Chapter 7: 7 - Out of Place

She was lost in thought. He could tell because she wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings, the space between her eyebrows was furrowed, and her lips were manifesting some internal dialogue with barely there twitching. Rogue waited until she’d walked past the shrub he was peeking around before bravely (or perhaps foolishly) risking his life to sneak up on her. His arm snatched at her waist from behind while he playfully growled in her ear, and Callida gasped from the jumpscare, whipped around, throwing an elbow that Rogue narrowly avoided, and got kissed. With his fingers against her neck, Rogue could feel the adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream while her fight or flight caught up to the harmlessness of reality, the rapid thumping of her heartbeat slowing gradually until it synchronized with the rhythm of their canoodling.

“Why did you have to do that?” Callida accused when Rogue broke off the kissing in favor of a hug. He just chuckled, squeezing her around her waist a little more snugly before letting go to lace his fingers through hers. “Qiangde, what’s your plan for today?”

“Harass my wife. All day,” he needled impishly.

“Really?” Callida deadpanned, eventually rolling her eyes when he merely winked at her.

“Come on, Callida. You just got back! Besides, what else am I supposed to do?” he whined in what he hoped was a tease, but in reality hid a much deeper frustration.

“Well, what have you been doing for the last… however long I was gone?”

He huffed, the bitterness seeping into his voice against his will, leaving him to feel guilty when Callida planted her feet and pulled him to a stop so she could watch his face more carefully. “I… whiled away missing you?” he offered coyly, his over-used smirk cropping up as an unconscious shield, and Callida’s scowl hardened. Crap, he sighed to himself, his smirk failing when he remembered that Callida was the only person in the world with enough personal confidence and insight to see right through his mask.

“You’re bored. More than that, you’re floundering still,” Callida deconstructed him with unnerving accuracy. “You still haven’t found a purpose.” He sighed again and dropped his head, shaking it in defeat. “I thought you were going to work on that while I was gone! Rogue, look at me,” she scolded gently, and Rogue cautiously lifted his face, anxious about the disappointment he might find on hers. What he saw was concern — which wasn’t better; he dropped his gaze again. “Rogue, talk to me. What’s going on?”

She drew closer, wheedling him into talking with her head snuggling against his shoulder and her hand pressing in a subtle massage against his chest where Shyaam, at least, prepared to spill their every inner thought to her. “Callida,” Rogue captured the seductive hand at his chest so she couldn’t continue directly appealing to Shyaam, “it’s not that I didn’t try. I studied every medical text I could get my hands on, I applied to work at the base hospital and the palace hospital and the handful of hospitals and medical centers I could find in town. None of them recognized my skill set. I mean, a spiritualist healer without owl ancestry?! And none of them felt comfortable hiring...”

“... a former bandit?” Callida supplied.

“N-... sure.”

“The Lion General’s husband?” she tried again, and Rogue involuntarily deflated a little. “So that’s it. And you’re just giving up?”

“This isn’t my world, Callida,” he shrugged defeat. “I don’t understand the social rules here, and I don’t… see how….” He was already struggling for words when he made the mistake of meeting her eyes, and suddenly he couldn’t hardly remember what he was trying to say. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Don’t look at you like what?” she asked softly, something in her tone changing to become unintentionally sultry. And the way her eyes glanced up at him without her head tilting back — those rich, caramel brown eyes….

“Callida, I….” Citrus oil. Gold hair twisted around his fingers. Her hands gripping his belt to keep him in place. The way she anxiously bit into her lower lip while she hung on his every word. Yeah. He couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.

“I just want you to be happy,” she whispered. “How can I help? I can… vouch for you to the hospitals? But you said you wanted to do this on your own. Is that still the case? Because it would be easy enough for me to write a letter or even go visit someone personally, but I don’t want to overstep. This is your life, so tell me what you need from me.”

He’d been aware that she was still talking, troubleshooting ways around the roadblocks to his intended career and offering her help, but he was too distracted to really internalize any of it. “Be still, M’lady,” he cut her off as his hand found her chin, lifting it a little while his thumb delicately stroked the curve of her bottom lip. “This. This is what I need from you.” He tugged her into a tangle of limbs, eventually lifting her into his arms where, predictably, her legs secured themselves around his waist. “Primordials, I’ve missed this.” Carrying her into a deep corner of the estate gardens, he found a stone bench on which to lay her down, escalating things by degree as the euphoria built upon itself.

“Qiangde, slow down.” She giggled as Rogue comically puffed and flopped over the top of her as though she’d literally just burst his bubble, and despite the letdown, Rogue grinned at the sound. “Don’t we need to talk about things?” He groaned and rolled off of both Callida and the bench to sprawl in the grass and whimper petulantly. “Such drama!” Callida laughed, rolling off the bench herself to sit cross-legged on the grass next to him and poke at his ribs.

“Hey! Cut that out!” Rogue grabbed at her wrists, eventually sitting up to return her rib poking for tickling that quickly had her writhing and scrambling to get away from him.

“Stop! Stop!” She shrieked through peals of unbidden laughter when his grip on her wrists proved too strong for her to break free of while being tickled. Rogue tackled her, and they ended where they’d started with Callida on her back while Rogue tried for a second time to escalate their makeout into something more. “Primordials, Rogue!” Callida laughed and rolled him over so she could take control. “You have a one-track mind today.”

