Lockjaw (Joshler)

11. Boot

***Trigger warnings for mentions of past abuse and mentions of self harm/self punishment.***

Start the song. It's Wallflower by Peacock Affect.

Josh was still lingering in the space between waking and sleep when Hoppus came back. Hoppus was supposed to take over Frangipane's shift so she could go home for the night, but she remained since Josh was still holding her hand as he slept, maintaining a death grip without being awake enough to know he was doing so. Even his unconscious didn't want to risk never being able to talk to her again. She understood him. She listened to him. She was genuinely nice to him. That was unbelievably rare for him.

Somewhere in his groggy mind, Josh heard Hoppus offer to help free her hand from Josh's grasp, but he couldn't wake up enough to move yet. If he could, he would probably have tried to smile when he heard Frangipane reply, "No, it's okay. He finally looks calm, so I'm just gonna let him sleep. Besides, I don't want to leave without telling him goodbye. I think he's accustomed to being abandoned whenever people leave. I want him to know that I'm not gonna disappear forever."

"He'll appreciate that," Hoppus agreed, seeming a bit touched by the sentiment. "This kid breaks my heart. He's one of the best people I've ever met, but he has no idea, and he doesn't believe me when I tell him. He doesn't belong in here though. As far as I'm concerned, he served his sentence a long time ago with how much he punishes himself for what he did."

"He's sweet," Frangipane added. "He doesn't act like the rest of the inmates. Ever since I showed up, he's been nothing he respectful to me. I've only gotten him to smile once though. I wish he'd smile more."

Josh felt Hoppus carefully take his free wrist in his hands, looking over the chafing from handcuffs and making sure he hadn't harmed himself in his dad's absence. It made Josh relax even more to think of Hoppus as his dad. There wasn't a single dad on the face of the earth who was better than Hoppus, especially Josh's biological dad, whom he hadn't seen in years.

"You should've seen him when they transferred him here. I didn't see him smile at all for at least a year. He was a lot smaller then too, and he'd been banged up pretty bad by his asshole pervert of a cell mate. That was when he went into solitary. I couldn't even convince him to talk to me until after I'd already been coming to see him every day for a month or so. At this point, I'm pretty much prepared to move him into my house when he gets out in June. He's been my kid for too long for me to let him go somewhere I can't protect him," Hoppus told her calmly as he checked the wrist her thumb was softly rubbing too.

"I've heard from a few of the other guards about when he was transferred. You were the one who got him out of that cell, weren't you?" Frangipane asked, and Josh felt her reach out to softly trace a cluster of thick white scars on his forearm, too weighed down by the haze of sleep to react to her touch.

"Yes, ma'am," Hoppus replied without even a hint of pride in that. "Not a day goes by that I don't wish I'd gotten there sooner. I was there before that asshole could do what he really wanted to, but I couldn't save Josh from getting the shit beaten out of him. It still kills me that he didn't fight back. He never fought back in juvie either. I think he could've if he wanted to, but he let them do it anyway. He always let everyone who came at him beat the shit out of him. That's why the thought of him ever getting let out of solitary and released back with the other inmates scares the hell out of me. They'll hurt him out there, and he'll just lie down and take it."

"Punishing himself," Frangipane agreed softly. "He doesn't realize how kind and lovable he is. He thought I was going to be scared of him when I came in here."

"He's not a scary guy," Hoppus replied a bit defensively, seemingly afraid that Frangipane was pegging Josh as someone who actually could pose a threat to her safety.