Jay looked at him—eyes wide, searching, blinking once, twice—but said nothing.
“I’m Logan,” Logan offered, gently pointing to himself, keeping his movements slow, careful. “And this,” he gestured toward Adrian, “is Adrian.”
Adrian gave him a warm smile.
“You want to color with us?” he asked, reaching into his bag and pulling out a thick coloring book lined with cartoons and wild shapes, then unzipping a pouch overflowing with markers and colored pencils.
Jay’s gaze fell on the pencils, and for a long moment, he just looked, eyes filled with curiosity. Then he nodded.
But he started watching them longer. Holding onto the toys they brought. Sleeping with the green stuffed turtle clutched to his chest. Waking before dawn to wait by the door, just in case they came.
And slowly, the questions started to come, in the form of uncertain words.
“Are you together?”
“But you’re both boys.”
“Where are you going?”
“Will you come tomorrow, too?”
It was slow. Uneven. Sometimes forward, sometimes back.
But with the quiet guidance of the caseworker, and the steady, patient hands of the psychologist and psychiatrist, Logan and Adrian stayed.
Every single day, they returned. No skipped visits. No broken promises.
They brought small gifts, not the kind that overwhelmed or asked for anything in return, but tokens that made the sterile world around him a little softer. A puzzle. A book about the ocean. Adrian’s favorite blanket, still scented faintly like home. A ball for the courtyard. Small things. Steady things.
They sat with him in stiff plastic chairs, kept their voices low, and either played random games or watched cartoons when he was too tired. They didn’t press for words or affection. They simply watched. Waited. And when Jay inched slightly closer, when his fingers brushed the edge of Logan’s sleeve or curled, tentative, around Adrian’s wrist as they handed him a juice box, they noticed, but they didn’t make it into something more than it was. They let him decide how much he gave. And when he said nothing, they didn’t try to fill the silence. They just stayed. Day after day, visit after visit, letting time do what pressure couldn’t. And slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, the edges began to soften. The walls cracked, not in collapse, but in the way that lets light seep through.
Then, just when things had begun to shift, Jay was moved again. Transferred to a children’s psychiatric unit for further evaluation and treatment. It was protocol. Necessary. But to Jay, it was just another abandonment.
Logan still remembered the moment he was told. How Jay had clung to the stuffed turtle, silent and stiff, his small face gone blank, not angry, notdefiant, just…guarded.As if he already understood that this was what had happened. That once he let his guard down, he got left behind again.
They accompanied him through the transition, walking beside the caseworker into a new ward, with new walls and new rules. Adrian gripped Logan’s hand so tightly that the blood had stopped moving through his knuckles. And when it was time to leave—they didn’t.
They stayed.
All day. Until the sky darkened and the hallway lights buzzed low. Until Jay’s eyelids began to flicker with exhaustion and his little body started leaning against the bed like he couldn’t keep himself upright anymore. And even then, before leaving, they promised that they’d be back first thing in the morning.
And they were.
Again. And again.
The caseworker watched. The psychologist took notes. Jay began to respond. With small signs. He no longer flinched when Logan walked through the door. He stopped shoving Adrian’s hand away when he tried to help him with a zipper. More questions came.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Can I keep this?”
“Do you have to leave yet?”
“Can we go play outside?”
And with the caseworker watching, assessing how Jay responded to them, and trusting them, they slowly became his people.
They waited for official approval. It took a lot of navigating the systems and signatures, making the case that they wouldn’t be another stop on the way to nowhere. And during that time, they just kept showing up.They watched Jay begin to test them, not out of malice, but out of history. Waiting for the moment they’d pull back. Waiting for love to expire. And when it didn’t, something in him began to shift.
