the non-sexual intimacy meme

[meme]

Reach out and touch someone.

1. In Bed
- Sleeping and only sleeping? You can hear your partner's heartbeat and listen to their breathing. Are they stubborn and need to be put to bed? Do they have a nightmare to be woken from, or do they sleep peacefully in your arms?

2. Cleaning Up
- This can be anything from bathing, shaving, to hair care! Or even dressing, getting out of your costume after a long day of superhero-ing.

3. Living Together
- Domesticity requires a certain level of weakness. Maybe you're seeing someone without their 'adaptive equipment' on, or their defenses lowered. A shared space comes with shares items: clothes or jewelry, or anything in between. Who keeps the place clean? Who decorates or cooks?

4. Emotional Support
- Someone who you can share your secrets with. Have you lost someone important? Are you risking your life to save theirs?

5. Physical Support
- Holding hands is the simplest show of support, like being held in someone's arms, or carried when you might fall.

6. Chaste Kisses
- A kiss on the hand may be quite continental! Or perhaps the cheek or forehead, or maybe even feet? Nothing's wrong with a little worship.

7. Wild Card
- There are as many ways to be intimate with someone as there are stars in the sky. What's the unique way that you connect?

Comments

[gandere]

Why would I ever be nostalgic for something like this?!

[ The fact she answers his question with that one means that it might. In her mind, she's recalling a time in which her mother used to be the one to put up her hair and now that she's gone from her life for good? ]

I was a perfectly obedient and disciplined child. I have good manners and made the best grades in the school.

[god_damned]

That is not what I am referring to. [ His fingers slide through her hair gently as he draws up the last bit for her next tail. ] You were never fond of me.

[ wonder why ]

[gandere]

You left me alone to fend for myself right after my father's death and you donated most of my family's fortune away carelessly. [ Stiffening her shoulders just a bit. ] You never gave me any reason to trust you.

So... hmph. Why do you even care if I was ever fond of you or not?

[god_damned]

[ He finishes the second tie and there she is: pretty as a picture. A picture which hasn't changed hairstyles in ten whole years. That's okay though; at least she doesn't grow a mullet.

He lingers, though, his fingers smoothing through one tail. ]

I was simply remarking. You disliked me, that made you hesitant to listen, so in turn I was stern with you.

[ 'Stern' being an understatement. ]

Would you have preferred that I kept close company?

[gandere]

Yes.

[ Wow that was unusually blunt and bold for a tsundere. Still, there's something that also lingers within her that keeps her body in place near his. ]

Children need parents after all. Isn't that... common knowledge?

[god_damned]

[ Her response actually seems to surprise him -- the honesty of it is not something he anticipated. Eventually, he does reply to her: ]

Yes. [ His hands remain in her hair, idly adjusting. ] However, I would not be suited for that role.

[gandere]

It doesn't matter if you were suitable or not for it.

[ If she's already been so honest with him already, why not continue it? Rin's always been a person who kept her heart well-guarded, but the City has soften her just enough to be stupid to believe she can have a family here. ]

You were the one chosen to fulfill that role by my father so you should have followed through with it all the way!

[god_damned]

[ That, however, does genuinely surprise him. Kirei meets her gaze through the dresser's mirror, and he frowns slightly. ]

And what would you have me do?

[gandere]

Praise me when I got it right every now and again.

[ Closing her eyes to avoid looking at herself. She can't stand to see her own face when she's this weak. ]

[god_damned]

[ There is a small pause following that, just briefly, before he bends his head and presses his lips to her head, kissing her hair. ]

That would not be as rare as you imagine.

[gandere]

[ Her father has only patted her on the head once and that was days (hours?) before he was killed. This? This is entirely new and something she's inexperienced with. ]

... Everything is rare coming from you. [ That's the best retort she can come up with when her head is this feverish. ]

[god_damned]

Do you doubt your worth so often, Rin? [ He speaks while still bent close to her, his lips murmuring against her hair. ]

What would convince you?

[gandere]

[ Yes. ] No, of course not.

[ His breath sends shivers down her spine as the tension refuses to leave her body. Having the greatest enemy of her family this close and wanting him to fill the emptiness their deaths brought them contradicted with the urge to have his body fill their graves instead. ]

Nothing. You can't change the past and I'm all grown up now.

[god_damned]

Do you mean to say it's too late now? [ He lingers, tucking a stray hair back into place behind her ear. ] Would you rather I abandon all attempts?

[gandere]

[ He makes matters so difficult for her. It'd be easy to accuse him for making her this way and ultimately for ruining her life, but what good would it do? ]

What do you think, Kirei?

[ Without the memories of 'raising her' of the past ten years, does he really want to put his best foot forward? ]

[god_damned]

I think, by all measures, you are still an incredibly young woman. You have not fully become yourself just yet.

[ His fingers curl through her hair gently, smoothing it back. ]

I wonder what kind of person you will be.

[gandere]

... Someone who would make my father proud. [ That much she's sure of even as Kirei's fingers touch her exposed skin. ] What do you think? Do you think I'm capable of doing that even here?