Author's Note: First, I want to thank my beta-reader S. This story would not have come together nearly as well without their recommendation and insight. This story has fifteen chapters: some long, some short. This is a story that contains flashbacks and insight into the lives of the Belcher family, but mostly centers around Louise at age twenty-two. This story takes place thirteen years into the future from current Bob's Burgers continuity. I have tried to include characters from the show throughout the story and make references to the show throughout the seasons. I have attempted to make it all as canon as possible.
This story is a Louise/Logan story. I want to put that out there right now, because I don't want anyone to get invested in the story before they realize where it is headed. For understandable and obvious reasons, this pairing is very controversial for a lot of people and a lot of people do not support this pairing.
I also feel it is my responsibility as the author to include a trigger warning. This story contains strong language, suggestive and sexual scenes, LGBTQ+ characters and relationships, and stalking.
All of that being said, in this long-winded author's note, for those of you that continue to go forward with the story, I hope you enjoy it. I have been working on this for approximately five months. It is fully written, but still being edited. I hope to get the rest of this story out in rapid succession. Constructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Chapter One: "Pepper Don't Preach" Burger:
Louise grabbed the dry erase board hanging from the hook on the open window of the food truck. She scrawled "I Can't Believe It's Not Veggie Burger (Comes with Real Burger)" under "Burger of the Day '' and started a pot of coffee. She tossed some change into the lock box she used for cash, dubbed "The Hurt Locker" for times when profits were suffering. She stowed the lock box under the lawn chair propped up in back. She zipped up her leather jacket and poured herself a cup of coffee before the pot was done brewing.
Louise plopped down in the lawn chair and set her laptop on her legs, scrolling through her course work.
As the lights in the shops and apartments along Ocean Avenue turned off for the evening, the sign on the door of Bob's Burgers was flipped to "closed." Louise watched Linda slip through the door to their upstairs apartment. Bob locked the door to the restaurant before turning on his heels to make eye contact with his youngest daughter. Louise looked back down at her laptop a little too slowly as her father walked to the back of the food truck and knocked on the door.
"Dad! Help! There's this creep with a mustache trying to kidnap me."
"Oh my God. Let me in, Louise."
She grumbled as she unlocked the back door to the food truck. Bob let himself in and took a seat on a plastic crate by the door. He sat down slowly, the pain in his back increasing with his hunched position. He was starting to gray around the temples and he'd put on a few more pounds around the waist.
"You've been sitting outside of the restaurant for half an hour."
"I make money sitting out here all the time," Louise said, messing with the ears on her hat. She'd taken only to wearing her Ears on particularly cold nights. She'd been known to carry them on her person, often tucked in her jeans pocket. A practice she'd started around the time she'd reached middle school.
"Teddy stopping by to get a burger on this way home doesn't count."
"Okay, okay. I'll go work the corner for money," Louise said, pulling her Ears down further over her head, hair frizzy and loose around her shoulders. "Think I look okay like this? I'm not trying to win Miss New Jersey or anything, but I don't think the really lonely men will mind."
"Don't talk like that," Bob gave an exhausted sigh as Louise abused the strained apartment WiFi to log into Chowster and post the food truck's location for the night.
At first, the food truck had been a point of contention in the Belcher Household. Louise was of the belief that Bob still had Post Truck-matic Stress Disorder from when he'd requisitioned a food truck on poor judgement and little money, Lolla-Pa-Foods-A saga notwithstanding.
Deep down, she knew her father had begrudged her decision to run a food truck. Thirteen years apparently wasn't enough recovery time. That and the threat of Louise spending her meager college fund and savings from her old job at Wonder Wharf on a food truck didn't do anything to encourage positive feelings. But Bob knew his daughter well enough to know she was going to do what she wanted anyway, parental interference be damned.
Louise had proven her seriousness when she did the legwork. She shopped around for a reasonably priced, barely running food truck. She talked down Teddy and some of his pals to negotiate the work to get the truck running. She got the food permits, licenses, and an insurance policy.
Louise didn't hesitate to use the insurance policy as an argument in her favor whenever Bob tried to counter her progress with another "Lolla-Pa-Foods-A lecture." Louise was never remiss to remind Bob that one day she wanted to take over the restaurant. She waxed poetic about all the work experience and management skills it would give her, a new perspective the restaurant couldn't.
