Standard disclaimer, I own nothing, I have no rights to the source material, I'm only a cog in the machine of capitalism so I only borrow Bob's Burgers to amuse myself.
L.B.B
Chapter 1
I guess you could say it all began with those stupid pink ears.
So, I was an angry kid. I liked to do whatever I could to piss off my parents and raise hell. The worst things one could do never really occurred to me because, as my therapist says, I'm not a broken person. Just a little dented here and there.
One of those things that I knew would get me attention- the attention that I craved, according to my therapist- was messing around with people. And the easiest people to mess with when you're a teenager are kids younger than you. So when that tiny nightmare of a child called Louise Belcher waltzed right past me on the steps that day, after already being warned off, I couldn't help it. I grabbed those stupid pink ears off her little head and thus began an enemyship that changed my life forever. At the time I thought I was just goofing off. But she, and life, surprised me.
Louise was hellbent on getting her ears back. The game was fun, at first. She followed me around everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I was stunned when she came to my school, my house, the bathroom… I gotta say, the squirt was impressive. Then I went one step too far and broke her little heart. I didn't really know what I was dealing with yet. But then SHE showed up with a literal BIKER GANG and really freaked me the fuck out.
Mom called her a psychopath. Dad said she simply lacked boundaries and supervision. I found that supremely ironic given my own life. The next time I crossed paths with Louise was the awful "modo time" thing my mother dragged me to in a very ill-advised attempt at bonding with me. It ended with laser tag and a cease-fire between Louise and myself. The brief glimpse at life without being at war with Louise Belcher was nice actually but incredibly short lived; the next time we were in the same place at the same time I got a job at Bob's restaurant for the experience so that I, and by I, I mean my mom, could write about it for college prep course applications. Louise lost her shit. In the end she fired me after making some sort of deal with her dad. The truce was definitely over.
After that, things settled for a little while, until the cantaloupe. Never in my life, not before or since, has a smell haunted me like that. No, not smell. Stench. Funk. Stink. Reek. The miasma of rotten cantaloupe would follow me for nearly a week after Louise threw it out her kitchen window. I probably wouldn't have been quite so angry after it happened if that foetid stench hadn't embedded itself into my pores. I nearly vomited with every breath I took. It lit a fiery rage within, causing me to completely lose what little self control I had and I tormented Louise and her brother until I made them both cry- Gene from giving him the Reverse Norwegian Stink-hold, but Louise out of sheer terror. I surprised even myself with how I was reacting but when I saw actual tears of fear come out of her eyes, I knew I should have chilled the fuck out. Sadly, I didn't know how to back down and walk away yet.
For a long time after that, I let sleeping dogs lie. We avoided each other, mostly, and pretended the other didn't exist. It made the whole thing simpler. A couple of years went by in a stalemate. Then, one night on my way home from a bad date, I saw fire trucks rushing down Ocean Avenue and when I got closer, I could tell it was Bob's building on fire. I don't know what drew me closer, maybe just curiosity or a sixth sense that I could help, but that's when I heard Linda freaking out because nobody could find Louise.
Without thinking, or pausing, or even asking myself if I should, I pulled my jacket around my arms to shield my head and pushed past the Belcher family and firefighters to go barrelling up the stairs into the Belcher apartment.
I never felt heat like that. It was like swimming on the sun. If I had taken even a moment to think. I would have known this was insanity. I could barely see, there was water cascading in the living room window from the truck on the street below, and every breath burned in my chest. I stumbled from room to room, looking for Louise everywhere. Tina's room and Gene's room were easy to locate. The kitchen was obvious and in the middle was Bob and Linda's room. Finding Louise's bedroom was strangely hard and I couldn't figure out where it could be. Out of desperation I began just opening all doors. When I went to open what I guessed was the bathroom door, the knob burned my hand and a little voice told me to not open it, that it would be too dangerous.
I spun around and figured I would try the last door that must be a coat closet by the stairs only to find it was locked. Who the hell locks a closet from the inside? Louise Beatrice Belcher, that's who. With a shove that impressed myself, I broke in and saw Louise in her bed, sound asleep.
No, not asleep. Nobody could sleep through all this noise, this heat. Something was very wrong. I scooped her up into my arms and covered her face with my coat. I didn't want her breathing in any more of this smoke-filled air. As I turned to run out of that hellscape, I saw her stupid bunny ears on her bedpost and knew, as sure as I knew my own name, that she would never forgive me if I left them behind. So I stepped back a couple paces and grabbed those too, shoving them into my back pocket.
