I opened the door to an apartment that seemed more like my home than mine did. The familiarity of it, the way it looked, the way it felt to be standing in it again, calmed me as I took a deep breath, my nostrils filling with the scent of wood. I walked into the living room, thinking about how many times I had done this, how many times I had taken for granted the man who let me in. I stared at the desk, the fish tank, the couch. The couch was my undoing. It was empty. He was gone. He was gone, and I was here, alone.
I walked to his bedroom, a bedroom that had not even existed until a year ago. My shoes clicked and clacked on the floor as I walked to the nightstand, the ticking as even and steady as if it were a clock, the intervals as drawn out as that of one. His shirt, a blue, thinly striped, button-down sat atop the trash on his nightstand. I picked it up, burying my face in it, pressing it to my heart. I slipped out of my shoes and threw my jacket on the floor with all the additional clothes.
Tears that I hated, tears that I had not been willingly to cry came, pouring down my face, drenching his shirt, but not removing his smell that lingered on the fabric. I looked at the shirt, his smell mixed with my tears. We would always be like that; mixing and mingling, chasing each other in an endless circle. Sometimes, now being one of the sometimes, I wished that the circle would end, and we could stop chasing each other. I wished that I were holding him in my arms instead of the shirt. I wish I was pressing my face into him.
I laid on the bed, covering myself in his sheets, overwhelming myself with his smell. I rested my head on his pillow, pulling the shirt to my chest and pressing it as tightly as I could to my heart, so that wherever he was, wherever he wasn't, he would know that I loved him, like it might make a difference. Maybe if I pressed what he once touched, clutch it with all the strength in my body to my heart that is so full of his love, it'll be like holding a piece of him. But it's not. It's nothing like it.
My eyes, so full of tears, close in exhaustion, succumbing to my tired brain's pleas for rest. My body, so numb with pain, stills, also submitting to my brain's will. My heart, so full of his love, and yet so empty from his absence, is breaking, refusing to surrender to my brain's wish that it would hold together and be strong.
But I can't be strong anymore. He gave me the strength to hold myself together, to hold my tears back. I'm sick of keeping everything inside. These tears on my face, on his shirt, on his pillow, they're for me just as much as him. They're for ever time I didn't cry when I felt like it.
The pain on my face, in my eyes, in my heart, they're for me too. For every chance that came and went for me to tell him I loved everything about him. For every moment I let pass in his company without letting him know how much it meant to me. For every time I looked in his eyes and didn't tell him how beautiful he was. For the second I fell in love with him, and I didn't tell him.
Mulder, if you're out there, and I know you are, hear me now. I'm so sorry for every second that I let slip through my fingers. I love you. I love you. Please hear me. I love you.