Author's Note: I wrote this for heretherebefandom on tumblr. We were paired together for the Johnlock gift exchange and have been exchanging fun ficlets ever since. My prompt was anything Post-Reichenbach, so here we go!

Warning: Spoilers, obviously, and massive feels.

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John kept waiting for it to get easier.

On the one-year anniversary of the death of Sherlock Holmes, he found himself standing in the precise spot he'd stood in after his funeral, the spot in front of the cool, black marble that had Sherlock's name chiseled into it.

The ache was the same. Deep, sharp and throbbing in his chest with every pulse of his heart. The coldness that crept across his skin like icy fingers was the same, a stark contrast to the hot tears he refused to acknowledge even as they rolled down his cheeks. The questions he screamed in the back of his mind were the same. They were practically a mantra to him now. Why did he do it? Why did Sherlock say those things to him, and why did he kill himself?

Why, oh why, did he smash John's heart into a thousand pieces and then leave him without any hope of ever putting it back together again?

One full year later, the pain was every bit as powerful as it had been the very first day.

John was beginning to think it would never get better.

He reached out and smoothed his fingers over the cold stone. Sherlock lay beneath it, packed up tightly in a mahogany coffin. He was probably rotting by now, shriveling away into something John would find disgusting. The thought sent another jolt of pain into him, adding to the steady thrum of it that always lay just beneath the surface of his skin.

He'd left roses on top of the tombstone. Long, deep red ones that looked like blood. They were stunning against the black stone, but their beauty was lost on John.

"I miss you," he whispered to no one. He cleared his throat and fought back a fresh wave of tears. "I miss you so much, I just—" He exhaled a shuddering breath. He wished it weren't such a beautiful day. The sky was clear and the deepest, loveliest blue, so rare for England this time of year. It was unseasonably warm, and the sunlight felt good on his skin. The trees around him were bursting with new spring leaves, and the grass was plush and crunched pleasantly under his shoes.

He hated it. It needed to be raining, lightning, thundering with the force of his emotions. The wind needed to knock him right off his feet, sweep him up into the air and toss him end over end until he forgot what gravity was. Just like Sherlock had.

"You don't know what you did to me, Sherlock," he murmured as his fingers continued to stroke the cool marble. He slowly traced the groves of Sherlock's name. He'd wanted to touch his face like this so many times. He had to wonder why the hell he hadn't done it, why he hadn't scooped him up and buried his nose in his soft curls while he'd had the chance. "You ruined me, Sherlock. You took me apart piece by piece, examined every inch of me and then put me back together again in whatever order you liked. You made me a different person, a better person, and you wrecked me at the same time. I made room for you in my heart, and now there's nothing but this giant, ragged hole and nothing to fill it. How could anyone ever take your place?"

His voice broke, and he passed a weary hand over his eyes. He needed to say this. He remembered the words he'd said to Sherlock the day Mrs Hudson and he had visited the grave. They seemed so inadequate now. There were things that needed to be said aloud, to be shouted into the void, and even if no one would ever hear them, and Sherlock would never know he'd said them, he still had to do it.

"I loved you," John's voice was no louder than a breath. "I loved you, and I never said a word. I was a fool and a coward, and I can never apologise enough for letting you die without ever knowing how I felt about you. How wonderful you are. How daft and maddening and infuriating and brilliant. I should have told you every fucking day that you were the most magnificent human being on the face of the planet, and I could have spent a lifetime happily by your side."

His knees buckled unexpectedly, and he let himself fall, breathing hard. It was drowning him, the sheer agony of it. He'd never forgive himself. "I would have done it, Sherlock. I would have stayed with you for so long as you'd have me, and no matter how hard you pushed me away, I never would have let you go."

He turned shakily around and leaned his back against the headstone, pressing himself to it like he'd wanted to press himself against Sherlock.

"There were times when I hated you," he continued in that same soft stone. "There were times where you made me so furious, I almost left. I almost threw my arms up into the air and said sod this. No flatshare in the world is worth this insanity. I was kidding myself, of course. I never could have gone through with it. You were my oxygen and my heartbeat. You kept my feet on the ground even as you constantly knocked them out from under me."

He drew another shaking breath and closed his eyes. "So why did you leave me? How could you do this to me? You knew how I felt about you. You bloody well knew. I could see it in the way you looked at me, the way you caught me staring and smirked. You had to know what your death would do to me, what it would reduce me to. But, of course, you were a selfish wanker right to the end. You went and killed yourself without a thought for the people you were going to leave behind. Without a thought for me. How am I supposed to carry on with without you? Am I supposed to be grateful for that final phone call you gave me? Was that supposed to make it better? It didn't, Sherlock. Nothing can make it better, and now I'll never see you again."

He fell silent and opened his eyes only to stare at nothing. The pain was throbbing inside him, pounding in his head and buzzing in his ears. He didn't know how he would ever get up from this spot. Maybe he would just stay here, right here, and waste away six feet above the man who'd murdered him in every sense of the word.

But he didn't. John was stronger than that, albeit not by much.

He climbed to his feet, brushed the grass off his jeans and turned back to the grave.

"I'll see you next year, Sherlock."

He trudged slowly out of the cemetery without ever looking back.

…

That night, he lay in bed in his tiny flat in Devon and thought about the same thing he'd thought about every night for a year: Sherlock. His mental image of him was always sharpest when he was halfway between wakefulness and dreaming. He could picture him perfectly: his preternaturally pale skin and sharp, keen eyes. His shock of black curls. His long fingers and the grin that he so rarely allowed to grace his features. His long limbs and the way he looked when he was fully absorbed in a case, oblivious to everything and everyone around him.

John groaned and buried his face deeper in his pillow. Why hadn't he done something sooner? He might have saved him if he'd only let Sherlock know how precious he was.

What would it have felt like to hold him in his arms, to lie next to him in bed and feel him pressed against his back, his long arms thrown over John's waist? He fancied he could feel it now. His brain conjured up a dream Sherlock for him, one that was slowly opening his bedroom door, studying him through the gap. It was late. John's mind spun off into a narrative: Sherlock had stayed up to finish an experiment, and now he was trying to surreptitiously climb into their bed. He thought John was sleeping and didn't want to wake him. In his dream, John kept his eyes shut and his breathing even, feigning sleep. It was rare for Sherlock to do anything considerate, and so he didn't want him to know it was futile.

He heard soft footsteps pad over to the other side of the bed and heard springs creak as someone lowered themselves onto it. The next thing he knew, a warm chest was pressing against his back, just as he'd imagined moments ago. He snuggled back into dream Sherlock, making content snuffling noises.

A finger stroked lightly down his cheek, and then a warm voice was at his ear, no more than a tickling breath, "I'm so sorry, John. I never meant to hurt you."

But he was already too deeply asleep to process dream Sherlock's words. For that one moment, however, when he was warm in bed and thought Sherlock was still with him, the pain wasn't so unbearable.

…

He had to wake up sometime, and when he did, he was forced to recognise the dream for what it was. Sherlock was still dead. He was still alone, and nothing was going to change that.

He rolled onto his back and bit off a sob. It hit him full force, just as it did every morning, and he shuddered beneath the force of it. Maybe today would be the day he finally shattered.

But then John froze.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turned his head to the side until it was facing the place where his dream Sherlock had laid.

On his pillow—the pillow he resolutely fluffed and left next to him every night along with the space for a body that would never occupy it—was a single red rose.