❈ Content: For days now, Hwei has noticed your strange distance, even though you seem to be constantly trying to act as if everything is normal. He knows you wouldn’t open up if confronted directly, so Hwei sets his own turbulent colors aside to tend to yours.
❈ Words: ~ 1790
Oh, and I usually use (__) to indicate the space where you can add your name — or whichever name you prefer.
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≫ Masterlist
≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪
By that point, Hwei was already used to your tendency toward isolation when things went wrong. He knew that approaching you directly wouldn’t work; it would only make you stutter and trip over your words.
No, no… He had been with you long enough to understand that overly direct approaches only made you feel cornered, forced to bring into the light words you couldn’t yet shape. He understood you: having an emotion exposed against one’s will was cruelty; it would surface incomplete, misshapen, missing crucial pieces to be truly recognized for what it was.
He needed other paths—ones only the two of you knew. That was why you now stood before Hwei’s new small canvas—nothing but sketches and formless outlines, lifeless promises.
- Why, exactly, am I here, Hwei?
Behind you, he gently placed one hand on your shoulder, the other serving as a measure to check the proportions of certain parts of the future painting.
Because I can’t tell a story without my dear main character…”
Hwei smiled softly at your sigh of surrender; it would never stop being pleasant, that warm feeling of knowing he had someone beside him who saw you exactly as you were. And this was Hwei when the canvases called to him: determined. Passionate. But only when your presence pulled him out of the chaos that demanded release through paint and talent.
Focused on you, concerned for the woman who gave him new palettes with which to color the world, Hwei felt magnetically drawn toward the light. He wanted to reach it, uncover it amid the turbulence of his image-hungry mind, take it not as a captive, but to give it back to you and illuminate in return the heart he had learned to love with such longing.
- So, what are you going to paint?
For a moment, he hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to tell you, but because he was waiting for his heart to fully align with the purpose he had set; silenced emotions are the loudest ones, and at that moment his focus was entirely on trying to hear yours, to tune them back into the melody you were to Hwei—the one that had made him fall irrevocably in love months before. It wasn’t an easy task; often, Hwei’s own colors flared so intensely, so passionately in response to yours, that they were consumed by the same desire to consume yours and possess them.
It was no longer unusual for him to need to bring you back in that sense, and in a way it had become an interesting dynamic: every time you closed yourself off, it became his personal mission to bring you back. And the creative reward for that effort was being able to watch you light up again with your most vibrant, vivid—and captivating—colors. A guide beyond the darkness that constantly threatened his mind and heart.
- First, the one who’s going to paint is you.
With that, he gently took one of your hands and guided you to sit on the small stool already waiting in front of the canvas; confused, but compliant thanks to your trust in Hwei’s schemes, you followed him.
- You know my painting doesn’t even come close to yours, right?
You protested, while Hwei briefly turned away to place some colors onto the wooden palette.
- And second,
He rolled his eyes, giving a light, playful brushstroke to the tip of your nose, blue staining your skin; his low, soft laugh at your expression served as compensation.
- I already know the story. I already know the colors it has. I want to know which ones it has for you.
Now armed with paint and brush, you faced the blank canvas, speckled with the outlines of the sketch Hwei had traced there. Silence willingly stretched between the two of you, until Hwei began to speak:
- It’s all about a bird that never learned how to fly.
Instinctively, your ears focused on the sound of birds scattered across the landscape beyond the wide windows that framed the four walls of the studio. It was comforting—almost envy-inducing—to be embraced by the shifting tones of their songs, markers of their freedom beneath an open sky and a protective nature. The birds that flew through that region seemed oblivious to any threat in the world, because that very world was one they could call home.
Hwei, however, had his attention fixed on something else. Knowing he had yours, he waited as you played with the colors on the palette, mixing small drops together to create new shades; when you found one you liked, you sighed.
- Go on. Why can’t this little bird fly?
Not quite knowing what to do, shyly and distractedly you began letting the brush dance along the edges of the canvas, waiting for Hwei to continue—perhaps to find in his voice some concrete rhythm.
- It’s not just a little bird, it’s one of the noblest birds of those lands. One of the biggest and most beautiful. And it grew up that way because there was a huge family living together in its nest—but no one ever truly saw it.
He waited for you to interrupt, but all you did was lessen the pressure on the brush, letting it slide farther and farther downward, toward where your eyes now rested.
