(cw for mentions of drug use)

It takes a lot, these days, to catch Khajiit's wandering, drug-hazed eye.

He'd had them - had almost all of them, his multicolored brood, lured them off of the Islands with promises of greatness and grand ideas for the future. He was building an empire, a dynasty, and he was going to bring it to the hooves of those who'd abandoned him, ripped him from his mother's highborn breast and thrown him to the wolves all because he'd made the mistake of having a nameless rogue for a sire. He had been punished for a crime he didn't commit, forced to fight and struggle and suffer where his half-sister had gotten everything handed to her without ever needing to ask, and though his time on the Islands had given him plenty of distraction, he did not forget.

He did not forget, but he had gone complacent. Soft. He'd allowed himself to indulge in the bread and circuses to the point of developing a dependence on various toxic flora, dulling his ambition, and when he'd finally developed the spine to put his plan to motion, he couldn't keep all his strong-willed children at heel. One by one, they strayed - and as his numbers dwindled, his addiction grew, until he could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. When he finally came down to Earth, he was alone.

So he returned to the Islands. And he sought out company, finding it the only way he knew how, attached to faces that were not yet lined with disappointment brought by his own misdeeds.

He'd been searching ever since: for another bit of a spider plant, for another mare to chase, for another shiny bauble to keep his thoughts at bay. In the past few months, he'd mostly given up, hiding himself away in a bundle of Spanish vines and doing his best to work a horse-shaped impression into the spongy topsoil. It was on one of his rare excursions out of his designated brooding chamber that everything changed.

The sound of hoofbeats rang in his ears, but he paid it no mind. There was a flash of gold in his periphery, and still he didn't take his attention off his muddled search for another little fix. Only when the scuffle was right in front of his face did he finally take in the happenings around him, and after his so-called brother's abysmal defeat, it was Khajiit being forcefully escorted towards the shoreline, ripped away from his self-pity hidey-hole and his creature comforts and bound for god knows where.

What an absolute crock of shit.

By the time they make it to Atlantis, the Marwari stallion's head is pounding, his mind as unfortunately clear as the cloudless blue sky above. For the first time in - well, quite a long while - he's sober, and not at all happy about it. He clambers out of the crystal-clear water, stepping with a harsh snort and a lash of his sodden tail onto the white-sand beach. Blue eyes squint against the sun, focusing on the cream-colored mare who'd driven him all this way.

"Well," he says, his tongue a dry rock in his mouth. "I seem to have found myself in quite the predicament." He takes a step towards her. "I've been thinking it over, but I can't seem to figure it out.

Why would a mare like you," he continues, taking another step, "be *so* keen to scoop up little old me?"

Khajiit flares his nostrils, taking in her scent. Hibiscus, jungle vine, sea salt... and not a trace of estrus. "My typical services are of no use to you," he says, his scarred lips tugging into a sneer. "Your flower's already been plucked." He circles her, putting his unhurried feline grace on full display. Did she regret her choice of suitor? The musk of the unknown stallion was all over her.

"I don't think I can paper over the last man's handiwork," he purrs, "but if you ask nicely, *darling,* I'd be more than happy to try."

And if that wasn't it, well, she'd better spit out the real reason for his sudden nonconsensual tropical vacation, and fast. He needed a drink, and he needed a nap, and he needed a hit of the spider plants he knew were lurking in the rainforest just beyond, waiting to send him back into oblivion's sweet, familiar embrace.