The Non-Sexual Intimacy Meme

[enticingly]

Intimacy is NOT necessarily about full sexual contact. Intimacy is all about two people forming a connection and bond between them. That involves becoming best friends, trusting each other, knowing each other, understanding each other. Intimacy is grown and developed, it can't be rushed.

Nonsexual forms of intimacy can add a great deal of depth and variety to fiction. On one end of the spectrum, they provide extra steps to support the journey from meeting a potential mate through romance, sex, and marriage. In the middle, they convey the import of family and professional connections, distinguishing those from more casual acquaintances. On the other end, they form much of the glue in primary relationships for people who don't base their ties on sexuality. Sex and romance are valuable, but they're not everything.

RULES
-Comment with your character. Be sure to include preferences (ie, f/f for shipping, OTA for gen, etc)
-Tag others!

PROMPTS
1. Hair care. Brushing, braiding, washing, cutting -- all of these involve a lot of careful touching in ways that many people enjoy. Hair braiding is a bonding experience in some cultures. In fact, grooming is a bonding technique for social primates in general. People without close ties to others often treat themselves to regular salon visits as a socially acceptable way to meet the need for touch and interaction.

2. Shaving. This involves an unusually high level of trust, especially if the person is using a straight-edge razor or something else with an exposed blade rather than just a buzzer. Although it can apply to women, shaving is one of the few forms of physical intimacy that is most closely associated with men due to their facial hair. Initiaton into shaving is a major milestone for becoming a man, not just for boys during puberty but also for transsexuals during transition.

3. Bathing. This varies by culture; in America most people bathe alone but some other cultures practice communal bathing. A bath is usually more intimate than a shower, although a public bath can be non-intimate and small shower stall can be intimate. It's also different when two people wash each other (an exchange of intimacy and affection) than when one person washes someone else (more of a caretaking or protective gesture).

4. Feeding. A classic romantic motif involves lovers feeding each other, but it works as a way of providing and caring for someone in any context. Like bathing, it can also clue whether both parties are participating equally or one is taking care of the other (temporarily or regularly). This one has an existential flavor since survival depends on food supply.

5. Seeing someone without their adaptive equipment on. This includes glasses, dentalware, prosthetic limbs, a wheelchair, etc. Adaptive equipment is part of one's presentation to the everyday world, and taking it off can be as intimate as removing clothing, for many people in many contexts.

6. Holding Hands. There can be many reasons for this gesture. Physical closeness, offering comfort, or staying together in a crowd, all may have you reaching for someone.

7. Undressing someone. This can be kind of a one-way experience if the recipient isn't awake, and is often awkward for both people if they are awake. Sometimes it happens because hands are out of commission, but a more common example is someone passing out drunk. Overheating is another good reason. Different circumstances can imply different levels of intimacy.

8. Sharing secrets. This especially applies to talking about personal issues that aren't widely known. An exchange of secrets is a common ritual between "best friends" among girls and women, but appears elsewhere as well. Some things are only discussed among people with a common reference; veterans may be more comfortable discussing war memories with each other than civilians.

9. Ordering for someone in a restaurant. Acquiring food, without asking the other person what to get, shows a knowledge of their needs and desires. Providing food is also a gesture of support and sustenance.

10. Providing moral support at a major event. Helping someone get through a funeral, a trial, or other intense but not crisis situation is usually performed by a very dear friend. This is a situation where lovers or family members may be too close to the matter to be much use.

11. Crying on someone. When you cry, you tend to let your guard down. Most of the people close to you will see you cry at some point, so that can be a milestone in a relationship. Actually crying on someone, letting them hold you, is even more intimate.

12. Serving in a primary role for someone during a wedding. This includes the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, or stand-in for absent parents, etc. as well as the traditional family roles. One aspect of intimacy is sharing each other's lives, including ceremonies and transitions.

13. Comforting someone after a bad breakup. Moments of great vulnerability can bring people closer. While this role sometimes falls to family, breakup repair more often goes to a woman's female friends or a man's male friends.

14. Listening to someone's heartbeat or breathing. Close body contact, enough to carry soft personal sounds, tends to be comforting as well as connecting, as it touches on positive childhood memories for most people. It is shared between parent and child, sometimes between siblings, and later between lovers. Tight nonsexual partners may also do this.

