Intimate Healing / Literature

• In Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero, Akatsuki fights off Phil, but gets slashed by Phil's poisoned sword and collapses with a terrible fever. Myuu strips them down and shares her body heat to break the fever. Afterwards, Akatsuki reveals he could have used his powers to neutralize the poison, but stopped since being hugged by Myuu while they were both in their underwear was much more appealing. Naturally, she gets pissed about him being a pervert.
• The military sci-fi novel Armor by John Steakley has the combat suits built with an energy transference function that occurs when they surface-to-surface contact. Though it isn't exactly as intimate by most standards, ie. flesh to flesh, the necessity to be in physical contact does make it intimate, and though siphoning energy from one suit to another isn't exactly healing, it does allow the suit to continue functioning and thus keep the protagonist alive, otherwise he would have died on any one of several occasions against his alien bug enemies.
• Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files:
  • White Court vampires can heal from deep wounds via sex, but this drains the life force of their partner, sometimes to the point of killing them. They prefer to draw only a little energy at a time, but given the sort of mayhem that follows Harry everywhere...
  • The Dresden Files is also notable in that, when someone is given mouth-to-mouth, that whole vomiting issue isn't ignored in the slightest.
  • Elaine's Reiki, which is a type of energy transfer, performed while massaging Harry, used to stimulate Harry's healing. Made more intimate by Harry and Elaine's past relationship.
  • A sort-of example occured in the book Changes, when Harry becomes the Winter Knight. Harry suffers a severe injury that leaves him permanently paralyzed from the waist down, and one of his options was to cut a deal with Queen Mab to heal himself. Sealing it was a rite in the spirit world that was very "intimate" moment between them to seal the deal. Once it was done, Harry's partner honored her end and healed his physical body.
• In D. K. Broster's The Wounded Name, Laurent cradles a wounded, sick, delirious, and freezing Aymar while they huddle in a tiny shelter that's being pelted a thunderstorm, and the scene is one of many that shows how deeply devoted Laurent is to Aymar.
• In Broken Angels, Takeshi uses his special psychodynamic rehabilitation techniques on Tanya, a recent internee at a wartime prison. Tanya decides that she needs to have sex with Takeshi to change her feeling of being 'fixed'. Said fornication causes the conditioning to break down.
• In Michael Crichton's Prey, Julia also transfers nanomachines by kissing. Unfortunately, these are not the good kind. It gets even worse later, with one unwilling victim being held down for the kiss.
• Sara Douglass' Tencendor fantasy series has the protagonist get burned to death by a rebounding spell, except that the Goddess of Death won't let his soul pass into the Underworld so he's trapped in agony in his own corpse. Said protagonist's girlfriend has to fuck that corpse in order to merge their powers, heal his flesh and anchor his soul properly back into his body.
• In The Diamond Age, Nell uses this to transfer hunter-killer nanomachines to save her adoptive mother from a deadly nanomachine computation.
• Anita Blake:
  • Anita- main Action Girl of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series- uses sexual energy to call various kinds of preternatural power, most often healing power.
  • Early in the series, deeply religious and strictly monogamous Anita only uses this as a last resort, to save friends from grievous injuries.
  • There's a lot of healing via licking or worse. Apparently medical magical saliva works only when it's tongue to troubled area. Putting it on a napkin ruins the whole thing.
• In the Hurog duology, there is a rather unusual example: Ward and Oreg have to tend to the wounds of a severely injured Tisala. The fact that they have to strip her clothes off is treated as a non-issue. Oreg has Healing Hands, which is also a non-issue, as the part of her that needs to be magically healed is her hand. However, Ward can feel Oreg's healing magic, if it's worked nearby, and finds the intimacy of this somewhat erotic and slightly disturbing.
• Rand of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time does this after being caught in a blizzard with Aviendha, despite the wide variety of magical powers at his disposal. The problem wasn't the warmth, it was that he couldn't stay awake. He could use magic to keep the warmth, but he was afraid that if he fell asleep the temperature would keep rising. Once her temperature is stable a Sexy Discretion Shot ensues, followed by Aviendha being disappointed in herself as she believes Rand belongs with Elayne and had promised to make sure he didn't stray.