Hwei sat on the remaining edge of the stool beside you, one arm wrapping around your waist in a way already familiar and comfortable to you both; his other hand sought yours on the canvas, enclosing it and guiding with you the tones that followed the brush’s movements.
- And because no one saw it, no one taught it how to fly. But it dreamed a lot, and it worked very hard. It tried to learn how to fly in its own dreams, watching the others fly. But all it ever gained were wounds.
Hwei kept his hand suspended in the air whenever you pulled yours away to change to the next color, receiving it back to continue guiding you along the painting. From your deep silence, he knew your attention was steady enough to let your inner voice have a chance amid the noise of the world: the chosen colors were the sound you hadn’t been able to express, letting them suffocate under tasks, ignoring them as if they were children asking for attention from a busy mother.
- One day, it realized it was alone in the nest. Everyone else had already left. Flying. They crossed the ocean. But it didn’t. It stayed there, climbed down from the nest, and wandered through the forest. It learned how to survive—by walking.
The silence that followed lasted longer than a minute.
With a saddened sigh, you leaned just enough to reach Hwei’s shoulder and rest your head there; immediately, he tightened his hold around your waist to make sure he wasn’t just a spectator. He was there—with you.
You set the brush back into the holder beside the palette. Together, you and Hwei contemplated the painting in complicit silence, letting it speak without a single word.
It was a small canvas, less than fifteen centimeters wide, and if it looked that impressive, you knew it was because Hwei had guided your hand. But to Hwei, the painting’s beauty lay precisely in the opposite: the colors your heart had chosen were exactly what made the scene admirable. Though they weren’t the classic shades of blue a typical artist would choose, the ones you picked laid bare so much of your soul that the shadowed colors within Hwei didn’t dare take the brush to ruin or retouch it just to speak of themselves.
An ocean bathed in a twilight sky now greeted you, brought to life by paint and brush. Nothing else composed the landscape, and yet the depth of the scene held your gaze at the horizon line.
- Is that it? The bird lived unhappily, never learning to fly?
Hwei’s low laugh came with a warm sigh that brushed your shoulder.
- No… It found someone who learned how to bring it a little piece of the sky and the sea. It didn’t need to cry anymore for not knowing how to fly like the others. It realized it could walk without haste—that this someone would bring it sky and sea every day, until it learned how to fly.
As he spoke, he stood up, and his sudden absence at your back left behind an uncomfortable sense of emptiness and cold.
Hwei removed the small canvas from its support and handed it to you.
- Whatever caused this sadness in you, (_), I’ll keep coming back until you learn how to tell me.
You flushed deeply, and that lifted one of Hwei’s eyebrows, amused at the idea that you truly believed you could still hide anything from him with your silence.
I—I… I’m fine! There’s nothing that… How did you… Who told you?
- Your colors, (___).
He said, indicating the freshly finished painting.
- Each one of them spoke about one of the little pieces of your broken heart.
You opened and closed your mouth a few more times, searching for a defense to deny it or an attack to change the subject. But deep down, you knew: Hwei was right. And he knew he was.
(..........)
Now seated on the edge of the bed, the painting hanging above the headboard, Hwei resisted the urge to pull you into an embrace as he watched you nervously stare at your tightly clasped hands in your lap. You tried to hide it, but the discomfort and awkwardness in your attempt to express yourself were evident.
Floor. Window. Books. Ceiling.
Though calm in front of you, the wounded part of Hwei screamed to find yours, to pry it open, to resolve what he couldn’t resolve within himself; he wanted to take your pain alongside his, make them accomplices in the chaos the colors inside him boiled with to spill into the world.
But Hwei waited as you let your gaze drift to every corner of the room, always avoiding his. Finally, after staring at the painting a little longer, he noticed the glimmer in your eyes and knew—you would manage it.
Your eyes finally met his, and nothing could have pleased Hwei more than that simple act of courage; it was the only thing capable of silencing the cries of darkness calling him inward.
Your lips parted shyly, trembling, and he decided to leave for another time the idea of comforting you with a light, welcoming kiss. The last thing Hwei wanted was to silence your mouth—but he would love to drink straight from it the words that trusted him.
His fingers slid over the bedsheet, finding yours, intertwining with them and squeezing gently—the contact of your skin against his serving as a gravitational axis to soften your nervousness; the contact of your skin against Hwei’s serving as a reminder that there was light within him, and that was the only part of himself he wanted to give you.
