adawritesfic | This moment's darling

Lan Xichen hadn’t meant to do it: to steal his didi’s boyfriend.

He of all people knew what it was to do, quietly, the reprehensible on purpose. He knew, at nineteen, the exact number of hearts he’d broken, of attachments he’d severed, of egos he’d wrecked, all in service of bolstering his own. Or so a therapist would say, or so he imagined. He himself knew the truth: his ego needed no bolstering. All he had to do in order to stroke it was to look in the mirror, whether that mirror be made of glass, reflecting to him his incomparable visage, or made of the words he wrote, reflecting to him his own brilliance. No. He did what he did, he committed his acts of quiet reprehensibility, for the sake of art. Where Lan Wangji was an artist of ivory and ebony keys, drawing from them strains and streams of glory and beauty, Lan Xichen was an artist of the human psyche, drawing it to its utmost lucidity—to its taut extremity—to the point of death. And he played it, this fine instrument of his, with as much love, and more, loving kindness, as Lan Wangji played the piano.

From the next part of Sonata Pathétique.