She shook her head. "I will deal with him. You—" she looked him up and down, and then her eyes lingered on the down. "I don't know what you plan to do to him, but you should not do it in here." When Qanar'dar shook his head and lifted his hand as though to explain, she just pointed at the door. "Out. I won't have any more violence in here, thank you." She stared after him viciously until he had slunk out the door and into the treacly dawn. She didn't move until he had rounded the corner, slunk into the darkness, and then doubled back with an invisibility spell about his shoulders like a cloak.

"Come on, now, ne'er-do-well, get yourself sober and get out. I'm not sure why every naked man in Tamriel feels he can just pop by here, but at least the first one was polite enough not to trash the place when he came through. Okay, up up! This is not an inn. Get up, you blasphemer!"

As best as he could, Qanar listened to them argue, holding his breath. The priestess sounded irritated, then deflated. As he had feared, she had already identified the two naked men as related in some fashion, though it didn't sound like she quite knew why. He cursed the mysterious man in the safety of his mind. He had worked so hard to find his way among them! To convince them that the naked Khajiit asking pointed questions about the most worrisome kinds of magic was, in fact, no threat at all. And no it all came crashing down to the sound of shredded drapes. He had drifted off for just a second—a second!—into sleep and woke to that horrendous sound. And the priestess had not even allowed him to intervene for the honor of Winterhold and the protection of the shrine. That trust he worked toward all these months had shriveled just like that. He stewed helplessly and shook his head. It was too late to do anything other than minimize the damage, and try to keep his Winterhold colleague from wrecking anything further.

He had intended to leave soon, anyway. With any luck, he would be able to complete his business in the morning, and then gently convince his idiot colleague to leave with him, so that the village could forget this disturbance more easily.

The priestess was still talking when he returned his attention to the conversation within: "... not so offended as your comrade-in-nudity. I sent him out before he could flay you, but I'd find and apologize to him, if I were you. That or try to disguise yourself with... literally any clothes at all, I wager."

He closed his eyes in frustration. She thought he'd wanted to kill the man. Well. That explains her reaction. Ah, well.

It would not be productive to point out that he is wearing literally any clothes; the College "robes" don't really cover anything worth covering anyway. It would be actively counterproductive to point out that getting hung up on the difference between his form of dress and hers is almost funny; presumably she believes covering one's genitals is a meaningful difference, and Ruby admits he's the exception in not finding it so. 

Rather than say these unproductive things he says, "I will. Thank you for letting me know. I'll clean and tidy everything up then I'll go look for him."

And without waiting for a reply he gets to it. The headache is still pounding inside his skull, and as he moves he realises everything aches. What happened last night?

And where is he?

The meekness of the man’s response, so different from before he had passed out on the floor, took Qanar aback. Priestess Senna had shaken her head and taken up a vigil in the corner of the room, one eye on the delinquent mage and the other on the door, in case her feline guest returned. Qanar steps away, dismisses his invisibility, and steps into the light from the door-frame with an inquisitive look at the priestess. Khajiit will be good and make nice, he tries to say with his eyes. 

She jerks her head sideways and glares, and his shoulders sag. Maybe their communion in meditation was not so strong as Qanar had imagined. He nods once, in acquiescence, and withdraws from the doorway with a great breath of resignation.

He grimaces. The smells the man tracked in with him were still strong in that building, and now they fogged his thoughts through his nose. Under the waft of alcohol and sod and vomit: A warm, irritable feeling, a scent of urgency and fascination—ohhh. He looks down in trepidation and embarrassment. Sure enough, his cock was jutting proudly into the night—and for how long? Did Senna think he had just been posturing with a strange male for— for— with her—? His stomach cramps with nerves and he scampers off gracelessly, nails clacking on stone and betraying his exit.

Ruby makes sure everything is tidied up. He feels like regardless of whether he remembers what he did—or, even whether "he" did it, rather than... something weirder...—the least he can do is help out with that. Then, after getting some... rather confusing and concerning information regarding his actions last night... he thanks the priestess and steps out into the city.

...wow. Markarth is gorgeous. It's an extremely vertical city, beautiful stone architecture carved into the side of the mountains, a river cutting and winding through the city, and it's breathtaking. For some reason he was instinctively expecting something austere and, uh, ugly, just like Winterhold, but no, this, this is something completely different. And it's making him realise just how little he knows of the world.

But he probably shouldn't linger. He'll have opportunity to visit again in the future, he's sure. For now, he should figure out what in the world just happened to him. And the first step to doing that is climbing down the steps from the temple to the street level.

