The size of the wolf dog is still shocking, given the cramped space they occupy. He's a flash of thick fur and those cold, cutting eyes. Sokol all but stamps his paw atop his charge's foot, pressing all of his bulk down toward the floor. Sophie blinks, but finds herself peering through the same preternatural fog that which held her in place for that ephemeral moment in the hall. Applying more pressure when next she lowers her lashes does little else to aid in her vision.
It can't quell the tempestuous running of her heart through her head either. That organ beats in her ears now, having made it's heavy way up her throat. Gulping has proved to the both of them a failure. No doubt that Arthur watches her throat bob in her attempt to wet that channel once more and dissuade its narrowing.
He'd tried to speak away her upset with soft words, and how his palm trembles against the round apple of her cheek. He's warm to the touch, she thinks that he always has been in the fleeting seconds they've every matched to one another in quiet spaces as the one they currently inhabit. A tenuous lustre climbs her cheek at the touch, and instinctually she finds herself leaning toward the cradle of Arthur's bent fingers, a somewhat perplexed bend of her of her brow turning soft expression.
" I'm not gonna do anything. " She promises, her countenance only partially taken by the same unease as would claim anyone at the thought of Skizm's forever-crowned victor knocking at their door. Most wouldn't imagine her to be so mannerly as to even wait for an invitation to come inside. Sophie makes an inexperienced effort to steal that judgement sharply under Arthur's stare. She asserts with a nod, " I wouldn't. "
What time has passed since he'd tread across her threshold remains a mystery. She hasn't looked to the clock once, but the night has deepened beyond the window panes still thrashed by rain. Somewhere, presumably over the sea, thunder snaps its allegorical jaws.
Sophie swallows yet another dry wad of what feels like sand between her teeth, then lifts her free hand to delicately wrap her fingers about Arthur's wrist. Careful not to simply pull away, she takes his hand in her own, affirms that hold, and tells him for what feel like the fifth time at least, in some vague capacity, " And don't talk about yourself like that. "
He doesn't need to ask, she watches the enquiry bite behind his eyes. Crows feet burgeon, only just, at the very corners of those twin headlamps of his.
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she would before her daughter seemingly pretending to misunderstand her, Sophie leans in, her eyes wide to make her point, and timbre just a touch below stern. " Like you're a burden. " She tells him, quiet yet sure. " Or an intruder. " Once he was. Only once. She guides him down the hall to 8B now, away from the clutches of his ghosts that she presumes to be worse for him. " Or like you're— "
The knock at the door which thieves her voice from her lungs is sharp, short. Just two swift raps of Nix's knuckles announce her presence in the hall. She stands alone, her lingering form swathed in rainwater and her hair hung limb between her shoulders. She's a pallid thing, a lanky waif who feels as though the very walls of the place attempt to wrench her from its insides like some festering disease. Nix sniffs and tastes damp and black mold, cloying in her throat... or perhaps she too succumbs to the facade of Penny's walking corpse these days. Can't see her. Might smell her. She swallows repulsion and does her best to hold herself as one merely waiting, as opposed to putrefying along with this building's ghouls.
A bolt slides, and a chain drops. A deep yellow light spills out on to her feet from the inside of 8B, along with a warm, soupy scent of cinnamon and pine. Sophie Dumond opts for seasonal scents, while Nix left Gary with citrusy candle burned at home. Both the light and the homely scent are pervaded by Arthur. He blocks sodium vapor from reaching her, and swiftly fills her lungs with cigarette smoke and that tinge of amber she pathetically clings to the moment he's within eyeshot.
Ere she leaps across the threshold to crush his chest with her own and wind her fingers his hair, she halts. " Your face... " She hangs, instead, as a spectre in the doorway, refuting any urge to peer beyond her husband and further into the apartment he appears to seem so at home in. Perplexity has tilted her head, and set her wide, hooded eyes to crystalline pools as she stares at his bare face. Not so much as a scratch of the white base he even prefers to wear at home lingers on his olive skin.
" The rain. " He tells her, softly, slow, taking the hand she hadn't even realized she'd proffered and tugging her close. Nix bends to him like a young tree beneath the wind, but the pleat of her brow remains. Not even the soft push of Arthur's thumbs beneath her eyes can soften the expression, as he wipes days old mascara from beneath her lashes. The storm's done a number on her, too, though he knows she'll lack any consciousness on the matter.
Nix searches the modicum of space between herself and her husband with the same exhausted vigilance as a vixen peering from her hidey-hole with her kits tucked behind her. The questioning turn of her brow aims to shade her pallid stare, yet it only cuts through the shadow with more ferity, in spite of the fog that which claims it. She lays her hands against Arthur's chest, notes that Hawk has followed his charge to the door and props his legs straight from behind, then seeks to count the speed at which his heart beats. Lithe fingers that are able, curl against his waistcoat. That mustard yellow canvas is typically framed by red...
" Your jacket. " She hasn't yet fully immersed herself in the homely environs of Sophie's apartment, and yet her wonderings travel through the living space. She's regained the voice that had previously buried itself in her throat. There's a bite to it that, whether intentioned or not, reels Sophie in from the peripheral field.
She treads forward with her hands interlocked at her sternum, caged not only by the gelid eyes of Nix, but by the ever-warm and seemingly perpetually startled eyes of Arthur, who swings around at the waist upon hearing her footsteps. Nix bears her the utmost fleeting glance, ere her eyes shoot away and back to her husbands face. The strain of her jaw is a striking, fine line that juts her lips forth and burgeons her downturned pout.
" I can get it. It won't take a second. " Sophie offers, and it feels like a useless gesture of ostensible comradery, but she smiles a smile that still pinches her cheeks, and waits until she's crossed to the hall and lingers out of sight to swallow the rocks having piled up in her throat. She'd hear the boots of Skizm's Killer Queen pounding after her if they were to do so. Her apartment, however, remains in a nigh-eerie silence that persists, even while her back is turned as she unhooks Arthur's cherry red suit jacket from its place hung above her shower.
Her return alludes to the reason for quietude. Nix cradles her husband's face in her hands, that tight and needy pinch that's been caught by one too many cameras before. Were her fingers curled at any steeper angle, those talon-like nails would carve right into Arthur's flesh as she crosses her mouth over his own.
Drawing away, she sniffs. The motion wrinkles her nose and curls her upper lip as if she'd tasted tasted something foul wriggle its way up her throat. Perhaps she has, and bile churns the moment Sophie re-enters her own living space, even if Nix doesn't dare to look toward her. Despite that, Sophie sits as some persistent ghost in her periphery, clutching Arthur's sodden jacket and dumbly awaiting some form of clearance to step forward.
Nix comes to a familiar conclusion, though it sits tight in her throat and stumbles with her voice, " The rain. " It trembles, the same way her tense fingers do, the same way Sophie watches her shoulders do.