When Louise got Linda on her side, it was all over. Bob had no reason good enough not to give in, even as he continued to argue against it all the way up until the first night Louise took the food truck out for its maiden voyage.
The matter of Louise operating a food truck by herself, into the hours of the early morning, was an entirely different argument that had been much harder for her to win. She still wasn't completely sure she had her parents convinced. Yet here Bob was, encouraging her to spread her wings and get her money's worth out of her passion project.
It started when Bob agreed to let Louise go outside of the neighborhood and away from Wonder Wharf proper, so long as Zeke was with her. They had some security measures installed on the truck "just in case." Teddy installed double locks on the front and back doors. The secondary security measure was the fact that Louise Belcher didn't live her life in fear.
Zeke began to take more shifts at the restaurant to cover the hours Louise missed while she was cruising around Seymour's Bay in Bob's Burgers 2.0. Two people in the food truck proved to be less sustainable than Bob had hoped. Zeke had another job at Glencrest Yacht Club. Bob needed the extra help in the restaurant and he knew Louise wasn't going to give up the food truck. He also knew Zeke wasn't going to quit his second job. When it came down to it, Louise needing a partner in crime seemed to be more of a convenience than a necessity.
Bob relented once more, but not before he talked to Officer Julia and Sergeant Bosco on the sly. He wanted to make sure someone was looking out for his daughter. What Louise didn't know wouldn't hurt her. What Bob may not have considered was his aggression prone daughter being the one to stir up trouble, not skeevy patrons.
Despite Louise's commitment to her food truck and her overall lack of enthusiasm as the first semester of her junior year drew to a close, she wasn't as on her own as she made herself out to be. She knew it, too. Nearly everything in her inventory was supplied by the restaurant. Her only independent contributions were the poutine and slices of pie exclusively served at the Bob's Burgers mobile location.
While her parents and Zeke were down in the restaurant for the morning shift, Louise would be upstairs in the apartment, baking pies from scratch and catching up on the course work that spilled over from the night before. In the afternoon she'd work her shift in the restaurant, then dip out a few hours before close to patrol the streets in her food truck. She'd stay out until the early hours of the morning.
Louise set her laptop to the side, took a swig of her sugar laced coffee, and dug the keys out of her pocket. Bob got up off the plastic crate with a groan and shuffled out of the vehicle. Louise locked the back door behind him and watched him slowly amble toward the apartment.
She crossed her fingers as she put the keys into the ignition, praying the engine would turn over. When the truck started, she murmured small words of praise to 2.0 as she drove down the street. She drove until she found herself downtown in front of the Lucky Lizard a few yards down from a shitty taco truck.
Weekends outside of bars were always the best profits. Bar flies came out of the woodwork buying food before they went into the bars. An ancient remedy to stave off easy drunken-ness. Others bought food on the way out to temper their foggy alcoholic oblivion.
A steady stream of bar flies had graced Louise with their business. She took it as a personal challenge until the taco truck peeled off for the evening. It was right before last call when the most sloshed and ravenous came to order food in droves.
The youngest Belcher stowed her dead laptop beneath her lawn chair and began to balance the till when she heard a sound she hadn't heard in ages. A vial sound that made her cringe.
"Louise Smellcher!" A declaration, not a question.
Louise proceeded to count her night's earnings and ignore the voice calling for her.
"I know it's you, Smellcher, I can see your stupid four ears."
"What do you want, Logan?" Louise asked in a dismissive tone.
"I just wanna chat," he hiccuped as he approached the food truck. Louise stood up and crossed her arms. Logan wasn't alone.
"Hurry up and order, bro. I gotta piss."
"Shut the fuck up, Scotty, I'm having a conversation."
"Fuck you, man," Scotty mumbled and stumbled down the alley by the bar. Louise could hear the stream in the background, Scotty just barely out of sight.
"Okay, buh-bye now, bye." Louise said in a baby voice as she waved Logan off. She reached for the metal slatted door above to cover the service window.
"Wait! I wanted to order something," drunk Logan sputtered.