With an unconscious 11 year old in my arms and a pocketful of Stupid Pink Ears I started back towards the stairs. About three paces away from the first step I heard a crash and felt intense heat and pressure on my back. Something had given way- the ceiling, the wall, the sky, who could tell- and it hit me. I tucked Louise's body under my chest and wrapped my arms around her head so she wouldn't get hit. The impact knocked the wind out of me and I started what seemed like the worst coughing fit of my life. I don't think I stopped coughing for hours after that. The weight and heat seemed secondary to how badly my lungs burned after all that smoke.
I stumbled down the stairs with my skin burning so bad I knew I had to be on fire, but I needed to get Louise out so I kept moving. I hurt so badly that if I had had the ability to scream, I would have. Then we were out the front door, fire chasing us into the street. I handed over Louise to Bob and let myself fall to the ground, doing whatever I could to smother the flames. Stop, drop, and roll. Thanks, kindergarten class. I guess I retained some of that after all.
The next hour or so was a blur- just struggling to get air into my brain to think was hard enough. I remember my mother losing her shit and screaming at me on the phone. I'm pretty sure I hung up on her. I hovered near Louise for a bit, just to make sure she wasn't dead or anything. The paramedics said she would be okay after some oxygen but they were taking her to the hospital to be safe. They told me I needed to go too, to get my lungs checked out and my back treated. I went but refused to stay overnight. Just being there until 2 am was enough to make my mom lose her mind. Dad met me at the hospital and saw to my care. Louise's too, to my surprise. Then Dad drove me home and I crashed hard on pain meds for a solid 11 hours.
My back… well let's just say I didn't go shirtless for like 2 years after that night. I had a giant burn scar for a long time. I also had nightmares for months- dreams I was locked in Louise's closet and could feel the flames crackling at my skin but I couldn't open the door. I could feel my flesh blister, smell my burned hair, hear the fire chew at the walls but I was trapped. I would wake from these dreams hoarse from screaming. If anyone was within earshot they thought I was dying.
The day following the fire had me escaping my mother's watchful eye and overbearing personality to go back to the hospital; not for me, but to see how the Belcher child was faring. She was asleep when I poked my head in the room, a real sleep this time thankfully, so Bob and Linda met with me in the hallway outside.
Linda was blubbering, unintelligible honestly, a straight mess. Bob was crying too, but he made real words come out. "How can we thank you, Logan? I mean it- anything I can do for you I will. You have no idea what we owe you. I…" He stopped and turned to look at the door behind him, as if he could see through the solid wood at the sleeping girl on the other side. "If we had lost her…" He trailed off again, obviously too overwrought to even finish the sentence.
"Bob, seriously, I'm glad I was in the right place at the right time. I was stupid and reckless but I'm glad she's okay. You don't have to do anything." I tried to make him understand that I wasn't feeling like the bright and shiny hero they were making me out to be. I was simply a dumb kid who made a dumb, rash decision and survived by dumb luck. Would I do it again if it meant saving Louise? Probably. Would I do it for a stranger… less likely. My burns were bandaged but even the weight of my t-shirt on my back was painful and I felt as if I was gasping for air when all I was doing was standing still. Idiot was just one word my mother had used when she screeched at me and I had never felt like I deserved it more. There were fire fighters everywhere, trained and uniformed to do what I had done and do it better.
What possessed me to run into Belcher's Inferno? I still don't know, honestly. But I was sure I didn't deserve the admiration in Mr. and Mrs. Belcher's eyes.
Linda seemed to differ. "No Logan. Until you have a child you can't know what it's like, but one day hopefully you'll understand. I just hope you'll never face the pain of thinking your baby is dead." She began blubbering again after that, a mother's overly-consuming love making it impossible for her to articulate anymore. Bob smiled a little at his wife and wrapped one arm around her shoulders so that she could lean into him and cry. I was slightly jealous of their solid relationship, wishing my parents were a unified team like that.
Turning to go, feeling like they didn't need me to witness such emotional family moments, I was struck with an idea that would end up making my mother happy. "Hey… you know I could use a personal reference to beef up my college applications," I mused. My test scores never got as high as my mother seemed to think they should have been, though I was told they were respectable enough. Maybe if I added a glowing recommendation to my applications my mom would chill a little bit. "Do you think you can write something nice about me- tell the admissions people I'm a good candidate?" Linda was nodding before Bob even spoke.
"I think we can put something together."
In the end, those letters turned an average college application into a shiny gold star. I was admitted to every school I applied to, but one. Mom said Harvard was a long shot anyway and I didn't even want to go there. I only applied to shut her up. I wanted Princeton and that's where I was accepted. For years I joked that admission was just a matter of jumping through some fiery hoops and that I was a little too flammable. It was the easy way to shrug off my scars and bring up my stunning heroism. Eventually I got tired of the fawning and stopped telling the story, but I did keep an extra copy of that letter at my mother's house, in case she needed reminding that I wasn't as useless as she claimed when I exasperated her.