• Mord-Sith in the Sword of Truth have the breath of life, where a recently-dead victim with their trachea and lungs intact can be revived. It's never explained how. Made fairly squicky because usually it's used so that the Mord-Sith can kill and revive their torture victims over and over. Yeah. They are not fun people.
  • Wizards heal someone by psychically entering their patient, taking the pain onto themselves, and then mending what's broken. It's apparently shockingly intimate and very tiring. In fact, one patient saved in this way described it in more intimate terms than when said wizard told her to pull down her shirt and proceeded to feel her breasts. To be fair to that wizard, there was a particular sorceress who was (spoilered for massive squick) cutting off a nipple of women close to that wizard and using the nipple to mind-control them from afar. Said patient teased him mercilessly in front of his wife for it, but is only ever really taken aback at the intimateness when he heals her.
    • To make it even more impressive, that patient was a Mord-Sith. Yes, a wizard did something so intimate to one of Lord Rahl's torturers, who are made by torture, who would serve as a consort to the Lord Rahl the instant he asked (and many have), that she was embarrassed by the intimacy. On top of that, they hate magic.
• In Mercedes Lackey's works:
  • The "sharing body heat" version occurs between the titular characters in The Lark and the Wren, complicated by their Unresolved Sexual Tension. Which then resolves itself rather thoroughly.
  • The "Osage blanket ritual" mentioned a few times in Sacred Ground.
  • The Kestra'chen of the Hawkbrothers specialize in healing people emotionally, frequently through sex, massages and other forms of physical comfort.
• In Marc Laidlaw's The Neon Lotus, a female practitioner of the Tibetan self-heating art of respa who was trying to be celibate had to have sex with a friend so that enough heat would be generated to keep him alive... just had to.
• In Eclipse (2007), werewolf Jacob Black (whose healthy body temperature is about 43 °C) zips up in a sleeping bag with Bella while he's wearing only a pair of slacks. When he suggests trying the naked version, vampire boyfriend Edward is less than pleased.
  Bella: C-c-cut it out, Jake. N-n-n-nobody really n-n-n-n-needs all ten t-t-t-toes.
• Emily does this to Genji in Cloud of Sparrows when they are ambushed in a blizzard. Naturally, Emily is terrified that it will count as a sin. Then when Genji regains consciousness, he thinks he's been taken prisoner...
• Star Wars:
  • Anakin Solo and Tahiri Veila in Edge of Victory II: Rebirth, in the rapidly-depressurizing Yag'dhul station (yes, yes, we know...). They were side by side, though that may have been the result of the size of the locker they were in (because, well, the station was depressurizing). They also had their First Kiss, since they weren't exactly laying long odds on survival.
  • In the Expanded Universe backstory literature features Ephant Mon (the large, elephant-like alien from Return of the Jedi) and Jabba the Hutt. It's a bit of Pet the Dog for Jabba, since Ephant Mon became his only truly loyal friend after they saved each other.
  • In Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Luke, armed with the Force-enhancing Kaiburr Crystal, heals Leia after her fight with Darth Vader by touching and tracing all the wounds on her face and body. The comic book adaptation, released after Return of the Jedi, opts to portray this as red lightning emanating from the crystal while he holds it above her body so there's less Brother–Sister Incest feelings implied.
• In Neil Gaiman's American Gods the protagonist's wounds disappear after he dreams of having sex with a goddess (who was disguised as a cat in his bedroom when he went to sleep - A dream?). Though he does find some fresh claw marks.
• In "Snow, Glass, Apples", a retelling of "Snow White" from the evil stepmother's view, Snow White gets revived with a kiss. In this version, Snow White is a vampire and she was incapacitated by the poisoned apple. The prince is a necrophiliac and from the stepmother's view she can only guess that while having sex with Snow White's body the apple was dislodged from her throat, or during the act of sex she was slowly revived and after biting the prince she started drinking his blood which undid the apple's magic, washing down the poison with the lifegiving blood.
