
Kurt was right. Leroy is sexy. While he seems a little nervous at the situation, he feels sure of himself as a whole. His curls are salt and pepper at his temples, the skin around his eyes crinkles when he smiles. Walter can’t deny that it makes for a very attractive package.
They order a bottle of nice Chardonnay to share, and over their first sips Leroy asks how Walter knows Kurt.
“Kurt didn’t tell you?” He asks.
Leroy shakes his head, an inquisitive look on his face.
“Oh. We, erm, we actually dated briefly.”
Leroy chokes - literally chokes, just a little - on his wine.
“Sorry!” Leroy spits out as he sputters. “Kurt’s great, he’s a great kid -” he winces. “Sorry. I just, he’s been friends with my Rachel since they were sixteen. He told me you’re recently divorced?”
In this moment Walter realises that this is what he’d been afraid of. He can’t claim to have been conscious of the root of his desire to date much younger men at the time, but right now he feels like a child.
But Leroy’s eyes look kind. His face looks open. He smiles slightly, gesturing for Walter to respond.
He talks about his divorce - he knows Leroy can empathise with that at least to some degree, talks about always sensing that something was wrong, but never having a name for it. His father had been in Korea. He was stern, cold. His mother was quiet. Finding Linda had been respite. She was warm, she wasn’t afraid of love. They’d married young, but he’d travelled for work. Children hadn’t come easily, but eventually they had come all the same. His life was busy, full. But then the empty nest came, and it became harder and harder to push away the feeling of wrongness. Social attitudes changed. Legal rights changed. He was making Linda, his wonderful, best friend Linda, feel undesired. And something snapped.
He talks about dating Kurt, how he hadn’t really intended to deceive, but either way, that’s exactly what he’d done. And the shame he’d felt when he realised. But Kurt was kind, Kurt was nice, Kurt was kind of naive but he was brave. Kurt had looked at him like he saw him, and like he liked what he saw. But Kurt wasn’t meant for him. Kurt had a lifetime of love ahead of him, but just for a moment, it was nice to pretend that Walter had that too.
“I missed out on a lot, I suppose. And I don’t really have anyone to blame for that but myself, but I guess I wanted a chance to experience what I feel I missed out on. But then I think about people like you, you and your husband, ex-husband. God, you raised a kid together! In the nineties! And I couldn’t even admit it to myself… Anyway, you’re not my therapist. Can you forgive me for my terrible first date etiquette?”
Leroy had laughed, then. It startled Walter, but it wasn’t an unkind laugh.
“I haven’t been on a first date in over twenty years, so I wouldn’t know what good first date etiquette is these days.”
To Walter’s bewilderment, Leroy reaches out to take his hand.
“I think you’re braver than you realise. And I’m glad you’re here now.”
Walter smiles, diminutively at first, then wider as he meets Leroy’s gaze.
“Tell me what it was like for you?” He asks. And Leroy does.
His father had passed when he was young, but his mother had been doting. She’d adored him, all but bragged to her friends that her son was a friend of Dorothy. She’d loved Rogers and Hammerstein, then later, Lloyd-Webber, and the home was full of music and openness and love. He talked about coming of age in the 80s. The clubs he’d been to, the nights he’d had. Then later, the friends he’d lost. He talked about finding Hiram. Leroy had thought himself a little bit of a party boy, but Hiram was something else entirely. He was a supernova, the life and soul. Leroy never thought he’d look at him twice, but he did. They were friends, to begin. But it developed to more. For Leroy, it became his whole world. He was secretly delighted when it became clear Rachel was biologically Hiram’s, because he knew that was secretly what Hiram wanted, and he would have given him the whole galaxy if he could.
He talked about how it had all started to fall apart. Rachel was a needy child, and fulfilling those needs had always distracted from the reality. But the truth was, Hiram had started to pull away more and more, snap more and more. The sex continued, but the intimacy was lost. And once she left for New York, nothing but a shadow of a once great love remained.
And Walter, for the first time, saw the truth of their situation. Regardless of the paths that led them here, both were men starting a new phase of their life alone, wanting to be seen, and wanting to be wanted.
Glasses empty, Walter decides to be brave.
“I’ve got a nice bottle of Sonoma Chardonnay at home. If you’re willing to indulge me, it would be nice to share it with someone who would appreciate it?”
Leroy smiles, and delicately nods his head. They pay up - Leroy insists on getting the bill - and head together in a cab to Walter’s new, modest, home.
They drink more, they talk more, and it’s gone midnight when Walter invites Leroy upstairs.
He feels lanky and clumsy as he undresses, but the one thing missing is shame. They kiss and they grind and they grab and they writhe and Walter feels his mouth water as he’s led by instinct to take and to give and to please, to suck and be sucked. He gets a cramp in his leg, and Leroy softens, and they have to stop for water and breath. But when they come with Leroy’s hand gripped tightly around the both of them, for Walter, it feels like a rebirth.
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