The Romantic But Nonsexual Intimacy Meme

[ladys_night]

The Romantic But Nonsexual Intimacy Meme

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 is valuable, but it's not everything.

RULES

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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.

(taken from here)

Comments

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[Sousuke either followed along or put up a stubborn fight, that much Rin remembered. When he thought of their childhood days, he remembered laughter, comfort, competition, and arguments. There weren't many, but the few that remained in his mind did so because they'd made his stomach twist into a sick mess. If he dwelled on them too long, they still did. It was a lonely feeling, but since Sousuke had returned it had grown more distant.

More comfortable. It was almost as if each rift was gradually closing.

Perhaps that was why Sousuke relaxed him so much. The comfort of old memories coupled with ties rekindling, with only more potential in the future. Rin could feel Sousuke's breath in his hair, and he hummed softly. Every breath he took he could feel Sousuke answering. They were almost synchronized, as if swimming in parallel lanes.

Rin thought of the relay. Of being even closer than swimming alongside. Moving, racing as one. He felt that familiar twist in his stomach, excitement mixed with the nervous anticipation that always built before a race. Just a bit of anxiety accompanied it all - would Sousuke understand? Rin needed wanted his friend to understand. He twisted his hand into the other boy's shirt.]

[shouldersokay]

[There was something in common, then. He tried not to dwell on their arguments - childhood or otherwise - lest that same twisting mess of a feeling settled in him as well. It wasn't something that proximity helped with him, either, so best to push it aside and hope to forget.

Still, he could feel the divide between them lessening, and it was... nice, really. Not quite relaxing, with the pressure of competition and getting better and chasing that dream of getting closer without pushing him away under pretense of rivalry, but still nice.

But now there was only sleep, and comfortable warmth, and Rin's body tucked close like they were supposed to be fit together as such, to the extent that his fidgeting and clinging did nothing to disturb him at all.]

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[Say what one may about Rin's ambitions, Sousuke was absolutely in his imagined future. He saw himself swimming in the Olympics. Swimming with Haru. Sometimes winning and sometimes on a team with the Iwatobi boy. No matter the situation, Sousuke was always there. Behind him, at his side, in a neighboring lane. With him in the water. There was no stress to that future. It was all on Rin's shoulders to accomplish, and he knew he could.

The only concern in Rin's mind surrounding his friend was the relay. The event Sousuke had begged to participate in. He'd wanted to see what Rin saw in them. At the moment Rin's chest had grown tight, breaths difficult with some form of tension. Left to think now, he knew it had been a good feeling. The jerking feeling he'd felt had been yet another schism between them closing.

Rin did not shift. His hand wound so tightly in Sousuke's shirt loosened. The redhead's thumb stroked the shirt's hem, moving closer and closer with each pass to stroke as much skin as fabric. Rin could not see himself being more comfortable, and for that he was thankful.]

[shouldersokay]

[Sousuke'd shared that dream, once, and it had gotten him to a point - and long past a point - where that dream was dashed, but he couldn't very well tell Rin that, not yet, and though that weighed heavily on him, it was only a matter of time until he saw what he needed to see and until he could tell Rin... and be cried on... but that should be able to wait until after the season.

But he was comfortable, wound up in Rin and blankets and warmth, so it was uncertain that even if Rin decided to fidget around if he'd wake up.

When Rin's fingers met skin instead of fabric, though, Sousuke shifted just enough to tug him closer, to tuck himself a little bit better around him before dropping back off into as deep a sleep as he had been in.]

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[When Sousuke shifted Rin stopped immediately. Had he woken him? It took a long moment after being pulled closer and wrapped around for Rin to allow himself to stop holding his breath. He wouldn't be doing that again. He didn't want Sousuke to wake up. He liked seeing him like this - relaxed and peaceful.

It was unusual. Usually either the determination of competition or the spark of rivalry was alive in Sousuke's eyes. Rin knew well that both of those things took a great deal of energy. So he wanted his friend to sleep, to rest well, because they'd be right back at it tomorrow.

Rin stared at Sousuke's face perhaps longer than would be socially acceptable, and then closed his eyes. They had grown heavy with sleep once again, and he leaned into the bigger boy once more to finally drift off to sleep. He was wrapped in Sousuke, comfortable and comforted that his friend was the same.

Sun spilled in through half drawn blinds and Rin skewed his eyes shut. He shifted, attempting to roll away from the light. He couldn't move. The redhead jerked awake and came face to face with Sousuke. Right. Last night. He remembered it all but his heart still jumped in his chest.

