Let's see what a nearly average morning looks like for our favorite anchorman and sportscaster!

"Don't you think it'd be nice, Ron? A little you or me running around the house; turning on and off the tv all hours? Rearranging our records to be alphabetized by color? Waking us up in the middle of the night with plaintive cries for attention?" Champ said as he set his steaming plate full of eggs on their kitchen island and pulled up a stool.

"Champ, I'm pretty sure that whatever you were just describing isn't a child. Sounds more like a poltergeist, honestly." The daydreamy look on Champ's face did nothing to assuage Burgundy's misgivings at the description.

"But, just think of the amazing things we could do with that much projectile vomit! The pranks we could play on visitors," Champ said with as much verve as he could squeeze out.

"I'm pretty sure that if people knew we were that haunted, we wouldn't be able to lure them inside."

"Aw, you're no fun, Ron."

"Not before my Irish coffee I'm not. But I speak mostly from experience, Champ."

"You've been haunted?" The hopeful look made Burgundy want to lie and say yes. Very badly. But lies were no foundation on which to build a relationship. Unless you wanted it to self destruct in a powder keg of scotch, crack cocaine, and poor life choices, of course.

"No, Champ, I've had a child. And now that you mention it, the two things are starting to sound eerily similar," Ron said with a nearly suppressed shiver. "Walter does occasionally sit in this one, obviously cursed, high-backed chair in the den for hours on end. Just giggling to himself. In the dark. For hours on end."

"Sounds to me like you only just got out of that madhouse on time. It's a wonder you and Veronica survived this long with that sort of pure evil in the house."

"Oh, I expect it's all thanks to our long time maid. Ah yes, dutiful, kind, foolish Lupita. She took the brunt of it, seeing as Veronica and I were so often at work or out enjoying ourselves. Anywhere but home really. Any excuse."

"Sounds rough."

"I know," Burgundy agreed with an emphatic nod and a hearty sip from his honestly more 'Irish' than 'coffee' breakfast of choice.

"But this would be different, Ron," Champ insisted. Scrambled eggs completely forgotten and starting to cool on his plate.

"How?"

"It'd be ours, for starters."

"How?"

"Well... you've had a kid. You know how these kind of things work," the guy missing out on some pretty well fluffed eggs said with a well waggled eyebrow.

"Yeah, between Veronica and me, or any human that has a fertile womb and one that produces viable sperm. Not two old, barely functional, alcoholic, homosexual men trying to hobble together some sort of life... together. Not unless you have a womb you haven't told me about," Ron finished with an eyebrow wiggle of his own. And another good mouthful of his biting cup of Irish Joe.

"I wish you wouldn't use that word, Ron. It makes my skin crawl." The shudder made it clear that the chef was being serious, so Burgundy decided asking for clarification would be prudent.

"Which one? Veronica? Because that's a fairly common na-"

"No, the 'h' word," Champ said as his face scrunched.

"Hobble? Because that's a fairly versatile word which I'm rather fond-"

"No: 'homosexual'," the grown man more mouthed than whispered.

"What's wrong with calling us 'homosexual'," Ron mouthed the word back the way that his eccentric egg ignorer had.

"That word was invented by the CIA during the Eleanor Roosevelt administration as a way of singling out the boys and girls who showed tendencies that were 'outside their stations'. Like boys who wanted to dance ballet, or girls who wanted to learn to read."

"Champ, what Eleanor Roosevelt administration?" Ron asked around another healthy swig of his bitter sweet, Irish-Columbian delight. "Wasn't Franklin Roosevelt our president?"

"That's just what they want you to think! But the woman was ruthless! Hear this: every school she ever visited on her 'husband's' campaign trail? Missing children. Every last one, Ron."

"What in the-"

"Oh yes, it's true alright. I read about it in the Midnight Star and you know that newsprint never lies."

"How could they? It's printed on paper!"

"Right? So, these kids she'd have abducted, these 'deviants', were mostly never seen again, but they were taken to a laboratory somewhere in Washington D.C. where the CIA's top psycho-babbelists experimented on them day and night to try and either weaponize their 'unnatural proclivities', or revert them back to 'healthy', 'proper', works of God."

Ron moved his non coffee clutching hand to lay atop Champ's when he realized it was trembling.
"Wow. There is so much about this great country's history that I had no idea ever happened. Thank you for sharing with me that harrowing story that you read out of a tabloid newspaper. I know it was hard for you."

"Thanks, Ron. I actually feel a little better, getting that off my chest," the man with no mustache said as he blinked his eyes several times.

"I'm glad. But, uh, Champ, if not 'homosexual'," Ron mouthed the word once again, "then what?"

"Probably one of the good old fashion words that folks used to use before the influence of her evil took root in this great nation. Like 'fairy', or 'queer', or maybe even 'confirmed bachelor'."

"Or," Ron began with a snap, "maybe we could go with that new fangled word I've heard the hip kids using. Uh... 'gay'- yeah that's it. We could be gay!"

"I don't know, Ron. That'd make it sound like we're celebrating Christmas all year round, not like we share a life together. Not like we live and cook and make beautiful, beautiful love together. I think folks are already calling us 'those queers' around the water cooler at work, so we could always run with that?" Champ ended in a voice longing for approval.

"Well," said Ron before quaffing the last of his delicious, caffeinated start to the day, "I say we think on it and maybe make a decision after dinner. Well, after after dinner." He suggested with a quick squeeze of his lover's hand. Where he'd forgotten he was still holding it, atop the kitchen island.

"You mean... 'after' after dinner?" Champ asked. His eyes and mouth both going wide in a happy, excited smile.

"Yes. I think we both think straighter after a good, raunchy, role play filled roll in the hay. Wouldn't you say, my sweet, sweet, sports commentator?" The back of a hand Ron gentled down the side of Champ's face as he walked past to rinse out his mug made the shorter man's breath catch.
Yep. The Burg still had it.

"Or we could skip work after the morning report and get back home in time to have ourselves a little 'afternoon delight', if you'd rather have the conversation sooner?"

"Champ, that would be completely unprofessional of us!" Ron all but snapped. But, when he saw the contrite dejection welling up in his boyfriend's eyes, he felt his own baby blues soften.
With a soft smile, he walked the few feet back to his special person and coaxed him into a hug. "I suppose it wouldn't be unprofessional if we both fell terribly, terribly ill around lunch time and had to rely on each other's support just to stand as we hobbled out the door with a promise to 'have this bug under control by tomorrow'."

"You mean it, Ron? Do ya really mean it?" Asked the man who'd so eagerly come into his arms and snuggled his head against his burgundy vest front.

"You know I only lie on April 1st, the day of fools."

"And it's not even Super Bowl Sunday, so we're in the clear!"

"Yep. Now, what say we go show those ninnies down at the station how real news gets reported?"

"I say it's going to be a whammy of a day!"

Ron smiled, even though he was pretty sure that hadn't answered his question. And that those eggs were going to end up in the trash sometime in the near future.
He smiled because Champ was smiling and because it had been a while since he'd pulled the wool over corporate's eyes. Even longer since he'd done it for wholly selfish reasons. Then again, he thought with a happy grunt, his reasons were only half selfish. After all, he'd never have thought of it in the first place if Champ hadn't made the ardent suggestion himself.

Boy howdy was this gonna be one hot roll in the hay.