The extra time turned out to be exactly what Qanar-dar needed to clear his head—and get the other one back in its sheath, where it wouldn't cause offense or confusion about his intentions. He stands, leaning on a wall, eyes flashing as he stared up the steps. When the night-invader emerged and started lurching down them, Qanar-dar is the picture of calm. He bounds up the stairs in threes in the darkness, forgetting, of course, that the shave-skins couldn't see nearly so well in the dark. He closes the distance rather than call out, lest he disturb the city’s pre-dawn peace. Five steps down from where the invader gamely negotiates a particularly steep stair, he speaks softly, choosing his words carefully to sound jovial rather than hostile.

"You look unsteady still, Scholar." It never hurts to use the proper title, right? "Whatever skooma you took, perhaps you should try a different distributor." Perhaps if the pun on distributor and stair translated from Ta'agrit, it would have worked better. Or maybe if he weren't suddenly calling out from shadows he didn't realize hide him so effectively from the man above him. "Might Khajiit help you find your way down from your high?" Another pun that didn't quite translate. If this were a Khajiiti woman in form rather than just smell, he'd be lauded as a poet.

He blinks. The smell is still strong.

His reach for a ward spell in reflex is stopped when he has enough time to make out the source of the voice. Now, Ruby should probably not draw conclusions about a whole species based on becoming acquainted with exactly two specimens but his first thought is "wow, are all Khajiit hot?" It doesn't help that this guy is very much naked, actually naked as opposed to only mostly and technically naked like Ruby is.

"Apprentice, not Scholar, I'm afraid. But I'm fine, now, the priestess shared a potion of Cure Poison with me and that's chasing the remnants of the hangover out of my system pretty quickly.

"Qanar-dar, I assume? Senna told me about you." He bows. "My deepest apologies for what I did to the temple."

"Did she?" he replies uncertainly. "Khajiit is flattered that Senna remembered his name." But what else had she said? Qanar'dar looks the other mage in the eyes as though that might reveal the answers. He had led with an apology, which implied that Senna had interpreted Qanar-dar as angry. Hopefully she hadn't also mentioned the erection.

He smiles and forces himself into a casual pose, hand on hip. "Why does this one apologize to Qanar-dar? It is a temple to the gracious Dibella, not to a humble Khajiit." He laughs lazily, under his breath, and holds out a palm. "I simply came to make sure that the Winterholder... Winterheld? ... uh, the fellow student was able to extricate himself from his trouble." Left unsaid: "before he permanently ruined the reputation of us mages in this city."

The stranger might claim that he's fine now, and certainly Qanar-dar believes Senna would offer the man a potion, but letting someone with who just trashed a temple run loose in the city is more reputational risk that Qanar-dar is willing to take. "Khajiit expects that the Apprentice it new to Markarth. He has not seen the Apprentice here before, despite spending many months here. Surely Qanar-dar can help the man find his way?" He stretches his arm out and steps closer, urging the stranger to take his hand and let him walk him down the steps—and is assaulted again by that eye-watering smell. He's calmer now, and expecting it, so he maintains his composure almost perfectly, but for the demure pink tip that pokes immediately out of his sheath. Just don't look down.

Unfortunately for him Ruby has spent the past several months living with another Cathay Khajiit so he's somewhat better than average at interpreting Khajiit instinctive body language, and something about Qanar-dar's does draw Ruby's attention down. Fortunately for him Ruby has spent the past several months living in Winterhold with mages so he finds Qanar-dar's budding erection entirely unremarkable; people just get boners sometimes.

"Having one's place of worship where one finds solace and peace trashed is as good a reason to be upset as any. 

"And you are correct that I've never been here before, and the circumstances that brought me here are in fact not as simple as drunken stupour. So I'll accept." He takes Qanar-dar's hand.

Qanar-dar relaxes immediately when their hands connect. He had feared the man would still be combative, or difficult to handle, but so far this is going well. He rolls his shoulders and picks his way down the steps, fears of a misunderstanding forgotten. “How might Khajiit call his new colleague, then? This one is of course Qanar-dar, as Priestess Senna said.”

People do indeed just get boners sometimes: One particular trigger, as it happens, is suddenly relaxing after a period of excitement. Another, at least in Khajiit, is certain smells. Before they are even halfway down the steps, Qanar-dar is proudly saluting the first rays of deep blue dawn, cock quivering at a 60-degree angle fully out of his sheath. Gamely, Qanar-dar tries to ignore it, though the awareness only makes him harder.

