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The alley behind the cafe is never the best venue for a fight, but Faith had been desperate, and her fingers were itching for something to hit.
And residing in a town like Sunnydale, it’s always easy to find a vessel for your own violent compulsions.
She dodges left, slams her knee up, elbow to the right, bone connecting with cartilage, and her chosen victim of the night lets out a howl of pain. Adrenaline sings in her veins as she steadies, already posed on the balls of her feet, watching as her foe tries to regain his bearings. The kid that had been on the receiving end of pointy fangs and hisses of pleasure had scrambled away seconds ago, a wild fear in his eyes, and as Faith reaches forward and tangles her fingers in this vampire’s hair, slams his head into the crumbling brick, she wonders if it had been directed at her or the creature she toys with now.
Admittedly, she wants it to be her. Vampires, demons, perfect girls who live up to everybody’s expectations, your everyday ignorant bystander that Sunnydale seemed to be full of – she wants them all to fear her.
Fear is power, and, dammit, Faith just wants to feel like she has some for herself.
“Please–” the vampire starts, voice thick and clotted with blood.
Faith aims a kick to his stomach, and he flies, slamming into the faded green dumpster with a resounding clang. When he lands on the gravel, the flickering streetlight from across the way briefly illuminates the depression his figure left carved in the metal.
“I’ll–I’ll go, okay? No more humans–”
“Not the issue, my man,” Faith grits out. Her teeth are clenched and lips pulled back in a snarl of a smile. “I get it: there’s a food chain, and humans and vamps are duking it out for who gets to be on top. Apex predators, walking happy meals, blah, blah, blah.” She pulls a stake out of her back pocket and tosses it between her hands as she approaches the bloodied body, how it kneels in the gravel and trembles with fear. “I’m more concerned with the bad PR you might be doing for the Mayor’s ascension. You’re drawing a bit of attention, killing this close to the courthouse.”
The vampire holds his hands up, head bowed in supplication. “Please – I-I’m sorry. I just – it’s been so long, and he was taunting me, and–”
Faith grabs a fistful of his curls and shoves his head back, cutting his words off completely. Yellow eyes bulge out at her like gems amidst the unrelenting sea of crimson that spills from his nose.
For a moment, she lets herself revel in the feeling: she imagines what it must look like to a bystander, a teenaged girl with fists raised, towering over a monster that tried to fuck with her and clearly lost. He’s her puppet, forced to go wherever she violently tugs the strings, and she never feels more control of her life than in these few, adrenaline-soaked seconds.
No wonder there are Watchers and alcoholic mothers and tyrants and mayors of small towns – it feels pretty damn good to scrape away someone’s edges until they fit perfectly into your hands.
This creature’s half-life is hers to do with as she pleases, and the justification is on her side: a slayer killing a vampire is just the natural order, no reason to file police reports and have a moral panic. She could savor it, go slow and steady, hacking at his neck with the dull end of the stake until she emerges covered in viscera and ash; maybe enjoy the thrill of a quick kill, shove the point through his chest and straight to his heart and walking away licking at her dust-coated lips. If she had some rope, she could bind him, toss him in an abandoned warehouse until she could return with a canister of gas, douse his pale body with the foul liquid, and watch in jubilation as she flicks her lighter on and lets him burn.
She could slip out the blade she carries like a rosary, a reminder of her sins. She could stab it through his gut, let the hot blood seep over her fingers, staining so far beneath her nails that she doesn’t think she’ll ever forget what it’s like to let a life drain out in her hands.
And she doesn’t fucking care.
The adrenaline is making her head go fuzzy, and her want is quickly morphing from needy to desperate. She doesn’t need the foreplay, now – she just needs the kill.
“How about this?” Faith starts coyly, pressing the stake to the center of his throat. “I kill you, the Mayor ascends, and we’re all better for it, hm? No more vamps loudly killing and maiming when we’ve specifically asked you folks to keep it quiet, and I don’t have to come and deal with you. Sound good?”
If it’s possible, the creature’s eyes swell even more, several of the veins around his irises having burst from the pressure. Remorse flits over his features, and as a another drop of blood trails out of his nose and over his lips, he opens his mouth to–
Lunge.