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“You abandoned me for over a year, and you just got back yesterday!” he protested. “Cut me some slack.”

“Mn,” Callida hummed to herself through a flirty smirk playing on lips that she was keeping just an inch too far away to kiss. “Then talk to me.”

“Callida,” he whined, “can’t we talk later?”

“No,” she replied coolly. “Consider this your incentive.”

“What incentive?” he frowned.

Her smirk grew. “Talk first, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I hope this isn’t how you negotiated world peace with King Thisavros,” Rogue laughed.

“Well… not exactly,” she grinned, and even though he knew it was a tease, Rogue still prickled, and the look of smug triumph on her face told him that she was delighted to be getting a reaction out of him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“At one point they tried to persuade me to divorce you or have you killed so I could remarry and become the Griffin Queen.”

Rogue pushed himself up into a sitting position so fast…. “They--!! They what?!” Callida merely laughed and leaned in in a failed attempt to kiss him. “Callida, are you serious? They wanted you to… to be the queen?!”

“Is that really so surprising? The Lion and Griffin Tribes both use political marriages regularly to patch otherwise shoddy diplomatic efforts. At the time, the Griffin Tribe capital had just been beaten into submission by the Lion Tribe military, and a young woman was at the head of that army. The rising king was unmarried and needed help securing his position on the throne, and a marriage between the Griffin King and the Lion General would certainly be an efficient way to both stabilize his position and ensure that a peace treaty was reached with the Lion Tribe.”

“And you were tempted?” Rogue asked coldly to which Callida snorted.

“No. Not even a little bit. I am very, very happily married.” She was leaning in to kiss him again, but the mood was gone. Rogue pulled away to stand up and grumble to himself, and Callida stood up behind him. “Rogue?”

“How many does that make?”

“How many what?”

“Thrones. How many thrones have you been offered now?” Rogue turned to glare the heat of his jealousy at her.

“Rogue–”

“Three? Is that what you’re up to? The Wolf, Lion, and now Griffin Tribes?! Or have there been others that I just don’t know about?!”

“Now, hold on,” Callida’s tease had changed to a frown. “Are you accusing me of something? Because if you are accusing me of something, let’s hash this out right now before it turns into… something else.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything!” Rogue glowered, feeling the tides of resentment swelling despite efforts to sweep them to the side.

“So you’re jealous.”

“We’ve never had the exes conversation,” Rogue found himself blundering foolishly onward. “I mean, not really. I know that you have a history with the Wolf Tribe Alpha and the Lion Tribe King. I know that you, by happenstance or choice, saved intimacy for marriage. I know about a few other guys you dated…. But Callida, apart from the end result of those relationships, I know nothing about your… before me!”

“And you want to know? Why?”

“I need to know what I’m up against.”

“What you’re up against?!” Callida laughed dismissively and drew him into a hug that he accepted with protest. “You aren’t ‘up against’ anything or anyone! You are mine! I chose you. Out of everyone, I chose you. And I’ve chosen you again and again since then. Every day.”

“But you’ve had choices,” Rogue stubbornly clung to his insecurities. “You have choices.”

“After meeting you, I couldn't even look anywhere else. And I tried, Qiangde. Believe me, I tried. We were on opposite sides of the Great War! You were fighting for the Resistance; I was fighting for the main tribes; I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which a relationship with you could work. But I guess the Primordials had better imaginations,” she said, leaning in to try and kiss him again, and this time, he allowed it. “So when the war was ending — when I saw you again at that first peace meeting — I didn’t hesitate. Because I already knew that I wanted you. And I still love you more than anything and more than anyone.”

He sighed, willing himself to find solace in her reassurance and to let go of his jealousy… for now. “You wanted to talk about finding something for me to do?” he changed the subject.

She smiled. “You still want to be a healer, right?”

“Obviously.”

“How good are you at caring for pregnant women and delivering babies?”

“Uh, I’ve delivered quite a few, actually. Why?”

“Because… I have need of a doctor for a mission, and I need someone that I can trust.”

“M’lady… are you trying to tell me something?” he asked, a frown forming between his eyebrows. “You’ve only been back a day. If you’re… expecting–”

“Oh, no, Rogue! Not me!”

“Not you?”

“No! Oh, Primordials, no! I’m… I’m still not ready for… for that. I only just got back from a war, and I need to make sure that the peace treaty sticks, and I need to settle into whatever this new routine is going to be and….” She stopped, her eyes widening at him a little. “Are… are you saying that you’re ready?!”

Rogue flushed, feeling suddenly embarrassed and strangely giddy. “I’ve told you before: when to start our family needs to be your choice.”

“But you’re not opposed to the idea,” Callida read between the lines a little too well, and Rogue felt somehow exposed. “You want a baby?”

“I…. Like you said, I’m not opposed to the idea, but I’m not in any hurry either.”

“Ok. Ok, good,” Callida said with a sudden finality.

“So, erm, this mission you need a doctor for…?” Rogue returned to the original subject.

“Oh, right. It’s still in the earliest of planning stages, but would you be interested?”

“Possibly.” Rogue grinned.