smokin' | louigan

fifty-five

tw: mentions of ptsd/war situations, violence.

----

louise and logan moved to a booth, both fiddling with their thumbs as they stared anywhere else but each others' eyes. she was a tough machine of a woman, but she suddenly felt incredibly frail in front of him, like the piece of her that made up the sarcasm and willingness to fight had been taken away from her.

logan felt like a puddle on the sidewalk, getting stamped into by kids in polka-dot rain boots that laughed as he lost pieces of himself, scattered around him just outside his grasp. 

he blinked and refocused on louise, as she sat in front of him, shoulders slouched forward as her fingers pulled at the ends of her braided hair. he sniffed as she continued to stare at the table. he noted that her eyes looked practically vacant, so distant that he suddenly felt like a tiny spec in her rearview mirror. 

though louise was grasping at her hair to stop from trembling. she'd always been one to immerse herself in work and other tasks to temporarily block out the pain of her thoughts. she's an anxious mess under the peach lip gloss and rebellion; her brain liked to amplify her anxieties until she's crumbled on the floor trying to level out her breathing once more. oddly, the panic started in her fingers, moving to tremble her hands until her entire body was twitching and her breathing subsequently rapid and irregular. 

"i need you to say something," she rasped softly, bringing her hands to shake in her lap away from his view. she still wouldn't, couldn't, meet his gaze. 

"don't know what to say, don't know what to say to make this better, to make us better," he replied just as soft. he had never seen her panic, she'd always managed to escape his grasp just before. he remembered she'd locked herself in the bathroom once for over two hours just to calm down away from him, away from his pleas to let him help. 

"nothing you can say will make what happened better," she started, "this all sucks and it's gonna keep sucking unless we confront what happened. and that starts," she sighed, "with you."

"with me?"

"yeah." he nodded. her voice was frail, lacking it's usual 'explosive' quality, something he'd heard anita once refer to it as. 

"i-uh," he paused to recompose, "after i graduated from high school, my parents sent me off to college to become something...mom wanted me to study business while dad saw me entering medicine like him. i soon realized that my parents are idiots," they shared a small, albeit weak laugh, "so i dropped out after two years. couple months after i was signing papers in an army recruitment office downtown, then came basic training. my dad had left by then which made me want to stay out of oceanside even more. i was gettin' ready to begin infantry training when my c.o. told me i was leavin' for afghanistan.

i thought i would be scared, y'know. the movies only show the gore. it was a lot of training, learning a new language, keeping the peace. i had made friends, even had a girlfriend or two. i was sorta...happy. then, one day, i'm riding out with some other soldiers when our humvee exploded from an i.e.d. the doctors said i was lucky; i only suffered some burns, where some of my friends didn't even make it out alive.

i got sent back home after a month of rehab. i started smoking, y'know, stress relief. then i started getting the nightmares. i almost killed one of my friends, like i did you," his voice trailed off into a broken whisper. louise grasped at her throat gently. he gulped. "i-i was in a rough place, i was off some meds. they made my head feel ridiculous, my words would slur. i'm a jack*ss for not going to my doctor, i know, but after what happened i rushed over there first thing. changed up the meds, now i'm doing okay. well, that's what my therapist said."