Her head hits the bricks so hard that stars burst across her vision. It sends a jolt of pain wracking down her spine, and she has no time to recover before the vampire’s cold body slams into hers, one of his thighs shoved between her legs, his hip digging into her midsection to pin her down. He’s pinned one of her hands above her head and uses the other to slowly hers into the building, tearing away at the skin as the stones shudder and crack around her. It makes her fingers spasm, and the stake drops out of her grasp, clattering to the ground.
Then, there’s a flash, like a match being dragged across pavement; her neck bursts into a sharp sting, and a hot, metallic stench drifts from her collar to her nose.
For one heartbeat, she thinks: this is all my fault.
For the next, she thinks: maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
But for the third, her eyes flash open, another wave of adrenaline anointing her, and that stubborn voice in her head that she can never quite seem to shake screams: only I get to say when this is over.
As the vampire’s fangs sink deeper into her neck, she leans back into the building, grasping for any leverage in their tight arrangement before letting those lovely slayer instincts take over. It’s a heady experience, almost akin to being drunk, the spirit of hundreds of women before her coating her bones and animating her with that instinct instilled into one girl in all the world so long ago:
Fight.
She screws her eyes shut and darts forward despite the trail of pain that sears down her neck, letting her teeth sink into the vampire’s flesh. It’s repulsive – rot and cobwebs and mold-covered clothes – but it does the trick. He jerks back with a screech, pulling away just long enough to whine, “You bit me?”
Which gives Faith all the room she needs to knee him between the legs. Snap another punch into his nose. Kick him in the solar plexus. Launch him into the back wall of the cafe. Scramble over to his prone form and add to the injuries already arraying his body: punches and scrapes and nails in his haunting yellow eyes, shining pale and sickly just like the moon used to in the pollution of Boston nights. His body is too busy spasming in pain for him to try and fight back, and as she sinks her nails into his throat, relishing in the gush of blood beneath her fingers, she lets herself breathe again. She is in control once more, and he is simply a victim to be torn apart by her hands.
Time no longer has meaning in this swell of gore and adrenaline, and it’s only through a dim haze that Faith realizes she should end this, that it can’t go on forever.
The vampire has no time to curl in defense when she pushes herself to her feet and scoops the stake up from where she’d dropped it. She looms over him, arm pulled back and ready for the final blow, when a raspy voice scrapes against the pounding of blood in her ears.
“Slayer,” the vampire hisses, half the word coming from his lacerated windpipe, the other half from between his pointed fangs.
“No shit, really?” Faith seethes, fingers tightening around the stake. “What gave it away?”
The vampire coughs, and it sends blood spraying across her face. His limbs still twitch with the agony Faith had enacted upon him, but he manages to rasp out, “Just like her.”
And the Slayer comment suddenly makes so much sense.
Because when it comes to being the slayer, it’s never just about Faith, is it?
With a wrathful growl in her throat, Faith throws all of her strength into the stake. Her aim lands true as she falls to her knees and cracks the wood through his ribs, digs it into the muscle of his stilled heart, and even when she hears his last cry of pain, she digs the weapon in further and further until it hits the ground on the other side.
The body she straddles shudders, and she doesn’t have time to collect herself before it dissolves into dust and ash. Her legs hit the gravel, digging cracked pebbles into her knees. The stake clatters out of her grasp and rolls in the detritus of tonight’s fight.
For several moments, she pants, begging for air to scour her cramped and dusty lungs. She reminds herself that everything is fine, really. She sneaked out of the Wilkins’s house, and she hasn’t been caught; she got the fight she wanted, and she didn’t even die.
Then, the streetlight flickers again, providing a brief wash of gauzy yellow that reveals ruby-stained hands. Blood clots and viscera turning sticky as they cling to her skin and seep under her nails.
Something hot drips from her neck and splashes onto her bloody hands. Red on red on red.
Her breaths turn short. Her chest seizes as if her ribs are trying to smash her heart between their ruthless fingers, and the dust and gravel are ruthlessly cold through the fabric of her pants. She sees herself from outside her body, and she’s on a rooftop, stabbing a knife through an innocent man’s gut, and the first thing she tells herself is I don’t care to distract her from the fact that she does.