15. Putting someone to bed. Interestingly, this activity can happen among people who are just getting to know each other -- most often if someone passes out drunk, but exhaustion can have a similar effect. It's a gesture of caring to put someone to bed rather than leave them where they drop. A milder version involves draping a blanket or coat over a person asleep on a couch or the like.

16. Sleeping in the same bed. This is an act of shared vulnerability and intimacy. Lovers customarily do this; so do some siblings or friends, especially as children. People may also be driven to share a bed, sleeping bag, etc. for warmth or lack of other accommodations in challenging circumstances.

17. Watching someone sleep. There is more vulnerability on the part of the sleeper, and more intimacy from the watcher, when only one person is asleep. Parents often watch their children sleep. Lovers sometimes do this with each other, which can be cute or creepy. It's also a guard position, useful for showing that one character seeks to protect another.

18. Waking someone up from a nightmare. A subtler form of rescue than more physical actions, this is still a gesture of protection and caring. It often leads to comfort afterwards. A typical courtesy between parent and child, or lovers, this can also be an early threshold for characters thrust together unexpectedly if one of them has sturdy daytime walls and a lot of issues. It is common, but often unspoken, among war buddies or veterans, many of whom have nightmares.

19. Sharing clothes, jewelry, other personal items. This is common between siblings or close female friends. Sometimes roommates do it too. Wearing someone else's shirt or bathrobe is typical in romantic relationships, so can suggest a similar level of intimacy even in the absence of sex.

20. Cleaning someone else's living space. This shows care and knowledge on the part of the cleaner, and trust on the part of the recipient. You have to know what NOT to throw away or move. It's typical of family members and roommates. Coworkers may clean each other's desk, office space, etc.

21. Living together. This is a big step, even if it's just for a little while. Housemates are in each other's pockets; it's hard to keep secrets. Family members and lovers often live together, but housemates who are family-of-choice form a category of their own. If you don't want a romantic partner, a permanent housemate is a good choice for someone to share your life with.

22. Childbirth. Attending the blessed event entails providing a lot of moral support for hours under high stress. It can create a bond with the baby as well as with the mother. When planned, this opportunity is only offered to the closest family members or friends, barring professionals. But it can happen by surprise in very awkward circumstances, a popular motif in fiction.

23. Saving someone's life. Quick action in a life-threatening situation demonstrates how much one person values another. This can create a strong sense of connection, and sometimes obligation. It often, though not always, entails personal risk for the rescuer. This is fairly typical for military buddies or police partners, etc.

24. Risking your life for someone. Placing someone else ahead of your own life shows their importance to you unequivocally. This often, though not always, involves trying to save or protect another person. While it can create a sense of gratitude, it frequently causes anger as well -- someone who loves you will generally object to you endangering yourself, even to protect them. Military and police buddies protect each other regularly.

25. Making emergency decisions for someone. This reveals both how well you know the person, and how much you care about them -- whether you know what they would want, and act on it even if it differs from your personal preference. Unlike some of the other options, in this one the initial action is often outweighed by the aftermath. Both characters have to deal with the results of the decisions, good or bad.

26. Deathwatch. Dying can be as intimate as giving birth. Staying with someone while they pass is an act of love; so is providing moral support to someone sitting deathwatch for a family member or other person. Many soldiers and police have done this for someone.

Comments

[weirlind]

I don't know. [His breath ghosts hot against her skin. She's trembling beneath him, whimpering, and he might talk big, but he can't keep as much control as he usually does. Not right now.

His tongue paints a stripe from her breastbone to her abs, tasting the salt on her skin as he does so. He moves down over her body, fingers moving to her hips to hold them down as he kisses from one side of her hips to the other.] I thought I was doing something, Ellen. [He bites down when he reaches the other hip, right above his fingers.]

[legbreaker]

[His fingers move to her hips, and she can't decide if that's a relief, or torture. He holds her down and maybe that intensifies the feeling a little, but she strains against it anyway, because she's Ellen, and that's what she does.]

Yeah, the thing that you're doing right now is-- [The problem with having your mouth open is that it makes it harder to bit back other sounds, a moan spilling from her lips at the sharp bite of his teeth.] --being a tease.

[weirlind]

[His lips press to the bite mark in her skin, soothing it.] I remember you teasing me a bit earlier. [He grins.] Besides, I like the way you sound.

