FERAL XIAO — once chained and feral, now a tamed beast who bares his fangs only to you . . .
requested / part two / gender neutral reader / feral xiao x reader / beast softened by gentle hands / asks about his skills, he shows them off like dog tricks / praise
masterlist | intro post | card . . .
a/n: finally finished part two!! thank you for being so patient <3 this one’s all about xiao showing off for you, because deep down, he wants you to be proud of him.
By now, the stones had learned your steps. Moss yielded beneath your weight as if bowing in recognition, its green threads bending to cradle your tread. The vines, once vigilant sentries clinging to the splintered archways, now merely brushed against your sleeves in quiet greeting, as though, you, too, were part of the ruin—woven into its slow endless decay. Persistence had made you familiar here. No longer a trespasser, no longer unwelcomed.
You came without lanterns now. There was no need. The path had etched itself into you, mapped not in ink but in the steady thrum of your pulse, the slow cadence of your breathing. As a companion, darkness did not hinder you. Instead, it draped the world in the same muted reverence that filled your chest whenever you crossed the threshold.
Whether this was the third night or the thirteenth, you could not say. Perhaps the stars had shifted while you were not looking, too preoccupied with coaxing warmth back into a place that had long forgotten how to hold it.
Xiao waited for you at every hush of dawn. He would never say so aloud; his pride was a delicate, fractured thing, too threadbare to bear words like missed you. Yet, you could read it in the way his head inclined at the faintest whisper of your approach, the subtle chime of his chains as he leaned imperceptibly forward, the iron links pulled taut with the stillness of one who had been waiting for far too long.
Once, he had asked for your name. You only smiled and told him it was his turn first. He had not tried again, but his gaze lingered on your face in the silence after, as if he could piece your name together from the constellations of your features alone.
When you entered the chamber, his eyes caught yours immediately. Gold, deep, and sharp, catching the light like an old coin dredged from a riverbed, glinting beneath the veil of his lashes.
“You’re late,” the boy said, though you were not. In truth, he had no way to mark the hours, but perhaps he only wished to place words in the space between you.
You smiled faintly. “You missed me.”
You often brought offerings; Small things wrapped in ribbon, stories folded between breaths, names for places he had never seen and for feelings he did not yet understand. Today, however, you carried questions, as if mirroring the quiet curiosity he so often directed towards you. They seemed to reach him before your voice did, pricking his awareness like the subtle shift in air before downpour.
“I thought I’d find you awake.”
“I don’t sleep.” His voice sounded low and rough, but no longer raw. It had the worn texture of river stones polished by years of current. “Not truly.”
You did not ask what visions came to haunt him—what dreams were left to someone carved from battle and bound beneath the weight of divine command. Some truths, you knew, belonged to the shadows, sheltered there like wounded creatures too fragile for light.
“You were a warrior,” you said at last, your voice lowered until even the stones seemed to lean closer. “What did you do?’
He did not move, but his breath faltered, like the moment one teeters at the edge of a precipice, the ground yawning open below. You waited, not as one who demanded, but as one who offered stillness: I will not turn away, no matter what you show me. For a heartbeat, you thought he might let te silence swallow the question whole. Then, without warning, he rose.
It was not the rise of a man, but of a shadow unfurling from the earth, of a memory sharp-edged and waking. Even in shackles, his movement bore a strange tempered grace, the kind forged only through centuries of honing. Iron grated against stone, yet he moved as if unhearing, unfeeling, shaped entirely by some inner precision.
“They carved his will into my bones. Not with blade or ink, but with something deeper. Karmic tethering. I was his weapon, and he wielded me without pause.”
“You must have been skilled,” you replied, tilting your head as you often did when pondering the shape of a cloud or the unfinished line of a poem. “To survive so long. To still be alive.”
His jaw tightened. “What are you really asking?”
“...You want a performance?”
“No,” you answered, calm as still water. “I want to see the parts of you they feared. The parts they punished you for. I want to see if there’s still beauty in them.”
The first movement was only a breath, but it rippled through him like wind through silk, altering his stance, aligning bone and sinew. He raised an arm, palm outward, fingers loose, then flicked his wrist so swiftly it blurred. The air shifted. Dust curled into the faint shape of a crescent blade, then broke apart without sound.
That was when his hands came alive.
He moved with an accuracy so absolute it became art. Each strike was a brushstroke in the air, a line of calligraphy traced by muscle memory. He pivoted, chains hissing with friction, body bending like a reed in stormwind. No gesture was wasted. No flourish was for show. Every arc of his limbs had been forged to end a life. You saw it in the low sweep of his heel, the high cut of his elbow, the unblinking focus fixed on phantoms that only he could see. He moved like death remembered—efficient, unrelenting, and, in a way you could not deny, beautiful.
You did not interrupt. You sat in the dim chamber as one might before an altar to forgotten gods, watching the last bloom of a dying star. He was poetry, yes, but he was also the storm that sparked it.
When the final movement stilled, Xiao crouched low, one knee to the ground, fingers spread to balance. His breath came even, but his hands trembled faintly. “That’s how I killed them,” he murmured, voice hoarse.
You stepped forward slowly, not as a pilgrim to an altar, but as someone returning to something precious. Crouching at the edge of his chains, you regarded him with a quiet pride that seemed to wound more deeply than any blade.
