A/N: I'm back from my six month hiatus with my new obsession. John's thoughts after the events at Reichenbach. Merry Christmas?
It's not like John expected to spend his entire life with Sherlock Holmes.
It's not like their lives together were peaches and cream every minute of every day, (that would be a blatant lie, and though John had shouldered his fair share of denial in the past week, he wasn't that blinded by his emotions.) Opening the fridge to an assortment of body parts, never being able to find his laptop because Sherlock was always stealing it, and being at the receiving end of his friend's volatile mood swings were just a few of the unpleasant things he dealt with after spending time with the consulting detective.
It's not like when John envisioned the future, he saw himself as an old man, still living with Sherlock and fetching him tea in the evenings. When John daydreamed, he was married, (sometimes to Sara, sometimes not,) living in London, with maybe a few kids and a dog he pretended to hate but in reality liked well enough. He would save lives at the surgery and get together with his rugby and army friends every so often to grab a pint or watch the game. But most importantly, Sherlock would still be around. He'd assist the genius on cases from time to time, and every so often John would convince his friend to have dinner with the Watson brood. (The man would moan and grumble, but somewhere deep down he would come to crave the adoration and familial affection that he had lacked growing up.) John would be a sounding board for ideas, and an admirer of genius. Sherlock would fight the darkness, dancing with the devil and counting on his best friend to pull him back from the brink. And John... well, John would be, in the simplest and most broad sense of the word, happy.
It's not like John expected to spend his entire life with Sherlock Holmes. But as he lay on the cold floor of his flat and stared at the ceiling, not having moved in close to twelve hours, John thought of the consulting detective and almost choked with despair—a future without his best friend was more painful than he could have imagined.