Intimate Healing

Oftentimes the only way to treat someone is to engage in some rather intimate activity. Some of these techniques are derived from actual methods, but often they're played up, especially in Anime and Manga given how sensitive the Japanese are to intimate physical contact.

Variants include the "mouth-to-mouth medicine dosing" or "medicine kiss", climbing into bed with the patient to keep them warm / cool them down (nakedness "for better skin contact" optional), various kinds of blood or power transfers through kissing/licking, a Magic Kiss with healing properties, and so forth. More explicit titles may have straight-up "healing through sex".

To the other extreme, the things a character won't do because they resemble intimate acts, such as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, can be taken to silly lengths; the superficial resemblance of resuscitation to kissing triggers all manner of modesty and embarrassment, ignoring the pushing and vomiting usually associated with the procedure.

See Deus Sex Machina for the offensive magic variety. See also Indirect Kiss. May result in Florence Nightingale Effect. Finger-Suck Healing and Intimate Psychotherapy are Subtropes of Intimate Healing. Compare Kiss of Life and Mate or Die. If intimate contact acts as a Power Limiter, see Cooldown Hug.

Examples of Intimate Healing include:

Anime and Manga

  • In the manga of Nagasarete Airantou, when Ikuto is poisoned during a visit to Kunai's house, Shinobu does this. It annoys Ayane, surprise surprise.
  • The Ah! My Goddess movie. Though that was more of a bastardly Mickey Finn trick.
    • Also the anime, to pass the wind crystal cure to Belldandy.
    • There's also a scene in the manga where Urd locked lips with Belldandy to pull an ailment (an "Ahem Bug" causing laryngitis) out of her. Keiichi walked in just in time to be paralyzed by the sight.
    • While not exactly used for healing, in one chapter of the manga Urd kisses Keiichi to get him to swallow a potion she made to help him win a race he was competing in.
  • Akira Okuzaki does this to Ill Boy Takumi Tokiha in both My-HiME and Mai-Otome, when he has a seizure that doesn't let him swallow his pills. She puts them in her mouth and then presses their lips together so she can give the meds to him properly.
  • Re: Cutie Honey. (It's a Medicine Kiss to restart the android during the showdown with the Big Bad.)
    • Natsuko's solution to Honey's blue-screening in the previous episode, after realizing that the Robot Girl's skin is reacting to her touch in her otherwise lifeless body, is to strip completely naked and embrace Honey as intimately as she possibly can without actually having sex with her.
  • The (in)famous Suboshi-Amiboshi kiss in Fushigi Yuugi
    • Not to mention the Soi and Nagako "sexual regeneration" sequences.
    • In Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden, Takiko meets a girl and rescues her from demons and takes her to an inn. The girl has a fever, so Takiko decides to "absorb her fever," by stripping to the waist and climbing into bed with the girl. Who turns into the male Uruki...causing Takiko to freak out when she finds out.
  • Mild subversion: Used by Saya and Haji to give each other their blood in different situations during Blood+.
    • The fact she lets out a little moan the first time he does it says all the rest...
  • Rue uses this technique to give water to a dehydrated Mytho in Princess Tutu, in a flashback sequence meant to cement their relationship.
  • In Shattered Angels, or Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora both are good, the Absolute Angels survive by draining Mana from humans by way of a kiss. Kazuyacan drain Mana from Absolute Angels via a kiss as well.
  • In Ranma ½ manga, the one-shot character Densuke will only take his vitally-needed medication if it's given by a pretty nurse. Weird circumstances make this nurse out to be Ranma. And Densuke does his level best to get the medicine delivered by this method. He fails with Ranma, but the medicine is delivered by this method (by a male Gonk of a doctor).
  • Ren delivers medicine to Kazuki like this in GetBackers. Later, the trope is mocked to an extent when she is told to do the same to Emishi who promptly sticks his tongue in her mouth.
  • Used in the Sailor Moon R movie, when Mamoru drinks the sap from Fiore's Flower of Life and administers it to Usagi.
  • Princess Mononoke, although in this case San gives Ashitaka his food this way (he's in no state to care for himself), chewing up meat for him and feeding him mama-bird style. Or mama-wolf style.
  • Infamous lech Miroku from Inuyasha once requests this. Kagome says "Yes, of course!"... then turns to the little fox boy Shippo and says "Take care of him, will you?" Suddenly Miroku thinks he can take the medicine okay by himself....
  • In Ikki Tousen, Ryoufu does this to her bed-ridden ex-boyfriend Saji, giving him a pill through a kiss.
  • Turn a Gundam: Harry Ord gives Lt. Poe Eiji some anti-radiation sickness medicine this way. What makes it strange is that she was conscious (if sick) and still fully capable of swallowing a pill herself.