"What was that sound? Is there someone out there? " Louise put a hand to the side of her pink bunny hat, mimicking an attempt to hear better.
"It was me, Smellcher. I was talking," Logan replied, slurring a little too long on "talking."
"Talking? You do that on purpose? And people actually listen?" Louise sniped.
"Can it, Smellcher. What kinda fries you got?"
"Get me some, too," Scotty shouted from the alley.
"Are you still pissing? That is not healthy, man," Logan shouted to his companion.
Louise pulled the door halfway down over the service window before Logan turned around to face her again and mumbled something in protest. "Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you." Louise slowly continued to pull the door down, enjoying how much she was irking Logan in the process.
"Do you want my damn money or not, Smellcher?" Logan said into the inch of space left between the door and the counter top. He was standing on the balls of his feet, trying to get closer to what little of the window there was still open.
"Fine," Louise said, opening the service window again, "but you're paying double. Consider it an inconvenience fee."
Logan muttered something about two burgers. Louise started up the grill. She took another sip from a bottomless cup of coffee. She pulled her pink hat down over her head just a little more to combat the cold November night. Right as the burgers began to sizzle on the flattop, she heard a sound outside her truck. A sound suspiciously similar to the one she'd heard in the alley moments before.
Louise turned her back to the grill and stuck her head out the service window. There was Logan Bush, in his full glory, pissing on the back tire of the food truck. Her food truck.
Louise reached over to the condiment rack beside her and with painstaking precision she lined up the bottle so that Logan was in her crosshairs. "Hey, shithead! What do you think you're doing?" she shouted. He turned his head to look at her as she squirted a stream of ketchup at her target.
The look of disbelief on Logan Bush's face was well worth the misfortune of running into him.
"That's so mean," Scotty slurred, having emerged from the alley. "Why are chicks so mean?"
Logan's incredulous look morphed into a glare, "You are dead, Louise Belcher!"
"I feel like I've heard that somewhere before," Louise looked around for show, setting eyes everywhere except the place Logan was standing, "but I 'cantaloupe' my finger on where."
"I'm gonna find my way in there and when I do-"
"You might wanna zip yourself up first," Louise cut her nemesis off. She turned back to the grill to flip the burgers.
Logan looked down. He was all the more fuming that his adversary was getting ample humor out of his embarrassment. "Shut up," Logan ordered weakly.
"So, do you want the damn burgers or not?" she asked. "Cause, I already got them on the grill."
"Yeah!" Scotty shouted. Logan glowered at his friend and pulled out his wallet.
"Okay, cough it up, Bush," the pint-sized Belcher slid over to the other side of the food truck and stood on her tiptoes to reach down through the service window. Logan dug through his wallet and produced some cash. "Double," Louise said, as if lecturing a child.
"Fuck, no!" Logan said.
"Inconvenience fee," Louise reminded.
Logan took out a few more bills and begrudgingly placed them in Louise's outstretched hand, "You're lucky I don't yank you out of that damn truck."
"Yeah, well that costs extra." Louise rolled her eyes. Logan gave her an amused grin. "Cute," she responded at his facial expression.
That killed his grin.
As Louise finished grilling up the burgers, she listened to a drunk Logan yell at an obliterated Scotty to "not call her" and "remember why you broke up with her." Louise came back to the service window with burgers wrapped in foil. Logan was leaned up against the side of the truck like a sullen teenager. A sullen teenager with ketchup in their hair.
Louise cleared her throat and watched Logan jump at the unexpected sound. He glared at her. She smirked and passed the food down to them through the service window.
Logan and Scotty were only a few steps down the street, already digging into their burgers when Scotty loudly accused, "You're only acting like a jerk to get her attention. You think she's cute."
"Yeah, Logan, you think she's cute," Louise called out from behind them, only her eyes and pink bunny hat visible through the service window.
"This isn't over, Smellcher. You better watch it." Logan threatened.
"It seems pretty over to me," Louise threw back at him. "By the way, I forgot to ask if you wanted some fries with your ketchup."
"Burn," Scotty cackled as he pointed to his best friend.
Logan stormed off down the street, Scotty following behind him laughing and claiming he was sorry.
Seeing Logan seething like that put a huge smile on her face. She felt like a mischievous kid again.