Welp the official bob’s burgers account tweeted this, sooooo, I guess that kinda immediately ends any ambiguity as to what the platonic friends joke in the new episode meant lol.
Characters/Ships: Louise Belcher/ Rudolph “Regular Sized Rudy” Steiblitz
Description: When Louise hears that Rudy's father is still making him spend his Saturdays in the Juice Caboose, she decides to do something about it.
Alternative Links: (AO3)
A/N: This idea came to me after watching both 'My Girl' and 'Bridge to Terabithia' within a relatively short time of each other. But don't worry. Both make it out alive just fine in this.
Rudy sat on the hard floor of his Saturday morning cell, the juice caboose, lonely and without any proper stimulation. Every week, he tried to put a positive spin on it. At least he got all the juice he could possibly want, right? Plus, it was a nice time to get his weekend homework done, while nearly all the other kids in his class waited until Sunday night and had to rush to finish. So, yeah. He could still manage a smile and maintain his politeness when boarding the train.
At the moment, however, he couldn’t be any more bored.
Rudy emptied the last bit of grape juice from its box and threw it at the wastebasket. When he missed, he let out a small groan, walked the few steps it took to grab the empty box, returned to his spot, and tried again. He repeated it a few more times, never making a basket until he saw something fly past the corner of his eye.
Interest peaked, he turned to investigate and found a paper airplane had landed on the floor. He was almost too excited for the break-in his monotonous trek around the lake, he hurried toward the plane, and unfolded it. A hastily written message was scrawled out on the page reading: ‘Prison break! Go to the window. -LB’
His breathing labored a bit with excitement, so after taking a puff off his inhaler he rushed over to the open window and saw his best friend, Louise, riding her bike alongside the train.
“Louise!” He called out happily. “What are you doing?”
“Ugh! Didn’t you read the note? I am busting you out of there!”
“But I don’t have anything to climb down with.”
“I got you covered, buddy.” She takes one hand off the handlebars of her bike and shrugs off her backpack. “Move your head away from the window!” Louise ordered, preparing to throw the bag.
Rudy did as he was told and a moment later the backpack flew in through the window on her first try. Damn. Her aim was most certainly better than his. He opened the bag and wound up pulling out a long rope ladder.
“You got it?” He heard Louise yell.
“Yeah!”
“Then hook it on the bottom of the window and climb down!”
Rudy was about to follow her instructions when something suddenly occurred to him. “Hold on a minute!” Rudy rushed out of the bathroom and grabbed his own backpack. He then ripped out a clean sheet of paper from one of his notebooks, wrote a quick note, then placed it on the floor where it could easily be found.
Ready to go, Rudy went back over to the window, hooked the metal part of the ladder over the bottom edge, and threw the rest of it over to dangle outside. He then gripped tightly onto the rope and climbed out of the window. He tried to take one step at a time as gracefully as he could, but the swaying of the ladder made it hard. Thankfully he managed to finally make it to the bottom and stepped off.
“So you can climb down a ladder out of a moving train, but can’t climb off a bunk bed without breaking your arm?” Louise asked when she stopped her bike next to him and planted her feet on the ground.
“Yeah, well…” He scratched the back of his head, not really having an explanation for it.
“What took you so long anyway?”
“I had to leave a note for Ethan saying I was okay and that I’d be back.”
“Oh, crap.”Louise face-palmed. “I don’t know how I forgot about him. Will he get you in trouble?”
“No, I don’t think so. He’s been super nice to me ever since the last time you were here. I think he feels a lot of remorse for what he did to Bean Bag.” Rudy frowned at the thought of his poor old friend who was torn apart. “What made you want to come to bust me out anyway?”
Louise shrugged casually. Really, she felt bad when he told her the other day that his father still dragged him on these wine train trips and had to spend a significant amount of his Saturday alone with nothing to do. She wouldn’t care if it were anyone else. But Rudy was always so nice about everything and rarely ever complained. His weekends should be better than this. Louise, however, was not about to reveal the soft spot she had for him. “Today was one of the few Saturdays I have off from working at the restaurant while Tina and Gene don’t. I got bored, thought I’d spring ya. No big deal.”
“Well, thanks for thinking of me! I don’t know how many more times I can go around Lake Waste Water without losing it.” He said gratefully.
Louise got off her bike and grabbed Rudy by the wrist to look at his watch. “Looks like we have about two and a half hours to get you back. What do you want to do?”
“Anything! I’m up for just about anything.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Hey, Louise! Look what I can do!” Rudy called for his friend’s attention from a low branch of the tree they were climbing. When she directed her attention to the boy about 15 feet closer to the ground than her, she saw him shift his weight and fall backward, dangling from the branch by his legs.
“Neat.” She commented, not really that impressed. Dangling was the easy part. “Just don’t crack your head open.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.” He sounded a little less sure of himself now that he didn’t quite know how to pull himself back up. “But everything looks pretty cool upside-down. You should try it!”
“It’s cooler up here, Rudy. You should focus on getting right-side-up again and get up here.”
“Uh, yeah. Okay.” He swung back and forth, trying to gather enough momentum to pull himself back up. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t manage it. “Uhhhh, Louise?”
She let out a groan. “You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little bit.”