[He moves down, glancing up at her for a moment before his head dips, breath ghosting over the front of her underwear before his tongue flicks over the fabric. Even through it, he can taste her, and that drives him fucking crazy. Enough to hook his fingers into them and start tugging them down over her hips, pulling them off. His hands move to the inside of her thighs, pushing her legs apart as he looks her over. She's beautiful, amazing.

He might have licked his lips a bit.]

[legbreaker]

What's your point? [The words come out in a rush, and she can't help the way her fingers tighten in his hair again. It's not even before that kiss over her hip is particularly hot; it's sweet, the kind of caring she literally only gets from him, and if it makes her want to cling to him a bit more, she's only too happy to hide that under the guise of a more sexual need.]

Jesus. [She bites the word out as his tongue flicks over her, and it's stupid because the pressure is lighter than his fingers, but somehow makes her twice as hot, twice as desperate. It's head thing, the way he gets so blatantly turned on just from tasting her, even through her underwear. A lesser woman probably would have come on the spot.

She lifts her hips accommodatingly, and there's no resistance from her as he pushes her thighs apart. Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, and she can't hide the way she trembles again, needy.] I hate you. [She groans it, watching him lick his lips] So much, I hate you so much, just fucking eat me already, Jack!

[weirlind]

You can take as good as you give. [In, well, all the ways that they interact in their lives, really. But mostly, she can handle a bit of teasing. It's not always that Jack can get Ellen like this, needy and desperate.

He grins, laughing deeply at her words. For a moment, he just sits there, hands creeping up along her thighs as he watches her. But then his head dips, tongue dragging up her slit and tasting her. Jack groans, repeating the motion again before he finds her clit. His tongue flicks over her, teasingly at first, waiting for her reaction.

He wants this to feel good for her. And maybe part of him just doesn't mind listening to what she tells him to do.]

[legbreaker]

[The thing is, she can't actually think of anything to say in response to that. So she just tugs on his hair, sharp and demanding. Another tremor works through her at the touch of his hands on her thighs, and the way she's spread open right now just makes her want to drag him into place, make him fucking touch her.

But having him volunteer is somehow infinitely more satisfying. It's not hard to figure out that he likes hearing her, so Ellen tells herself that she's just rewarding him with the way she whimpers at the first flick of his tongue, that the short cry that escapes her when he licks her clit is solely for his benefit. She digs her heels into the bed, trying to resist the urge to grind down, fingers winding deeper into his hair.]

[weirlind]

[Her fingers are tugging at his hair, and honestly, that's hotter to him than the sounds she's making - and those are hotter than anything he can think of comparing them to at this moment. He can already feel himself getting turned on again, and he pants harshly against her before he gains control of himself again.

This is about Ellen, after all, not him.

His mouth teases over her, fingers digging into her thighs before he forgets about teasing. He wants to tip her over the edge fast and hard. More than that, he wants to not stop until she falls over it again.

Jack groans, at his thoughts, at the way she tastes and moves and sounds, tongue circling her clit with purpose.]

[legbreaker]

[There's a soft, low chuckle from her when she feels the way he pants against her. Even if he's driving her insane, she can't help but be pleased with how obviously worked up he's getting again.

The chuckle is lost to a groan, and then a litany of curses as his tongue moves, flicks over her clit. Her legs part again, spread wider before shifting back, doing her best to to clamp down. She doesn't have that kind of restraint with her hands, clenching in his hair and the sheets next to her as a shudder rolls through her, from her core out to the tips of her fingers. She definitely (thinks that she) doesn't plead, but a garbled something that is probably his name tears itself from her lips as her orgasm takes her over.

And then he keeps going. Her body is trembling, ready to come down as she forces her hands to relax. but Jack isn't stopping. She whimpers faintly, head shaking] Jack--

[weirlind]

[Jack reaches one hand up, finding one of her breasts and palming it firmly as his mouth still moves over her, his hips grinding against the bed when she comes. She's so hot, and she's so wet. His thumb brushes over her nipple, teasing it.

She says his name more coherently this time, and he looks up at her without stopping, without moving, without even saying anything.

His free hand moves, fingers sliding up her slit first to feel how wet she is for him, because of him. He teases her entrance with two fingers. It's not because she needs to be teased, because he thinks he needs to go slow. No, it's really only because sometimes, he just really enjoys being an asshole to her.

But then he's slipping his fingers inside of her, groaning. She's so tight, he can't even really think at this point.]