Ruby himself is... mostly ignoring it... Well, okay, he's sporting a little bit of a semi but it's fine, he can in fact distract himself enough that it won't get past that. He's bigger than J'zargo, though, and Ruby's wondering how it'd feel he can in fact distract himself enough.

"Ruby. A pleasure to meet you."

The Nord—or whatever he was; Qanar-dar could never reliably distinguish their various ethnicities—definitely noticed. The man didn’t react negatively, though, as most Nords did when he gave them a “rut salute.” In fact—is he halfway?—Qanar’dar blinks in surprise. The Nord bodies he had seen were harder to read than his own, since they got full before hardening rather than poking from a sheath in an obvious display of interest, but he is reasonably confident this one is—but now he is staring.

“Forgive Khajiit for saying so, but the village is waking soon and we are… conspicuous. Perhaps we should move a bit away from the village center, at least until you can wash up.” His cock bobs defiantly as he says it, though, and he subconsciously tugs at the tight-drawn skin of his sack. It would be *fun,* right here…

Nnnnnot looking, resolutely. "Nords are indeed unreasonable about such matters," he says, hypocritically. "If you know the way to the baths I would certainly not refuse one right now."

A bath! That would do the trick! “Yes, Khajiit knows the way. Come,” he says, tugging the man along. “There one can speak frankly and not worry.” The exertion of a jog would likely lessen the tightness in his loins for a moment, too—though not totally.

The priestess led Ruby to believe the Khajiit would be pretty upset but he's beginning to suspect the truth is a little bit more complicated than that. Perhaps she got the wrong impression from his body language.

"Lead the way."

“Here are the baths,” Qanar-dar says after a minute of jogging, still holding Ruby’s hand. The interior was deserted at this hour, and the Khajiit, being totally naked, wasted no time in stepping into the water. “Now, let Khajiit and his new friend relax a bit. Once you’ve doffed your cloak.”

Ruby's clothes are also not exactly pristine so even though he's stepping out of them he's bringing them with him into the baths to wash them. He's had plans to develop a cleaning spell that doesn't require water for a while but it's not an easy task and he is actually being very ambitious when he talks about "development". For the moment enchanting the water with the regular cleaning spell will have to be enough, and then he won't feel as rude about how much he has to clean.

Also he's thinking about this in order to avoid thinking about whatever else the Khajiit might be thinking.

A few moments pass in silence, neither person wanting to speak first, But Qanar-dar does, eventually: “Khajiit thinks it best to speak here, where two naked men do not seem out of place—insofar as a Khajiit ever seems normal around here.”

He intended to ask about what brought Ruby here first—but the heat of the baths and the sweat from the jog made the smell stronger. Sooooo much stronger. It smelled more like Ruby, too, but not less appealing for it. “But you seem to have made yourself very comfortable around Khajiit, no? Enough to have spent the night in one, anyway…”

Aaaaahahahahah okay the subtext is now text but also there's a point of confusion.

"So I'm going to tell you something quite queer about that. Last night I was in Winterhold, and I got somewhat drunk with a girl I met at the tavern, and the next thing I know I'm waking up here this morning. So. I don't know that I spent the night in a Khajiit, actually. —not that I haven't ever, to be clear, but last night was probably—strange."

“Khajiit apologizes for his confusion about the language, but it sounds like you said you were in Winterhold last night. That’s three weeks away on horseback at least. And Khajiit had a minor altercation with you when you invaded the temple, so he knows you to have been here at least since this morning.”

The smell the smell the smell it screams to him

"I did indeed say that. I am exactly as confused as you are by how in the name of the Aedric gods I crossed the span of Skyrim overnight."

“Well, was your tavern girl a Khajiit?” he replies with just a hint of annoyance at the absurd answer. “I’ve never known a Nord maid to smell like heat—though it’s late in the season even for our kind.”

"No, but she was not—standard-issue, either, so to speak. She had an entrance like most women but also a prick with no balls grew out of the upper part of it where her flower should've been. And I apparently left myself a note regarding some materials I had to fetch, and I spent at least some time in Rorikstead somehow. So I wasn't just instantaneously relocated to Markarth directly."

“You will forgive Khajiit if he trusts his nose over the heavily inebriated man he knocked out in a temple last night.” Immediately he looks away apologetically. “Ah, that was forward. It is difficult to keep one’s calm around that smell.”