Louise groaned again, this time longer and more frustrated. Partly because he needed help, but mostly because she found herself willing to give it. “Fine. Just hang tight.”
“I’m hanging on as tightly as I can!”
The strain in his voice urged Louise to move faster as she descended down the tree, fearing he would fall and seriously injure himself. That’s all that kid needed. Thankfully she had climbed enough trees to be sure-footed going down. When she eventually reached the branch he was hanging on, she extended her hand to grab one of his and hoisted him back up.
“Woah, head rush.” he breathed out as he wiggled on the branch to right himself. “Thanks, pal.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get gross on me.” She said, rejecting the idea of a moment too mushy for her liking. It wasn’t much of anything, but she had a badass reputation to protect here! With how sweet she knows Rudy can be, she had to stop it before it started. “Now come on. We gotta get to the top.”
Rudy looked up the trunk of the tree and realized there is quite a far way yet to go. “Uh-well… okay, I guess.” His voice sounded a little unsure.
“Just stick close by. I’ll even slow down for you.” She stuck true to her word, stopping at every branch to wait for him to catch up. She even held in a groan when he needed to take a break for another puff on his inhaler. Slowly and surely, they finally climbed their way to the top.
Rudy pushed back some of the smaller branches in their way. When he caught sight of all that was around them, his mouth dropped open. It wasn’t that marvelous a sight, Louise thought. She could see the expanse of treetops that surrounded them, the lake, The Warf- nothing you couldn’t see from the top of the Ferris Wheel. There weren’t any people on the ground she could get excited to be towering over and mock. Really, all she appreciated was the accomplishment. She knew that Rudy did too, which is what made her so determined to make sure he did it. Her friend deserved more experiences like this. So when she saw the look of joyous wonder on his face, Louise had to turn her head to hide a smile.
They sat there for a while, Rudy excitedly pointing to all the cool things he could see, but eventually, Louise realized it had been a while since they left the train. Quickly, she grabbed Rudy’s wrist again to check the time. “Crap! We need to go now if you are going to make it back in time.”
“Aw, really?”
“Yes, really! You took too long climbing.” She grumbled, already starting to make her way back down.
~*~*~*~*~
“That was fun, but I’m sorry for being such a slowpoke.” Rudy apologized when they made it back to the train tracks.
“Stop being such a push-over, Rudes. It’s not like I was expecting Spiderman anyway.”
He gave a chuckle and shrugged. “I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“It was still a good time,” Louise assured him, nonchalantly. Then she gave him a punch on the arm that was meant to be friendly but wound up being a little too hard. Thankfully, he knew her and where it was coming from. “Maybe next time we can build a fort or something instead.”
“Next time?” The hopefulness to his voice was unmistakable.
“Uh-yeah. Sure. If I am confronted with another boring-ass day, I could make it out again.” Louise took a few extra seconds getting situated on her bike, afraid to see a look of disappointment on his face over her lack of enthusiasm. She couldn’t let herself show that she was honestly excited about the idea of more of these adventures. Not unless she was willing to reveal the fact that she enjoyed her time with more than she did with most people (the only exceptions being her family). When she finally looked at him, however, he looked as pleased as ever.
Her heart melted -just a tiny itsy bit- and she kind of hated him for it. Her hand was twitching to slap him across the face, but she didn’t. Instead, Louise brushed it off as much as she could and turned the conversation toward the train starting to pass.
“Alright, here’s your ride. You think you can grab hold of the ladder?”
Rudy put up his hands and shifted his weight from foot to foot, readying himself. “I got this!” They waited while each compartment passed, and when the Juice Caboose neared, he started to count off. “One, for the money. Two, for the show. Three, to-”’
“RUDY JUST JUMP!” Louise yelled, cutting him off before he missed it.
He did as he was told and leaped with all his might toward the back of the train and landed with an ‘oomf!’ on the small platform. After a short breath of relief, he moved to grab the ladder and climbed it as awkwardly as he had climbed down. But he was alive-at least he was alive. ‘I’d like to see Spiderman do that’
“Yes! You did it!” He heard Louise cheer.
Once he was able to crawl back into the train, he grabbed her backpack and returned to the window so he could roll up the ladder and stuff it back into her bag. He then tossed it out to her, and she brought her bike to a halt to pick it up.
“Thanks for breaking me out! See you at school!” He called out with a wave.
“Yeah, see ya, buddy!” She waved back as watched him ride off ahead of her.
~*~*~*~*~*~
A/N: I am CONSIDERING making this into a series. But, as always, I can't promise anything.
Anyway, any like, reblogs, or comments are greatly appreciated!!!
I love whenever a BB fanfic taking place in the future has Rudy be really tall but Louise grows up to be a very short adult, it’s so perfect for both of their characters and if I had the power to make only one fanon thing canon I would pick that in a heartbeat.
If I had a nickel for every time a louwheeze/roudise fic had Louise become the surrogate mother to the daughter of another character. and said daughter ending up feeling like she’s not her real daughter. I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice right?
in the first fic I read it was the daughter of jessica who died in childbirth or something before the fic’s events
and in the second fic it was the daughter of chloe barbash and rudy, chloe leaving said child and divorcing rudy when the girl is young.
fanfics are wild sometimes.
