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Hailey fits in wherever and however she can for her entire life albeit with a tension at times which threatens to break her and has more than she probably realizes even herself. She uses everything she learned as a kid, in that house, as part of that family to stay safe. Tricks and habits she uses to this day.
Using them in an intelligent way, channeling pain and fear she sometimes feels as real as if they were yesterday.
She’s like all the parts of a jigsaw puzzle except for one or two pieces, the pieces that you lose down the side of a couch or which simply disappear into the air, pieces that maybe everyone has missing until they find the person to fit into it.
Garret was that missing piece for a while. She’d fallen in love that first time despite herself, despite the promise she’d made not to fall because it was so cliche.
At least she thinks it was love, maybe in the real world away from ‘Kelly’, it would have fallen apart, sometimes she’s wondered if everything as a child meant love could never happen, not to her anyway, not in the way once upon a time as a kid, she’d thought it would.
Still, whatever it was, it meant something. Till one day someone shook the box and she was without the last piece again.
Sometimes she wonders if she thinks she has to say it was love because that means it was worth him dying. That she owes him that place in her heart.
Whatever it was, the pain made her more determined than ever to not let anyone in again.
Then came Intelligence, and it’s like she’s been a fly on the wall watching herself from above, convincing herself as she warmed to him that it was more a sibling type of love.
Just like her brothers, annoying, loveable, impetuous, fearless. Just like one of her brothers, absolutely petrified of needles too.
Slowly but surely, she allowed herself the love she felt because she told herself, it could never be anything other than platonic, surely by now if it was anything different then just like with Adam and just like with Garret, something would’ve happened to make it not platonic.
It’s incredible the lies you tell yourself in order to avoid facing reality, it’s remarkable how many times they can laugh together, tell each other truths in a way that the other wouldn’t accept it from any other person.
Sincerity and admissions of some things that from anyone else she would know that it means more, except with Jay, she doesn’t allow that thought. He’s just her partner.
Jay always was that missing piece, it’s just Hailey would constantly shift, moving all the time to avoid that feeling like it fit so well.
She’d been the person shaking the box, usually straight after they’d opened up to each other. She was her own security blanket trying not to look at herself in the mirror long enough after each time that she’d have to realize the lies were so big they could fill a book.
Sometimes though it was others shaking the box, maybe sometimes if she admitted it to herself, perhaps one of the others was Jay because Jay’s damaged too, just different ways. Damaged is damaged no matter how you end up there though.
Other times, it was neither of them, the shaking of the box was beyond their control even if actions they took led to it, it was still others giving it the final shake, twice it almost ended up with Jay no longer being part of her life. Permanently.
The first time she thinks she hid it well. Another lie.
The second time she didn’t account for him really and truly almost dying. She hadn’t accounted for no sleep before it happened meaning her defenses were lower. She hadn’t accounted for Vanessa Rojas calling her bluff and this moment of ‘Oh’ that caused every single part of her to look at him differently.
Events after crystalize it all for her, her own loss of self-control - a hardening that even takes her by surprise at first and it all serves to make her realize that far from being alone in her thoughts, Jay's the mirror of her, different in ways that mean they complement each other so that in another universe they could've made it work. The way they look out for each other when the other errs they try to reel the other back in, when the other loses the sense of what keeps them sane, when the other's in danger, when the other needs someone else looking out for them the most. They're the constant, the one who knows almost telepathically that they need to be someplace, look out for them, make them see.
Perhaps she knew this all along, maybe the only difference now is she looks at whatever HaileyandJay is or what it means, honestly. She’s almost sure he knows too, maybe even feels the same way.
It’s almost unsaid, it’s almost like their souls have said to each other ‘Yeah okay, you are the missing piece, let’s just not let these two people we inhabit ruin it all for us’ and in a funny way, she doesn’t mind it at all.
One day it changes. It doesn’t take anything other than a set of circumstances that leaves them back at Hailey’s because of course, she’s the one he goes to when the power cuts out at his apartment.
It just happens. No great declaration, nothing other than talking and talking until there’s nothing left to be said and there's no running from it this time, there's no sense of anything other than the time is right now, their souls trust them now perhaps and there’s no hurry to leave and she leans forward first and the small but certain smile from him is all she needs till she kisses him and that’s all she needed.
She expects the box to shake, every day for weeks afterward, she waits for it to happen, for one of them to wake up and realize it isn’t worth it or worse still, not wake up at all.
Till one day she forgets to wait for it, one day when she's a little older and he's still around and it's no longer just the two of them and she doesn’t have to use the tips and the tricks anymore, not for herself anyway.
It’s easier than she could have imagined and it’s better than a young Hailey Upton could ever have hoped for.