She’d been having spells like these ever since she’d joined Mayor Wilkins, where the pieces of her taped-together life suddenly collapse on top of her at the smallest of reminders. All it takes is the feel of leather pants beneath her fingers or a glass shattering on the floor, tearing the airbrushed blondes out the magazines Wilkins buys her or smelling stale beer on one of his minion’s breath, and she’s buried all over again. She can build it back as much as she wants, but no matter what, it’ll always come back down, and she’ll be left to pick up the pieces: innocent blood, chains on her wrists, showing up at the Wilkins’s doorstep like a fucking dog in need of reassurance, tricked and crossed and Buffy right under her touch, a knife nearly piercing her ear and something still in Faith’s chest purring Not yet–
She’s a killer. She’s a slayer.
And she’s a fucking coward who can’t breathe–
She stumbles to her feet, eyes refusing to budge from her bloodied skin. With feeble, shaky motions, she scrubs them on the front of her pants and prays that it’ll go away, please go away, let her have some goddamn peace for once. She’ll scratch her skin off or say a hundred Hail Marys in the cathedral two blocks down, just please make it stop–
Suddenly, there’s the sound of shoes on pavement. Cackles and hollers of students on a school night, their only concerns when they’ll hang out next and whether they’ll get their science homework done on time – just another batch of ignorant teenagers flaunting their freedom on the streets of their town, oblivious to how close they live to death every day. She hears the clack of heels on the pavement and tries to picture the girl they must belong to, how innocent and undamaged she must be to feel safe wandering the streets at night. A sick part of Faith wants to jump out and give her a reason to fear, to wrap her fingers around her neck and watch the blood smear across her skin. She wants to press her mouth right up against this stranger’s and hiss, It should’ve been you.
She wants them to fear her. She balls her bloody fists and watches them shake before her eyes, and she repeats it until she believes it: I want them to fear me. I want them to fear me.
Their footsteps draw nearer, scuffs and clicks and chattering voices.
A new instinct unfurls in her gut, allowing her self-pity to be subsumed once more by the rush of adrenaline that tells her to do what she’s always done:
Run.
Faith sprints through the dimly-lit streets for several blocks, blood dripping from her neck and hands curled into fists to hide their stains. Her stake got left behind in her hasty escape, and with how tightly her fingers are crushed together, she does not miss its weight.
She takes deep gulps of the night air, tries to focus on the remains of winter’s dewy chill that still have the slightest hold on spring in Sunnydale. It pours through her, clarifying her thoughts and soothing the tension winding down her muscles.
The further she goes from the cafe’s alleyway and the ambient chatter of people her own age, the less she thinks about the blood. About murder and betrayal and choosing whichever side gives you the most for letting them use you as a pawn.
Just like her.
A building tinged with familiarity breaks through her blurry vision, The Bronze cut out in rusted letters and affixed to the wall. She rounds the corner and leans her back into the cool stone before she plants her hands on her knees, gasping for breath. Her hair falls stringy with sweat and blood across her vision, curtaining her off from the world, and what does it matter, really? It’s just another alleyway, just another corner in Sunnydale where the kids run free and she’s still stuck.
In that way, she agrees with the pile of dust that now litters the cafe’s back alley: she and Buffy are both slayers, stuck in a position carved out for them that neither asked for. Hell, Buffy has already gone rogue enough with the whole death and resurrection messiah act that threw Faith’s life into the mess that it’s in, and now they’re two sharing a space where there’s only supposed to be one, throwing elbows at each other’s ribs just to try and gain a little room.
But that’s it. That is the only reason Faith could understand being on the receiving end of such an acidic comment like Just like her, because Faith is nothing like Buffy-fucking-Summers when it comes to everything else. She’s curves where Buffy’s angles, stringy dark hair versus silky blonde highlights, pits of obsidian that look so dull compared to the other’s jade green eyes, begging for just another glance, more attention, please look at me. Buffy fights with poise and measured movements, only doing as much damage is necessary to save the day, but Faith takes and she takes, and she’ll claw a demon’s throat out if it means finding some measure of peace, if only for a moment. And while Buffy roams the earth with her tortured sense of morality, clanging together chains she could easily snap out of if she thought about it for more than three seconds, here’s Faith, who saw through the Watcher Council’s bullshit. Here’s Faith, who saw how fickle Buffy’s friendships were, how easy it was for them to pontificate about their love for each other with smiles stretched wide while lying to each other’s faces. If anything, watching their friendship and the Council blow up in their faces was a noose of red yarn to tie around her finger, a reminder of what she’s always known: you can only ever trust yourself.