  • Vincent feeds an antidote to his servant Echo in Pandora Hearts like this to prove that it works. Break probably didn't give that antidote to Sharon this way, though.
  • Alice in The Country of Hearts: Peter White force-feeds a magic potion to Alice via mouth-to-mouth.
  • In Ai Yori Aoshi Aoi holds Kaoru close in a very early episode to help Kaoru get over his cold.
    • It could be said that she performs acts of intimate psychological healing as well, over the course of the series. His Achey Scars hurt less because of her influence.
  • Parodied in an episode of Excel Saga, where Excel prepares to share her body warmth with a frozen-solid Hyatt in a way that obviously plays up the sexual aspect. The heat created was apparently sufficient to not only remove Hyatt from a block of solid ice, but also cause an explosion. Hyatt winds up fine after the treatment... but Excel, doing the treating, suffers full-body frostbite.
    • In the manga, Iwata is ecstatic at the possibility of having to administer CPR on Matsuya while they're searching the sewers of Fukuoka. She wakes up in time to stop him in his tracks—but he does have to perform CPR by the end of the story. On Sumiyoshi.
  • Jubei-chan—This is apparently the only way that Jiyu's magical fever can be cured. It's done by her dad, who takes off her clothes while she's unconscious, immerses himself in ice water, then lies on top of her (clad only in boxers) as the water steams off and he gets burned. Then runs back for more ice water. This repeats until her fever breaks, at which point he collapses, still lying on her. She wakes up and sleepily mumbles that he's a pervert, but doesn't push him off. Your Mileage May Vary on whether this cure is as squicky as it sounds, given that it would have been a lot more efficient to give her the icewater bath directly instead.
    • The fever (and required cure) comes up in both seasons.
  • Twice in Mai-Otome: first by Arika on Erstin, and then one episode later by Sergey on Arika.
  • It was done by Louise in Zero no Tsukaima, who opposed it in the first place, to Saito. But when Derf the talking sword tried to tell Saito what happened, she buried the sword.
  • In the Outlaw Star episode "Forced Departure", Melfina cures Gene of poisoning from darts by taking him into the navigation chamber of the show's titular ship. In the chamber Melfina is always naked and Gene is seen wearing boxers just as much as her. They float together in an embrace as she cures him.
  • In one episode of Keroro Gunsou, during the Hinata family's stay on Momoka's private beach resort, Momoka tries to get Fuyuki's attention by pretending to drown so he'll perform CPR on her.
    • Momoka does this again in a later episode, inviting Fuyuki his family to the Nishizawa family's private snow resort in the mountains, where with the help of a few high-tech snow-making machines, she plans to stage a blizzard and get stranded in a cabin with Fuyuki, where he'll hopefully perform the "nude body-warmth sharing" trick with her. Of course, between Fuyuki's Selective Obliviousness about Momoka's crush on him and the meddling of the Keroro Platoon, things don't go quite according to plan.
  • Berserk: Casca is forced by her commander to lay with Guts like this after his first clash with the Hawks, which leads to a great deal of resentment on her part for much of the series. Guts returns the favor about halfway through the series after she gets hurt in their first fight with the Blue Whale Knights.
  • Bleach: When Ichigo is rescued and revived after his first confrontation with Byakuya, he wakes to find Urahara's burly assistant Tessai lying on top of him. Hilarity Ensues.
    • Later in the series, Mayuri Kurotsuchi revives his dead assistant/daughter Nemu by doing something off panel that horrifies and embarrasses both Renji and Ishida - we don't see what happens, aside from one panel with Mayuri wiggling and a lot of sound effects involving Nemu panting and screaming. Ishida protest loudly about this much to Mayuri's confusion. Nemu, meanwhile, is restored to full, beautiful health - blushing deeply. The anime later goes on to have a field day with this.
  • Not all is roses in the manga version of Battle Royale: For a drawn-out moment Mitsuko Souma really seems to think that riding an agonizing guy she just fatally wounded will make all the bad things go away. Healin' indeed. Do you think this particular instance of the trope is a subversion? I do.
    • Possibly done as the last wish of the victim. Doesn't make it any less squicky.
  • Great Teacher Onizuka does this with Urumi after saving her from her suicide attempt. Unfortunately for him, he's too unconscious to enjoy the act.
  • Elfen Lied has Lucy and Kouta in their childhood, sharing back-to-back body heat after playing in the river.
  • In Saint Seiya, Cygnus Hyouga is released from an ice coffin by his companions, but is nearly dead from the cold. His friend Andromeda Shun burns his cosmo while lying on the ground with Hyouga in his arms, in order to thaw him out (neither of them was naked, though. They didn't even remove the armor-like Cloths, except for the bulkier parts.) It works and Hyouga is saved, but Shun is throughly drained and it takes him quite a while (aka: at least four episodes) to recover.