- I’ve got you, (___). You can try to fly.
≫ ──── ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫ ──── ≪
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The warmth of spring, helping melt the snow to help the spring blossoms bloom but he can easily lose control of himself and can end up burning down entire gardens
I haven’t been able to get @vexgar’s Jhinhwei fairy court au out of my head, so I tried my hand at some fan skins! I went with an Autumn Court Hwei, as I like how the themes work out.
(See under cut for rest of the skin concept and for Jhin’s ‘true’ form.)
🍂 Backstory ❄️
Within the Autumn Court, it is the Artisan Guild’s venerated duty to paint the leaves with ruby and topaz hues. How shameful then that the guild’s crown prince had found himself increasingly drawn to the Unseelie realms the rot and decay.
Secretly, the prince had taken to escaping the bright canopy of the Seelie Court to explore the forbidden forest floor below. One evening, he came across a cobweb lined hollow— where a Winter Seelie toiled over frost gilt creations. The two artists talked through the night, debating and philosophizing over preservation, rot, and the consuming force of time. When the late morning sun filtered through the trees, the Prince realized he would be missed. He fled back to the canopy, returning to his dull courtly tasks. He went through the day even more distracted than usual, impatiently counting down the minutes until he could sneak away.
But he had been deceived, for his new acquaintance was not a Seelie frost fairy, but an Unseelie working hand, obsessed with preserving life and death alike in ice.
The young prince has since vanished, and it is unknown whether he left of his own accord, or was taken. But in one dark corner of the forest, the frost has taken a markedly iridescent hue.
/
I imagine that instead of a halo, Hwei’s wings can change color and position to indicate what spells he’s casting.
I based Jhin’s concept on his Dark Cosmic skinline! So 4 arms and 4 ‘legs’. I also imagine he’s a spiderfey, so doesn’t have wings of his own. He stole them, as much as his disguise as his mask. He keeps them attatched to his body with web and makes it look like the fuzzy back of a moth.
jhin and hwei to me r above all the ideal ship for me despite being terrible to each other
hwei and shen have the ability to make each other better Or worse within their shared repression and hweis willingness to coax feeling out of shen’s decades long facade of his duty
hwei and zed are a public safety hazard because zed would try to turn him into a splatter of paint and blood. if they did talk tho, as hwei wants to, i think it could be interesting
hwei and sett are worlds most awkward fling where somehow the fighting pit boss is the more normal of the two. hwei would be endeared by sett’s attachment to his mother
hwei and viktor r two ends of an emotions are nothing and emotions are everything spectrum. hwei needs to unmask viktor (haha) and make him face his own humanity he claims to be above
hwei and viego interest me in the idea of hwei being able to help viego find closure. working through his delusions from a place of understanding, of underserved kindness. hwei is the more normal one of them here sadly
hwei and pyke r kind of similar to above to me. can art touch a wraith? can art touch a heart that has long since stopped beating?
hwei and ezreal r like yeah here’s 30 year old oomf. i’m joking there’s lots of potential here i just can’t put it into words rn. but like. hwei can make ez face the emotions he’s running from
hwei and vlad is mostly just me wanting to see hwei in the hands of a hemomancer because i’m deeply not normal but im sure there’s emotional significance here. writer said that he’d probably be in trouble in noxus and… yeah i see that
trad goth hwei could save me i think. not enough people acknowledge how he wears makeup in canon. he’s good at it in his splash too. i think he would look so good with the white foundation and sunken eyes and ughhhh
“The hands that cradled your face are soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood.”
“But they cradled me, yes?”
...
Item is in my shop! It has options for shirts, stickers, prints, and more!
(See below for reverse!)
Wow was this a challenging piece. I love the idea of the romantic/mundane moments during the Koyehn era paralleling more angsty moments post reunion. Huge thanks to @chopshajen for helping me out with Jhin's anatomy. The human form is not my strong suit and this would not have turned out this well without their help.
While "no reposting" is true for all of my art pieces- given Twitter's more recent updates- ESPECIALLY no reposting or sharing on Twitter please. Same with Instagram- while Meta hasn't been as obnoxious as Twitter I still do not trust it.
I'm tickled by my thumbnail vs my final, I must admit. I can struggle with completing more complex pieces, and while the details evolved a lot over the course of the project, I’m glad I was able to stay true to my original idea!
ellievsbear
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
vaporwave
titsay
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