(And most of all, there’s the simple and bare truth stuck bloody in the whorls of her fingers: Faith Lehane is a killer, and Buffy Summers is the golden child).
No, Faith isn’t like Buffy at all. Faith is the rogue slayer, the bad kid, the loudmouth with a deadbeat mom who’d pop her over the head with an empty Bud Light if she didn’t have the right response to How are you doing?
And most of all, Faith fights – she refuses to believe she’ll have to be a pawn in everyone else’s hands, and if she has it her way, she’ll flip the world over until she’s the one on top.
Not like her at all, Faith reassures herself. She lets a bloody shot of spit out on the ground for good measure, like some half-hearted promise to the earth to prove it wrong.
Fingers tensed and chewed nails curling into her pants, she rises out of her crouch and presses against the stone wall once more. It sends a pinprick of needles down her back, her muscles already growing stiff, begging for a moment to rest. If she can just make it back to Wilkins’s, sneak back through the window and take a nice, scalding shower, she’ll be as good as new in a few hours. Ready for another morning of planning the ascension, of twiddling her thumbs in her ivory tower until night falls and she can prowl the streets once more, looking for another fight to simultaneously lift her up and tear her down, piece by piece, atom by atom.
She huffs. When she glances down at her hands, the smeary red mess doesn’t send such a shock through her anymore. She still feels blood seeping from the wound in her neck, but the vampire didn’t get too much out of her, thankfully. A warm washcloth and a nap should seal it all up, and if she’s lucky, she’ll come away with a fun scar that lets people know she’s not to be messed with.
She’s just debating sacrificing the hem of her tank top for a makeshift compress when the wind sails out of her lungs once more and her head flings back into the wall. There’s a flash of blinding white light across her vision, and she’s being shoved into stone again, a forearm pinning the top of her chest down and sneakers pressing on the toes of her boots. Even through her gasp of pain, Faith catches that familiar floral scent, scrunches her nose up at perfume-soaked memories she’s relived far too many times in her dreams.
Buffy Summers, no doubt coming from another night of partying with friends or edging her boyfriend, just to make sure he doesn’t turn into a fucking monster again.
“Hey, B,” Faith rasps, wincing as she tries to reposition her neck. “Didn’t think you’d be out this late.”
“What’re you doing here?” Buffy seethes, and Faith feels it: that anger, radiating off of Buffy’s body, snapping like a wildfire on the tip of her tongue.
God, it makes Faith want to kiss and kill and carve the world up until it’s a shell of what it should be. Anything to take and take until there’s nothing left, and then perhaps they can know something of peace. They’ll clasp their hands together, shove blades through each other’s ribs, and together, they can make the world burn.
Faith’s eyelashes rim her vision, but she easily makes out that upturned nose, those jade eyes narrowed in defiance. They hadn’t seen each other since Angel had deceived Faith, and the star-crossed lovers of the century had weasled Wilkins’s plan out of her mouth. That last time, she and Buffy had been this close too, blades pressed to each other’s necks, Faith’s only saving grace a taunt that Buffy couldn’t handle becoming some vile killer like her.
(A hasty kiss pressed to her forehead, blonde hair sticking to her maroon lipstick: the only image of love she could dredge up from her childhood, when her mom would settle down after shouting matches and the world had erupted in broken glass. She’d approach Faith with open arms and swipe a hasty kiss across her forehead to tell her it was all better now, that they could rest.)
It makes something wretched in Faith’s blood curdle.
So she slips on the mask. It’s an easy one to wear when it comes to Buffy, the only other girl in the world who understands what being a slayer is like. The only person that’s made her feel accepted, only to revoke it all at the first sign of trouble.
Nothing like her.
Faith curls her lip up, feigning nonchalance. “What’s it look like? Just having another night on the town. Trying to live it up in good ol’ Sunnydale before it all goes to hell.”
Buffy doesn’t relent with her pressure, doesn’t even bat a perfectly-curled eyelash. “I thought you’d be too busy tasting the Mayor’s boots and murdering innocent civilians to try and make any appearances in civilized society.”
“You know, I’m beginning to think the murder thing is the only card you have on me. Can’t think of anything else to insult? Maybe the hair? Lipstick color?” Faith scoffs, feeling her throat bulge against the press of Buffy’s forearm.