    • In the manga, the scene lasted about only one page, while in the anime, they made it last around half an episode, probably to please the Yaoi Fangirls. Masami Kurumada, you sly dog.
  • In Kanokon, both Chizuru and Nozomu do this to the resident cute little boy and odd woman magnet after the entire school gets frozen. But, Kanokon being Kanokon, they up the ante by taking every chance to fondle, rub up to and generally molest him, up to and including a (heavily implied) handjob. From both of them. At the same time.
  • In Otoyomegatari, Amira does this with her young husband during a cold night in a yurt.
  • Used in Kaze no Stigma when super-powerful wind mage Kazuma Yagami uses an elixir to revive Ayano Kannagi.
  • Karin and Kazune in Kamichama Karin...which is slightly creepy because the two characters are children.
    • They're actually in Junior High , but still...
    • It's not squicky if you consider that they are actually married, have a daughter (well, two halves a daughter to be precise) and are simply de-aged and reincarnated respectively. So not only were they involved in this, they already did it at least once.
  • Tsukune does this to Kokoa in the second Rosario + Vampire season.
  • Eiken has this, when Kirika strips down to do the fever cure variant with Densuke when he falls ill. Surprisingly, it's actually a fairly sweet scene, given the series.
  • This is how the Misago gets Takahiro to stop fearing her in the Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou manga.
  • In the Brazilian manga based on an RPG setting Holy Avenger, Lisandra's procedure to apply healing spells is through kissing the targets. The explanation is that, as she was raised by animals, that's just how she interprets the motherly figure of a wolf licking her cubs' wounds.
  • In both Mahou Sensei Negima series, the "only convenient way" for Negi to enact a magical pactio contract with someone is to kiss them (the only alternative is apparently "open vein, swap blood"). This has been done for healing purposes as well as power-up, including when Konoka kissed Setsuna in order to save her life in the end of the first series.
    • Something tells me he's gotten to the point where he enjoys it, given his epic makeout scene with Chachamaru or his use of Pactio to unmask Shiori.
    • Later in the manga, Konoka did a naked Transformation Sequence in which she held Negi closely from behind in order to seal up the wound through his chest.
  • Sex to charge mana:
    • This is common in the fantasy Hentai genre. Dragon Pink features an elven mage, Pierce, recharging her Mana with this tactic—in the midst of a fierce battle, no less! Readers with mature (or perhaps immature) sensibilities may be amused by the on-screen caption: "Pierce absorbs the liquid protein!"
      • Done similarly in Jiburiru.
    • Sex to replenish/boost/control mana is an infamous martial arts technique in the non-hentai series Fushigi Yuugi, used by the locak Dark Action Girl who also "happens" to be an ex-prostitute.
    • Beat Angel Escalayer and Spiritual Successor Beat Blades Haruka both use this device. The heroines also get a stat boost depending on the sex act performed.
      • Actually subverted at the end of Beat Angel Escalayer. Turns out it's The Power of Love that fuels the magic; sex isn't actually required.
      • Alternatively, sex (or sexual arousal/attraction) with love gives an extremely more powerful result that does not diminish with repetition.
  • The manga PQ Angels required the heroines to kiss to transform.
  • Lucia kisses Kaito in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch while he has amnesia. This kiss brings his memories back.
  • In Tokyo Mew Mew, Neko-Ichigo has to kiss someone, anyone, to turn back to normal. This causes a problem as the only one she actually wants to kiss is the one that she's trying to keep in the dark about her identity.
    • Also, in one episode, Retasu kisses an unconscious Ryou to activate the Mew Aqua required to save him.
    • Then there's the Grand Finale...
  • Martian Successor Nadesico: In the final episode, in order to combine their nanomachine fields and get enough reaction to boson-jump the entire ship, Ms. Fressange proposes that Akito and Yurika kiss. Ruri suspects after the fact that any sort of physical contact would have worked and Fressange was just trying to end the Will They or Won't They? dance.
  • In the Divine Design arc of GetBackers, it is revealed in the middle of a resurrection ceremony that, for it to work, Ban has to kiss the spell's target full on the mouth. This produces some annoyance with Ban's male co-lead, Ginji, as the manga plays up a healthy amount of Ho Yay between the two. Might also count as a medicine kiss, as Ban had a mouthful of blood and that was previously established as a key component of the ceremony.
  • Used in Loveless: given the fact that the connection between Sacrifice and Fighter is crucial to winning the magical battles it follows that Soubi should kiss Ritsuka in the middle of a showdown. This device is probably a means of allowing for intimate contact that isn't too intimate, after all Ritsuka is only 12.