• In Fred Saberhagen's Third Book of Swords, Kristin gives up her virginity to Mark to heal him from the Mindsword's poison.
• In Olympos, a character must awaken a women from suspended animation by having sex with her unconscious body.
• Happens a few times in A Song of Ice and Fire, and - of course - twisted in horrifying ways.
  • Robb Stark is "comforted" by Jeyne Westerling after he is injured and in mourning for his supposedly dead brothers. He ends up marrying her to preserve her honor, which directly sets in motion the events leading to his death.
  • An event taking place before the beginning of the series has Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish is wounded in a duel and allowed to recuperate in the home of his beloved's family. Said beloved's younger sister takes this opportunity to essentially rape him in his drug-infused state under the guise of tending to his wounds. Needless to say, there are some nasty repercussions later on, including the sister's descent into madness and an entire war brought about by Littlefinger's manipulations, ones that he could only accomplish thanks to the position of power she gave him in hopes of making him love her.
• In Robin LaFevers' Grave Mercy, this is how Master Poisoner Ismae saves Duval, who has been poisoned. She is one of Death's daughters, and she has the ability to neutralize poison via skin-on-skin contact. While sex isn't strictly necessary, Duval certainly wasn't about to object.
• In the Star Trek: The Original Series novel Ice Trap, at one point Security Chief Chekov gets poisoned and becomes ill and comatose, which puts him at risk of losing body heat due to the ice planet his mission is on. Uhura and Sulu thus talk one of his male security ensigns into helping him keep warm by sticking both into the same sleeping bag with each only wearing a body slip. Played for Laughs a bit in that neither has any interest in the other aside from professional loyalty, so the ensign is decidedly feeling awkward at the whole situation. When Uhura tells the ensign to "yell if he wakes up", the ensign dryly quips, "Don't worry, if I don't, he will."
• The School for Good and Evil ends with Agatha bringing her friend Sophie back from the dead with a kiss, after Sophie, who'd done a Face–Heel Turn, had redeemed herself with a Heroic Sacrifice.
• The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Alexander digs Tatiana out of a bombed train station, removes her bloody clothes, then cleans and dresses her wounds. There are no beds available, so Tatiana asks him to spend the night lying next to her instead of on the wet grass. Which Alexander does, wrapping his greatcoat around them both. They First Kiss the next day, and much later Tatiana admits she'd been doing everything she could to bring this about.
• Lampshaded at a moment in the second series of The Chronicles of Amber, where the Pattern has abducted Coral and holds her captive and comatose in the center of a broken reflection of itself. In order to rescue her, Merlin is forced to walk the broken Pattern, only to find her comatose and impossible to wake. He asks the Pattern what he should do to heal her, and it answers with the image of him and Coral having sex. Merlin is furious, tells the Pattern that he is not starring in any kind of occult porn and that if what it wants is some stupid tantric ritual he can calls specialists. (He eventually ends up doing it.)
• Subverted in The Zone series by James Rouch. A soldier cuddles up to Sociopathic Soldier Andrea in the snow, only to back off when he feels the point of a knife pressing against his ribs.
• In Tomcat Blue Eyes' Diaries, Blue Eyes has a serious (live-or-die serious) fight with a mean yellow cat who wanted to hurt Kiki, a young kitten. Blue Eyes tries to lick his wounds, but it hurts terribly. Kiki comes to help him, and Blue Eyes notes that her tongue is much softer and her purring is soothing as well. He also mentions that Kiki looks exceptionally well and realizes that She Is All Grown Up now.
• The Ganymede Takeover. La Résistance huddle together for mutual warmth when hiding in the mountains in winter. Their leader lampshades the trope, saying how it makes them a Band of Brothers (given that men wouldn't normally snuggle up to each other for fear of being seen as gay).
• In M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link, Massha successfully and instantly sobers up the Geek by giving the drunken Deveel a big long kiss. In this case, it's not eroticism or true affection that has the sobering effect, but the fact that being smooched by a woman as fat and ugly as Massha will subconsciously override even the thickest of Beer Goggles.
