Me? I'm just a lawnmower...

At Arnold's, Fonzie is untouchable. He owns the real estate in every way but financially (or legally, or however - the point is it's his practically spiritually, and he'd sure as hell swear it up to God) and the middle booth is never occupied by anyone else when he's around. Only Richie, and Ralph and Potsie and Joanie by extension, are allowed hallowed placement there. All others? Serve to scram.

(After all, the booth is more presentably, impressionably, like a throne than any porcelain-plastic version found in the bathroom, and that's a ridiculous thing to bear peerage over, but for Fonzie who's never had much of anything, now he's taking all he can get, in spades and stars and hearts and diamonds and sock-hop clubs.)

It's just...nervy, sometimes. Some of the guys from school start to get suspicious, seeing Fonzie who goes around with every girl in town, perfectly respectable as he is simultaneously dastardly raunchy, taking such a vested interest in this particular trio of guy friends, and the sisterly attachment of one of the trifecta.

He's always hanging all over Cunningham, they whisper - hey, did you hear he just moved in with the Cunninghams? Like, plural "s" Cunninghams? I see him coming down from the garage apartment to eat breakfast and everything. Hey, yeah, sometimes I swear he's got a part now, and not just a ducktail. Gee, guys, I don't know about him anymore...

In that situation, were all of those bits of gossip true in the sphere in which they were rotated, what would be the most demeaning, damning part? Fonzie not being a drifter? Fonzie getting himself a proper family? Fonzie changing the ultimate coiffure of his appearance? Fonzie liking his toast with the crusts cut off?

No, none of those things. Or, at least, none of them in isolation. It's that they think maybe Fonzie's turning on them, deciding to take a play for the other team, and be a different kind of swinger altogether. For these so rigidly heterosexual puberty products, they need him to be extreme, maximal, unerring. Richie, himself extreme and maximal and unerring in his quest to be the perfect freckle-faced neighbor boy, throws a wrench in all that.

So Richie sits in the prized booth, and he wiggles his straw in his egg cream, and he eyes the empty seat across from him. No one will take it, not just because they know it's summarily reserved, but because it's, if you'll pardon the expression...no, I won't say it. Words, slurs, that start with f- and h- and q- and all manner of other derisive notes, and Richie doesn't even particularly mind the last one, if he's able to use it for himself, but like this...

"Richie! Hey, there's my favorite middle-class guy!"

Oh. He's in a good mood today. It would make Richie smile, grin from floppy ear to floppy ear, if it didn't fold so grossly into the rest of his stagnant thoughts. Because the thing is, the way Fonzie says it it's like he likes being called all those awful things behind his back. Like he thrives off of becoming goody-two-boots, like he's propelling himself towards a different mode of gainful employment where he'll get a nameplate and a tweed suit and a bigger salary than Richie's father.

None of that, not none of it, makes sense. He doesn't want people to know his name until he tells it to them himself. He likes exactly one mode of dress that doesn't include leather, and that's his mechanic's jumpsuit, dusty faded blue and full of grease stains and love. And even with all the status symbols Fonzie likes to array upon himself, money isn't one. He'll never want to flash a Rolex, and he'll never need to.

Richie waves, with an awkward anti-flex of his wrist. What time is it, anyway? Time to go home, probably, but Fonzie's only just gotten here, so he can't leave. It's not that he feels trapped, no, just...

"Hey, c'mon, what's the matter, sweetheart?"

And oh, when Fonzie calls him that...that's the end. Richie's a puddle. That's it for you, bucko.

"Fonzie, there's people looking." He didn't quite say "watching", because they weren't, somehow, just...looking. And watching or not, that's why he didn't say "Fonz" either.

The way Fonzie slipped into the mood of it all, parsed all the problems and all the solutions in an instant, was more than just admirable, it was breathtaking. "Eh, let 'em look. I'm busy lookin' at you, huh?"

Not much of a sight, nose-deep in milk foam, but Richie cracks a grin nevertheless. "That's the problem, Fonz," he murmurs. "You're always looking at me."

"So?" Fonzie still hasn't actually sat down, and instead he's got his thumbs dug into his belt loops, short and stocky as he can be as he makes his case. He's ten feet tall, and he always has been.

"I like lookin' at my favorite things. I mean, you're not a thing, right, you're a person, but still. New transmissions, and pretty chicks, and every one of the Cunninghams...I dunno. Makes me feel better when I'm down. And you, Rich-ard Cunningham, look like you are down, down, down."

Richie doesn't raise his head, waiting as he is for Fonzie to finish his semi-childlike train of thought: "Heh. They should make a song outta that."

"You should sing it," Richie mutters, but the train of ambivalent, tone-deaf thought has come to an end, and Fonzie shoots back, "Nah. That's Potsie's thing, right? I'm cool keepin' things just the way they are - not that I don't think I'd do a super-duper job if I did sing it, mind you! But...you know."

Richie nods mechanically. "I know, Fonz." Then he catches a little further at the hook that's been tossed to him. "You'll always be this same Fonzie, right? Like, you're not afraid of anything. You won't let what other people say change what you do."

With a mighty dry squelch of the vinyl on the booth seats, Fonzie sits down. "Whoa-ho, Cunningham, what's all this? You taking up philosophy now? I just came to say hi, jeez!"

"That's not what everybody else thinks," Richie insists. "They think...well you know. They think less of you, and of me, for us being together like this."

"You mean, like this," Fonzie gestures with an appraising face at the sticky tabletop, "or like this?" and now his flickering hand goes back and forth between their noses.

Richie sighs. "Both, Fonz." Both, and neither, and everything in between. "They sorta used to think the same thing about me and Potsie, only neither of us have ever been as worldly as you. Or macho, or whatever."

"Okay..." Fonzie rolls the vowels judiciously. "Still don't really see what you're drivin' at here, Rich. You think I care what a bunch of nerds think about me spending time with my best guy? Pssh. They couldn't land a guy like you if they tried," he concludes proudly, reaching out a careful thumb to stroke over Richie's chin (and, conveniently, retrieve it from its dipped position among the soda glass).

"You're sure?" You're sure you won't ever let it get to you? You're sure you won't ever change, not unless you're ready?

"Positive. And would I lie to you?" Fonzie, Fonzie, Fonzie. Yes, even among the teenage debauchery of Arnold's, he stays untouchable.