She tries to ignore where skin presses into skin, that thin line of heat that races between them, and it’s enough to make her forget the bruise of hurt she feels when she says murder.
Blood on hands, cold steel in her fingers: red on red on red on–
For a moment, Buffy leans in, sending a jarring burst of pressure against Faith’s throat, then steps back. Her toes still brush against Faith’s, but her arms are crossed primly over her chest as she scans Faith’s figure.
It sends a bloom of heat up from Faith’s gut and into the tips of her fingers and toes, as if her gaze is enough to sew fire beneath her skin.
“What happened?”
“To us? Well, that’s such a long story, B – we’ve just been through so much together, I mean, where do I even begin–”
“Tonight,” Buffy clarifies, voice clipped. She tips her chin up. “Why all the blood?”
Faith narrows her eyes and blows a strand of sweaty hair out of her face. “Just because you’re so worried about getting blood on your clothes doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”
“Oh, right. Because your new boss’ll just buy you something new and shiny to wear.”
Faith feels her hands balling into fists again. She wants to push her forehead into Buffy’s and shout, What about your mom? What about Giles, and your friends, and your fucking boyfriend? What makes you so much better than me?
But things are tense enough as it is in Sunnydale, especially with two slayers playing on opposing teams, so Faith settles for the diplomatic route. She takes a slow, deep breath, and she tries to push down all the ways Buffy has made her feel the past six months: beautiful, wretched; holy, damned; grotesque, inhuman, a thing worthy of dismemberment.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ve got plenty of new stuff waiting back at home.” Unconsciously, she crosses her arms, and she tries to ignore the way they stand like mirrors to each other now. “And I’m heading back there, so if you don’t mind–”
“Wait.”
A firm hand guides her back against the wall, a clammy palm against Faith’s bare shoulder. Buffy gives her another once-over, this time confined to Faith’s bruised forehead, the scrape on her jaw, the spray of blood like freckles dotting her face and neck. They slide down her jugular and against her clavicles, darting back up to where blood trickles from her neck like a rotten fruit, weeping musty juice from its pores in some attempt at self-destruction.
Buffy’s expression remains stony, but Faith notices the slightest shift in her demeanor. She’d been able to ever since she’d gone from pining after the other girl’s attention like some needy child to a starry-eyed puppy crush to whatever cancerous, violent desire had bloomed in its place when blood first stained her hands and she’d learned that friendships don’t mean shit. It’s in the tense line of Buffy’s jaw, the slight jut of her lower lip, the way her breaths turn just a pinch shallower than normal.
“Faith,” she says, “what the hell happened?”
And Faith can’t help it – she notices the little things, hears the slightest edge of concern in that quippy, valley-girl voice, and she withers under her gaze. Fear is power, yes, and what she fears most in this moment is just how quickly Buffy can make her want to give in.
With a swipe of her tongue across the front of her teeth, trying to swipe away whatever specks of blood might still linger, Faith feels herself wilt. “It was just a vamp – no big deal.”
“You’re hurt,” Buffy says, nodding to her neck. “And I know how you get about fights. It seems like a big deal from where I’m standing.”
Faith tilts her head to the side. “Then maybe you’re not standing close enough.”
With a sharp exhale, Buffy steps forward, challenge and care dueling in her eyes. She leans in, and now they’re even closer than they’d been last time, their noses just shy of three inches apart, and Faith can feel Buffy’s breath tickling the seam of her lips. Her expression remains neutral save for the set of her jaw, and when she tilts her head, Faith almost expects to see steam pulsing off of the skin of her neck. Maybe it’s the unfiltered stream of the slayer lineage that neither can turn off, something that allows them to know the other’s mind without needing a word, but Faith can see the flames licking at Buffy’s insides, a fire that calls out to the one that sits strong and steady in Faith’s gut, too.
Fire and brimstone, drawn together by violent delights and meant only for mutual destruction. Faith wants to burn and burn Buffy with her.
(And she wants Buffy, who’s hovering just in front of her, a mere few inches away. She wants to nip at her lips and run her hands down the slant of her waist to her hips. She wants to make Buffy forget there had ever been an Angel, or any other boy in her life, for that matter. She wants to take and take until they’re both ashen husks with nothing left to give.)