His face twisted—confusion, anger, something like shame. “You saw what I did. That wasn’t beauty. That was slaughter wrapped in silence.”
“Maybe once,” you said softly. “But not now. I saw survival. I saw strength. I saw a man who remembers how to move, even when the world has tried to make him forget what it means to be alive.”
He said nothing, though his fists clenched and his shoulders drew taut as bowstrings. The war behind his eyes was plain, the ghosts demanding he reject your words. But when he finally spoke, his voice was pulled from some deep place.
A silence stretched between you, the chains clicking softly with the rhythm of his breath. Then, without quite looking at you, he said nothing more—but you saw it: the faint fracture in his armor, not of weakness, but of want.
“Do it again?” you asked gently.
His eyes flicked toward you, cautious.
He hesitated, then yielded—whether to defiance, exhaustion, or the dangerous hope blooming in him, you could not tell. His body shifted, flowing into a single motion: a low kick spun like water around stone, a palm pressing to the floor, the air humming in its wake. Flicks of turquoise swirled in delicate patterns, parting around you like petals caught in a summer breeze.
Your hands came together in a soft, genuine clap. Perhaps this was his way of telling you he was glad you were here—finding beauty in the remnants of a skill once wielded for ruin.
And in that moment, something brushed Xiao’s lips. Not quite a smile. But close enough to steal the breath from your lungs.
it’s been forever since my last post, so here’s a little soft extra as an apology!! this isn’t part of the main storyline — just a glimpse of him freed from his past and now dating. please give me your forgiveness 😭
The world beyond the ruins was quieter in the evenings, when the wind softened its teeth and the last light clung stubbornly to the horizon. Lanterns glimmered in the streets below like captive stars, their gold shimmering across the river’s skin. You stood at the cliff’s edge beside Xiao, watching the water carry the light away.
He didn’t speak at first. He rarely did. His presence was measured in small, unthinking gestures—the brush of his sleeve against yours, the way his gaze followed your hands whenever you moved. You’d dragged him out here, insisting he needed “fresh air,” though you suspected the real victory was simply getting him to leave the shadows he always folded himself into.
“It’s… loud,” he murmured, voice nearly stolen by the wind. You knew he didn’t mean the sounds. He meant the press of the world, the closeness of it, the way people moved around each other without thought. But still, he stayed. Because you had asked.
You tilted your head toward the lantern-lit town. “Do you want to go back?”
His jaw shifted, as though considering it. But instead of answering, he looked at you. Really looked, eyes softening from amber to something closer to dusk. “No,” he said, barely above a whisper. “If you’re here, it’s fine.”
The words lingered between you, fragile as spun glass.
You didn’t push him to say more. Xiao was like the mountains, carved from silence, reluctant to change shape. But his reliance came through in ways he didn’t realize: the way his steps matched yours when you began to walk, the way his gaze swept the path ahead before you reached it, the way his hand brushed yours as though checking you were still there.
A stray gust carried the scent of grilled buns from the vendor’s stall at the foot of the slope. Your stomach betrayed you with a quiet growl, and Xiao’s eyes flicked to you immediately, brows furrowed as though you’d been wounded.
“You’re hungry.” It wasn’t a question.
“Not that much,” you laughed. “We can eat later.”
He hesitated. Then, without a word, he was gone in a flicker of movement—vanishing into the shadow between one breath and the next. You sighed, though the corners of your mouth tugged upward.
When he returned, there was steam curling from the small paper packet in his hand. He thrust it toward you like it burned to hold it. “For you.”
You blinked. “You just… stole this from the vendor, didn’t you?”
His ears pinked at the tips. “…No.”
“…I paid,” he muttered, as though the word was unfamiliar. “He looked… startled.”
You took the buns before he could vanish again, warmth bleeding through the paper and into your palms. “Thank you,” you said simply.
Xiao looked away, but you caught the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth.
You both sat on the edge of the grassy slope, the lanterns below bright against the falling night. Xiao didn’t eat, but he stayed close. At one point, his hand ghosted over the back of yours. Not quite holding, not quite letting go.
It wasn’t chains that tethered him to you now, nor duty, nor debt. Just something quieter, steadier. A soft spot carved into the heart of someone who’d once thought himself incapable of such things.
When you leaned your head against his shoulder, he didn’t stiffen. Didn’t flinch. He only let out a breath that sounded almost like relief.
And for the rest of the night, he stayed that way—rooted beside you, as though the world could fall apart and he would still be there when the pieces settled.
an2: oh wow, thank you all so much for these messages. reading them honestly make me so happy—I didn’t expect so many people to enjoy my writing this much.
inbox one: i’ve finally given you the crumbs you’ve been asking for… hope a proper feast comes soon
inbox two: 🌵 taken!! also, your desert metaphor? absolutely perfect, i’m obsessed. part twos are coming, slowly but surely, i promise you won’t have to wait forever!!
inbox three: dominant(ish??) sfw is basically all i write 🥹 so stay tuned and you’ll get exactly what you’re looking for. you all make me so happy, and i can’t wait to share more worlds and characters with you. thank you for being here and loving these stories as much as i love writing them!
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