What John found

It’s always been there.

As long as he can remember, as long as he thought to wonder what it was, as long as he realized that he couldn’t define it–because you can’t name something you’re missing when the only thing you know about it for sure is that it isn’t there.

He’s tried, of course.

Spent quiet moments with his eyes closed tight, exploring the edges of the void inside of him, desperately willing it to reveal its shape. Spent years running headlong into the things he was sure would ease the ache (hot sand and wind and gunfire and blood and danger and pain and death), scooping them in greedy handfuls into the chasm inside of his chest, only to find the emptiness even less bearable when it found him again. Spent evenings and nights and mornings making friends with the hollowness, deciding if he could live without whatever it was he didn’t have. He thought maybe he could.

He was wrong.

Spread out on the bed, fine linen soft and cool on his flushed skin, short fingers tangled into inky curls as Sherlock presses slowly into him–John Watson gasps out a sigh at the ceiling.

Sherlock finds John’s mouth with his own, pale fingers trailing up his ribs and tunneling under his torso and up around his shoulders. John winds his legs around strong thighs, hips rising to meet each slow thrust, moans swallowed by hungry kisses…

And this, John thinks, this is what it feels like to be whole. A lifetime of emptiness finally banished forever when the missing piece slotted itself into place, tumbling headfirst into what eases the ache (hot skin and breath and heartbeats and sweat and excitement and love and life) inside him.

He didn’t know what he was missing.

Until he found it.