Now what?

Rin was still comfortable. He wasn't sure if he should be embarrassed, but they hadn't done anything but sleep, so he decided not to be. Hopefully that decision would last. It was still relaxing to be held and to see Sousuke so soundly asleep. But it was also probably later morning. They'd overslept.]

Oi. [Rin jostled himself in bed, hoping the motion would wake his friend.]

[shouldersokay]

[Sousuke hadn't planned on falling asleep, nor had he planned on spending the whole night in Rin's bunk, but he had slept and slept hard and before he knew it there was some jostling happening and sunshine right in his face.

That... wasn't quite right.

Usually they were up early enough that the sun wasn't the worst thing ever, and yet there they were.

And if it wasn't going to be an early morning, than an attempt at sleeping in more was a worthy one to make, so he tried to tuck further into the blankets... and they weren't moving. And there appeared to be someone else in bed with him...

Oh.

Oh, right.

He'd dragged Rin off to bed the night before, and had apparently stayed put. Best to play it off like it was nothing, and like he hadn't just cuddled his friend closer in an attempt to go back to sleep, then.]

...What?

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[Rin had tensed against Sousuke's efforts to pull him closer. It wasn't that he didn't want the contact. In fact, Rin would have liked nothing more than to lay in bed with Sousuke for a greater part of the day. What had him resisting was the time. He had no idea what it was, but they'd likely slept through something important.

He allowed Sousuke to play off his attempt. Rin sat up with a groan and stretched. He hadn't wanted to leave that warmth. His back was cold and his instincts were begging him to return.]

Get up. [Rin regarded Sousuke with very aggressive neutrality. He tried not to let any overt familiarity show, but his efforts quickly crumbled. He smiled at his friend, a grin to show that he realized what had happened and he'd enjoyed it, even if it was against some unspoken rule.]

[shouldersokay]

[They'd already woken up late, so really what harm was there in staying a little longer? He didn't want to let go, and Rin didn't seem to want to get up, either, and yet there they were.

So he groaned in protest when Rin told him to get up, glaring halfheartedly until he met Rin's smile, which he couldn't help but return as he shook his head and pushed himself up.

Still no mention of the breach of whatever unspoken set of rules that had occurred.]

What time is it?

[Because if they didn't have to get up...]

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[Rin's phone had been abandoned on his desk. It would have been a simple matter to crane his neck out and peer at the clock on the other side of the room, but in that moment leaning away from Sousuke seemed like the most arduous task possible.] Don't know.

[He sighed and hunched his shoulders as he exhaled. It would be so easy to fold into Sousuke. His friend would likely take that as a cue to lay back down. Rin wasn't tired, but the morning's routine had already been ruined. There wasn't anything worth doing. Temptation was clouding his judgement and he knew it. Rin was fully aware that he was twisting his own logic, ignoring his unfinished homework, ignoring the stirring of hunger in his stomach.

Sousuke would be spared Rin's body weight, but only barely. Rin leaned back, initially aiming to rest himself on Sousuke, but at the last second deciding to slide past and back down onto the bed.] You check. [Rin's command was half-hearted. He would really rather Sousuke didn't.]

[shouldersokay]

What for? [Sousuke had been expecting Rin to lean back against him once he started to move back, had been willing to be receptive, to curl around him with ease and a familiarity that was a little too intimate, no matter how much they both ignored that.

Rin slid back down onto the bed, instead, but all that provided was an excuse for him to do the same, to settle back into the warmth and easy affection as he wrapped around Rin again anyway, nestling into his back and nuzzling into his hair in the sort of motion that could be passed off as just trying to get comfortable in the limited space.]

Go back to sleep, Rin.

[sharkinfestedwaters]

[Rin spared a raised eyebrow and a concerned eye to Sousuke so easily draping himself over the redhead. He'd let Sousuke's earlier attempt to play off their contact go without challenge, but this instance was much more noticeable. But he didn't want it to stop. So Rin said nothing.

Perhaps there was something important that could still be done this morning. That being staying right where he was. Sousuke's command was met with a grunt. Rin shifted, seeking a small extra bit of comfort. Once he found it, it was all too soon that his eyes grew heavy.]

You too. [There was no alarm set, and Rin wondered if he should be concerned. His thoughts drifted away before he could find an answer. The last thing his mind focused on before he fell asleep was Sousuke's face nuzzled into his hair.]