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

[glowsferatu]

[ kanaya folds her arms and leans back against the pile. ]

Yeah, because I've certainly been deliberately shutting you out. That's precisely what's occurring between us right at this moment.

[shipper]

Only when it actually matters. Efury ofur time nobody can get rid of you.

[she grumbles half under her breath as she reluctantly steps through the portal finally. Nepeta remains in place after coming into the room, shoulders hiked and tense as if she expects an altercation to break out at any time]

[glowsferatu]

[ she doesn't move except to let the portal close behind nepeta, and a raise of her eyebrow. ]

When it actually matters? That's rich, as though I even had the opportunity. You shut me out preemptively when I had no inclination to do the same.

The difference is that I actually care. The question is why you stopped.

[shipper]

[there's a horrible comment about the idea of Kanaya actually caring, but Nepeta almost physically cuts it down before it leaves her mind. instead she bites on the inside of her cheek, glaring daggers at the nearest pillow]

Beclaws I'm tired of fighting ofur something that wasn't worth as much as I used to think it was. Is that so diffurcult to understand?

[glowsferatu]

[ what came out wasn't much better to kanaya, not with the way she interprets it. ]

If that's what I was actually asking, sure, but it isn't. I keep no illusions that I'm worth anything to almost anyone, but you at least kept up a pretense until you just decided to...not. [ in other words, "no matter how often i may think i'm worthless, it still hurts to have it explicitly confirmed." ]

[shipper]

Oh my god, this isn't about you as a purrson! ['for once' is the unspoken addition to the sentence]

It's about the fact that our furiendship actually sucked ass and it's not worth trying to fix!

[glowsferatu]

But it wasn't by any means unsalvageable until you decided to turn your back on it for months at the sign of the first challenge. How can that not reflect on how little you care about me as a person?

You've never made even the slightest effort toward that friendship, what else am I expected to think?

[shipper]

That maybe I'm just tired. [her shoulders slump, voice softening] Maybe you're just as wrong as I was about our friendship and I'm tired of holding onto things just in case they get better someday.

[glowsferatu]

Things don't get better just because you want them to, Nepeta, no matter how patient you are with them. You have to take action to bring them where you'd like them to be.

The waiting tends to only make matters worse.

[shipper]

I did take action. You just don't like that either because it wasn't the one you wanted.

[glowsferatu]

No, what you did would be categorically defined as inaction. You only made a response beyond that when, surprise, it made things worse!

[shipper]

Avoiding you didn't make things worse, you pushing and prodding and then not listening when I actually said anything was what made it worse!

[glowsferatu]

So I'm the one who wasn't listening, now? I heard precisely what you said, Nepeta, and I tried to discuss it with you, but you wouldn't hear a word I said!

And yes, Nepeta, the avoidance made it worse. I hardly think it would have been nearly as bad if it hadn't taken four months to come to light.

[shipper]

Telling me that I'm wrong isn't listening and discussing! Four months or four sweeps wouldn't change that!

[glowsferatu]

Speak for yourself! If that's all you got out of anything I said, then you weren't listening. And it's a bit rich when you hadn't done any better.

I understand the difficulty of your position, why do you think I was hesitant to see you put in it? But once that was out, well, there was nothing to be done. That understanding isn't a courtesy I have been mutually extended.

Would you have preferred I treated you as incapable of it? Because encouraging you in a path that ignores the reality of our situation would have been nothing short of patronizing, and I think that would have been worse.

[shipper]

Worse? You were ready to pretend that there was nothing horrible in my future for the entire time we spent here but telling me that maybe I could change things once I found out is worse?

[the anger in Nepeta's voice sputters out into genuine disbelief. it had been made perfectly clear to her in the past that Kanaya didn't really think she was capable of very much, but the idea that she considered letting her think she could actually make a difference as the line in the sand when it came to condescending facades is more than she'd expected. when she speaks again she can't help the note of hurt creeping into her words]

How can you really think that?

[glowsferatu]

[ kanaya shrinks into her shoulders a bit. maybe it had been patronizing already to keep mum about her future, but what she was really afraid of was how nepeta would take it. she didn't want to ruin her chance at happiness here.

but she'd been wrong to do that, hadn't she? bad as it may be to think so, now that she's seen the effect, she's no longer sure. ]

Because I'd seen what one omission had done already. Piling another on top of it seemed...unconscionable.

What else could I have said?

[shipper]

'I hope you can do it.' Is that such a terrible thing?

[she spreads her hands out slightly, question genuine rather than scathingly rhetorical. she really wants to know what exactly is so awful about wishing her good luck; even if Kanaya sincerely doesn't believe that she can't do anything (and that alone stings) it doesn't change anything to simply wish a friend good luck]

[glowsferatu]

I'd be glad if you could, but... [ and there always seems to be a but. ] I'm not very good at hoping for a pure hypothetical.

You want me to think you're capable of the impossible, and that would come at the cost of thinking you capable of understanding and acknowledging reality. That's something concrete, and it was something I did hope of you.

You would need that much if you're to have any chance at the other. You need to be prepared for the possibility that it might not work out the way you want it to, and I thought that was something you would be capable of.

[ though nepeta's done little to really display that capability, so maybe it isn't as concrete as she wants it to be. it's just easier to imagine than a happy ending where everything works out for everyone, given how used to her own failures kanaya's become. hope in general is a challenge. ]