• In Lady Midnight Emma heals Julian, her supposed platonic life partner from a fatal injury while they're cramped together in the back seat of a car. She even notes that she's straddling him. It turns out to be intimate in more way than one, as it was her romantic feelings for him that made the healing runes strong enough to save his life.
• A component of some types of elven healing in the Raine Bennares series by Lisa Shearin.
• In The Tiger's Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera, Princess Shizuka comes down with a nasty fever and, afraid she might not live through the night, has sex with her childhood friend Shefali — who notes that Shizuka shouldn't be engaging in such activities in her condition. When Shefali's mother enters the ger the next morning, Shefali tries to pass off Shizuka's nakedness as this.
• Lilith's Brood:
  • Among the Cthulhumanoid Oankali, the ooloi use their sensory arms both for healing (by performing microsurgery and genetic manipulation) and for the species' version of sex (by transmitting pure pleasure to the nervous system), and like to add a bit of the latter to the former.
  • In an intimate but starkly non-sexual instance, Lilith helps the ooloi Nikanj heal the loss of a sensory arm with some naked spooning, so he can use all of his sensory tentacles to copy helpful genetic information from her. He's in no condition to make it pleasant, so she has to endure the feeling of being perforated by hundreds of needles.
• In Chronicles of a Strange Kingdom immature nymphs^note Nymphs appear out on nowhere as prepubescent girls. They grow up an the same rate as humans, become sexually active at mid-teens, then mature and settle down at early to mid-twenties. are nymphomaniacs that need to sleep with several different men every week. The one-night lover is invigorated and one of his ailments — physical or emotional — is cured. What do nymphs get out of that, nobody quite understands, not even nymphs themseves. Eventualy, a nymph matures and settles down with her chosen husband. From this point on, she only keeps him in good health. It is said that the love of a nymph cures, but just spending time in the same room seems to help, although the increments decrease greatly after the first night. They may be elementals of Life, their power may be connected to deities of love and fertility, but nobody can be sure.
  • In the backstory the nymph Azille had sex with an ex-wizard Orlando suffering from Superpower Meltdown. His powers were restored right in the middle of the act.
  • Later Azille felt that the hero, who once saved her from rapists, prince Elmar, had been rendered paraplegic. She travelled to him, declared him her future husband, and spent several weeks next to him, curing the paralysis. When the story starts, they live together, but she is still immature and spends almost every other night with other men.
  • When Elmar is hit by a Mind Manipulation that compels him to protect the witch, give her all his money and then kill himself, Azille cures him again.
  • In a one-night-stand she cures emotional scars of Espada, a warrior, who lost his family to prison camps.
  • Cantor, a singer-cum-soldier, who lost his voice because of tortures, keeps avoiding her. He assumes, that her cure will work only once, and tries to fix as many things as possible, hoping she'd repair his vocal cords when all else is fine. She doesn't, instead curing his sterility.
  • Then a vampire, that tries to take Elmar hostage, ends up dead. Seems to be a case of Revive Kills Zombie, although the exact circumstances stay secret.
  • Then she is captured by invaders and cures one soldier, removing his detrimental mutations.
  • Then she teaches love to The Dragon, resulting in Heel–Face Door-Slam and him being Driven to Suicide.
  • Then she spends a night in a room with a super-lich, irreversibly killing him.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In volume 4, Oliver is still fighting the aftereffects of Ophelia Salvadori's Perfume. When Chela realizes it, she corners him in a restaurant men's room and advises him that, As You Know, if he's still feeling the effects after this long, the only surefire way to clear the Perfume out of his system will be to satisfy the urge, and not by himself. Though she questions whether he'd rather sleep with his primary Love Interest Nanao (both of them have admitted to their attraction at this point, though neither is willing to call it "love" yet), she solves the issue with a magic-assisted handjob through their clothes. Justified because Sex Magic was involved in causing the problem to begin with, so it makes sense that a similar effect would be useful in resolving it.
• Inkmistress: Asra has Hal lie against her while she's fighting a fever to keep her warm. She tries to tell herself this doesn't arouse her, but realizes she's lying.

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