Exposed. || swritess_

Sand in the Hourglass

She'd left behind the lingering scent of her perfume in his bedsheets, but it had faded now. So had the imprint of her body on her side of the bed, even though it hadn't been disturbed. Kylo still wouldn't sleep on the side.

He remembered pieces of that drunken Friday. The glass in his hand, repeatedly calling her because he kept forgetting that he already had, an ice-water alarm the next morning.

And he vaguely remembered admitting to breaking his longstanding rule, though he was fairly certain that had just been a dream.

He'd wanted to say it out loud, to confess that he'd let himself love again. But he just couldn't.

Loving her gave him the power to hurt him. Loving her made her vulnerable to him losing her. Loving her put her at risk.

And yet despite that, he still wanted to say it to tell her and confess how he really felt. But he couldn't. Every time the words, those three little words, rose in his throat it burned, stung with an acidity that stopped his lips from moving. A kind of self-preservation, though it felt a lot more like self-sabotage.

It wasn't until Friday that he realized she didn't know. She really didn't know how he felt about her, how he physically ached when she wasn't there, how she had him wrapped around his finger. Never had the mention of another girl made Kylo so nauseous. The idea of being with anyone that wasn't her.

Do me a favor and make sure the next girl knows what you actually mean.

But what really made him so nauseous, what really caused the sinking feeling in his gut, wasn't the idea of being with someone else - though he did still find it revolting. But no, what really made him sick to his stomach was the realization that she might be giving up on him. That the last grain of sand had fallen to the lower half of the hourglass.

Which is why he was now standing at her door.

It was strange coming to her place on a Friday night. She usually came to his place, just like she had a week ago at Kylo's drunken request. It had only been a week but that nagging visual of an hourglass running out of time had gripped him with the kind of dread that wouldn't grant him a moment of peace.

He needed to see you, to try and stop those last few grains of sand from slipping away. That's why he was here outside of her apartment door, one of the few times in his life when he'd been truly nervous. But he swallowed his nerves and raised his fist to knock.

He'd only taken a short breath when he heard a quiet gasp before the door swung open to reveal her standing there wearing a white sweater and an expression of complete shock.

"What are you doing here?"

"Hello to you too."

"Hi," she muttered. "What the hell are you doing here? Better yet, how did you find my apartment?"

"You mentioned this building a lot when you were thinking about moving," he said.

He hoped she wouldn't ask how he knew she'd moved.

"How did you find my apartament number? Did you knock on every single door?"

"No," he said. "It's not very hard to find a resident's address when you built the apartment building."

"Of course you own the fucking apartment building," she spat. "Why didn't you mention that when I told you I wanted to rent here?"

"I could've pointed out every building the First Order owns, but the list is very long."

She glared at him for a second. "Why are you here? I'm assuming you didn't show up just to gloat about your company."

He cleared his throat. "Can I come in?"