Softly, Buffy repeats, “You’re hurt.”
Faith sucks in a shallow breath, hates how wavering it sounds, hates that her heart beats so loudly in her ears that Buffy must hear it, too. “Yeah, what about it?”
There’s a sharp intake of breath.
Then, Buffy glances down. Her fingers draw up to her shirt, and she tears at its hem, ripping a strip from the bottom. She folds it over once, then twice, and with stiff fingers, she presses it to Faith’s neck, the fabric still warm and singing from where it had lain against her skin.
Faith stills, distraught from the contact and the sting it delivers. She feels like a deer facing the brights of a semi, unable to decide if annihilation is a better option than trying to make another faulty escape just to end up back where she always is: she and Buffy, separated by inches that feel like miles, burning from the inside out and unable to find relief.
Without warning, her mind jolts back to the night where it all went wrong. She’d never been able to distill her life’s philosophy into such a simple mantra until she’d been strolling these same streets with Buffy, when she smashed her fist through glass and slipped a blade in her pocket, put on the finest lipstick the drugstore could offer to impart those three quick, sharp words:
Want. Take. Have.
“You just can’t let me go, huh?” Faith asks, the question coming unbidden to her lips.
Buffy’s expression falters. Her hand shakes against the fabric, and Faith would do anything just to coax a bit more of that rage out of her. Tease her into making a move, just this once.
“Gonna say anything, B?” Faith prompts, wincing at the fabric’s burn; it stems the flow of blood, but it leaves only pain in its wake.
Buffy twists her mouth to the side, eyebrows high on her forehead. “You’re not a treasured keepsake, Faith,” she whispers, her voice barely a hum beneath the buzz of the streetlight. “You’re an anchor, pulling us all down with you so you’re not the only one who drowns.” Her fingers press into the puckered wounds, no longer intent on showing whatever remnants of care still lurk in her chest. Even in the dim lights outside of The Bronze, Faith can see a frustrated red scoring Buffy’s cheeks, the twitch in her eyebrows that proclaims she could destroy Faith with just a bit more force.
And for once, Buffy gives into that vengeful cruelty that Faith knows has always been there. She digs her fingers into the wounds, coaxing a sharp cry of pain from Faith’s throat that she tries to cover with a laugh.
“How’s it look?” Faith asks through gritted teeth, attempting to leer down her nose at the golden girl, the true slayer, good child Buffy Summers, defender of all things just and true.
Buffy doesn’t break their magnetic gaze. Whatever goodwill had leaked into her demeanor is now gone, replaced by her quiet fury. “Five by five,” she murmurs at last, her voice quiet and thin with rage. Faith can hear it just as she can feel the anger pulsing just below the surface of Buffy’s skin, a rousing chorus of hundreds of voices from the past, all interlaying over each other to say, You’ve taken so much from me.
“That’s my line,” Faith whispers back.
With a dark grin, Buffy steps away and drops the strip of fabric on the ground. Her hands shake at her sides, her stomach trembling from where its smooth skin peeks out from the tear in her shirt, and Faith recognizes this person as if she’s looking in the mirror, that tense set of her shoulders, the challenging gleam in her eyes. She’s a soldier posed for combat, lying in wait for the right moment when the line between sinful and righteous violence is crossed.
Venom pulses in Faith’s stomach where flames had licked just moments earlier.
It’s always going to be the two of them on opposite sides, a chasm between them no matter how close they pull together.
When Buffy turns, she makes sure to dig her heel into the strip of fabric, grinding it into the gravel so that when she picks her foot up again, all Faith can see in the streetlight are streaks of her own blood dotting the pebbles and cracks. The night quickly swallows her up as she retreats from the lights of The Bronze, off to sleep a few hours before another day of being everyone’s hero greets her.
Faith presses her fingers where Buffy’s had just been, grasping for that phantom touch that was already drifting away as quickly as it had come. The wound burns, rage throbbing just beneath the surface, and Faith can’t wait to see where this takes them. Longs for the moment when they can finally burn themselves from the inside out, for the world to turn to ash around them as they consume each other, blazing and tearing away at their layers until there is nothing left, and they are both free, no longer pawns to anybody.
She picks the fabric up from the ground just before she leaves; she carries it in her fist and pretends to still feel the warmth of Buffy’s skin pressed to it.