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Sunghoon slowly set off down the corridor, trailing a hand mindlessly along the rough walls. The Victorian-looking wallpaper was faded with age, burgundy and pale grey, each side of lined with closed mahogany doors.
The sound that he was blindly following grew louder. Now, he could identify it as the sound of a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, although he couldn't identify the tune. Sunghoon turned the corner and came to a doorway, the door propped fully open. Waterfalls of light spilled from the large windows, giving the room a cozy feel. Peering in, he saw that it was clearly a music room, with a majestic grand piano standing secluded in a corner with an audience of chairs arranged against the far wall. A translucent material was draped over the harp that stood in the centre of the room.
A familiar broad-shouldered, lean figure was seated at the grand piano, his slender hands moving rapidly over the keys in a frenzied dance. He was barefoot, a white dress shirt hugging his slender frame, matched with a dichotomous pair of chinos. His raven-coloured hair was ruffled up around his head as if he’d just woken up. Both of them had identical cardigans that draped over their muscled backs, and the signature red-and-blue lined ties nestled under their collars.
Sunghoon straightened his posture and wiped his face clean of emotion. He walked into the room, the click-clack of his Doc Martens stark on the hardwood floor, startling the one seated at the piano, causing the cascading euphony of notes to cease and silence to hang heavy in the air once more.
Murky brown irises met the elder’s, and a thousand words seemed to pass between them.
The demiangel’s eyes held so many emotions in them. From afar, mundanes would brush him off as some kind of bambi-eyed wonder; however, Sunghoon thought the elder’s dark brown orbs held the universe and so much more.
Almost impulsively, he stood up from the wooden seat as Sunghoon approached him. Although there was a noticeable height difference, the elder acted sometimes acted as if their roles were reversed. Sunghoon felt butterflies in his stomach as the elder pushed back his hair in a feeble attempt to tame the mess of stubborn wavy strands on his scalp.
Sunghoon's elegant yet unexperienced hands glided over the keys as he tried to recall a melody that he was familiar with on the 88-keyed instrument. He let muscle memory take over, as the first few bars of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake theme resonated in the space between them. However, it soon turned into a rocky dissonant melody that caused a smile to etch itself on both their lips as Sunghoon stopped playing, letting out a muffled cry of embarrassment.
"Ah," Sunghoon started, "Heeseung, I was never good at the piano to begin with-"
The elder interrupted him mid-sentence. "Do you want me to help you?"
Sunghoon's eyes widened by a fraction, taken aback by the brazen straightforwardness of Heeseung that he had yet to get used to. He nodded, and the other took it as an invitation to reposition himself closer to Sunghoon. The elegant curve of his hands ghosted over Sunghoon's, and when they touched, the younger's breath hitched while his heart leaped and danced; the elder was so close that he could feel his breath fan over the exposed skin on his neck.
Sunghoon really tried his best to pay attention to the smooth timbre of the elder's voice, watching the quick, sure movements of his hands across the keys. However, with every passing moment, the recollection of how it had felt to be lifted up by those hands became more vivid in the back of Sunghoon's mind, his strong, muscled arms holding Sunghoon up, and the stars hurtling down around Sunghoon’s head like a rain of silver tinsel.
He must have made some kind of noise, because then Heeseung suddenly stopped talking, his sentence trailing off and an eyebrow raised in a silent question. Sunghoon was rendered speechless as he took in the ethereal beauty of the raven-haired man that towered over him. The atmosphere shifted into something more intimate, as the both of them stared into the depths of the other’s eyes. Sunghoon was the first to move, closing the gap between them as he hungrily pressed his lips against Heeseung's, throwing himself wholly into Heeseung's welcoming embrace.
And they stayed that way for a while, indulging in each other's presence, the impromptu piano lesson long forgotten as the pads of Heeseung's nimble fingers danced a pattern of stars along the piano of Sunghoon's back.
Time seemed to stop as Sunghoon spent another half-hour or so wrapped up in Heeseung's arms once again, whispering sweet nothings to the other, lips occasionally slotting against his, softly, delicately, like butterfly wings, just long enough that he could inhale the other's breath, feel the warmth of his skin, and the taste of the other that lingered long after he had pulled away, like they had all the time in the world. For now, they could pretend. Pretend that their bigger responsibilities as Shadowhunters didn't exist, like their father, Valentine, wasn't the one who left a blazing trail of chaos in his wake.
Instead, Sunghoon let a separate universe open up and swallow him, the two of them against the world.
Heeseung was one of those people that lived by the phrase "actions speak louder than words." Sunghoon sometimes wished that he would just tell him "I love you," every now and then instead of showering Sunghoon with random bouts of affection. Not that he didn't like it. He loved all the attention he received from the demon-angel, but he just wished that Heeseung would be more verbal with him, too.
"You know I love you, right?," Heeseung's voice, smooth as slik, lazily lapped like waves on the shore against Sunghoon's ears, as he pulled away from yet another kiss. It was as if Heeseung could read Sunghoon's mind.
Sunghoon smiled and buried his face in Heeseung's chest as he felt the blood rush up to his cheeks, painting them a bashful shade of cherry-red.
“I love you until the end of the world.”