  • In the manga Omamori Himari, Shuzuku (a water demon in the form of a little girl) rubs her naked body against the unconscious male lead's back to heal his stab wound, then admits after the fact that she just did it that way because it felt good, when a more mundane form of contact would have worked just as well.
    • In the anime it is his chest, although she does keep her panties on.
    • And in a later chapter, Himari gets in a battle at a ski lodge and ends up covered in snow. She claims to be extremely cold after the fight is over in the hopes that Yuuto will use his body to warm her up. She is extremely disappointed when he helps her get to the lodge's natural hot springs instead.
  • The anime of Chrono Crusade has Chrono coming down with a fever after he uses too much astral energy. Rosette goes to a Fortune Teller to find out how to heal him—and she whispers a "folk remedy" into Rosette's ear. Of course, it's a kiss. Towards the end of the episode, Rosette tries it out of desperation, and the next morning Chrono's right as rain. (Of course, he had passed out right before she tried it, so he had no idea that Rosette used a "magical" cure.)
  • Subverted in Lilim Kiss. The titular boy accidentally released Sealed Evil in a Can a scintillating succubus. The Succubus requires life force to perform and usually forcibly gets it by kissing the protagonist. Said act almost always leaves said protagonist not being able to move for at least a day from exhaustion.
  • Karin from Naruto can heal people, but only if they bite her (during which she seems to get a rather elated look). Unfortunately for her, this also leaves a permanent bite mark any time she uses it. While you might interpret it in the manga to just be pain, the anime makes it all the more blatant.
  • In the Fatal Fury movie, Sulia Gaudeamus heals Terry Bogard by first stripping to her underwear and then initiating full body-to-body contact before turning on her healing powers. Of course, Terry being a Celibate Hero (for a rather... understandable reason), he doesn't do much afterwards except hugging her and warming her up when she doesn't have the strength to get up afterward.
  • In New Fist of the North Star, this trope is invoked in a way that makes the entire series not very believable (and some people may put that particular scene in Canon Discontinuity land). Near the end of the series, Kenshiro is trapped by Seiji and put in a barred room. He continually tries to kick his way out of the bars, but it's ineffective. The only way he can get out is to use a technique that requires him to meld his chi with Sarah in order to produce the power needed to shatter the bars. What follows is a scene of them pressed together in a very suggestive manner, as they gather the energy needed. Also mind-boggling because 1) it's Kenshiro, the man who has walked through collapsing skyscrapers, burning buildings, the DESERT, and beat up tens of thousands of mighty men with ease that would probably be outright fatal to master martial artists like Batman, Captain America (comics), and Iron Fist in the zero prep time + no weapon but your body confrontations that he would often find himself in. 2) This cage that Kenshiro is in: it's not any supermetal or anything designed before the war, it's not specially designed to absorb extreme shocks or anything, there are no force fields or nano fibers or any of that shit involved. No, it's just made of cast iron.
  • In the Shaman King manga, Ren has to be cured through that by Jeanne. Due to Ryu's misunderstanding (he thought that Jeanne was going to have her first kiss with Ren), the poor fin-haired boy couldn't be completely healed, and became scarred. Actually, it was Shamash who was healing him with a kiss... Not that Jeanne doesn't end up married with Ren in the end, anyways. Or at least, as the mother of his kid.
  • Sekirei require a kiss from their Ashikabi to use the full extent of their powers.
  • Prince Vald in Crimson Spell passes an antidote to the magician Halvir this way. Unbenownst to Vald, Halvir's been having sex with him while he's controlled by the demon from his cursed sword, so he can't help feeling there's something... familiar about Halvir's lips.
    • Halvir decides early on that it would be a good idea to have sex with Vald in demon form, as this will both drain the demon's energies and feed his own magic; this causes complications later on, though not all of them negative.
  • In Black Bird, female lead Misao is plagued by demons trying to kill and maim her. The lead male and local Bastard Boyfriend Kyo can heal with his tongue. Do the math.
    • Misao's Kiss of Life gives energy to whomever she's kissing, so she oftentime does this to Kyo to help heal him if he's injured in a fight.
    • In a later chapter Misao falls ill and can't warm up even with four blankets on her. Kyo finally strips down and warms her with skin-to-skin contact.
  • A couple of Contractors in Darker than Black have to kiss people as the remuneration for using their powers. One of them is the (not-so) Innocent Fanservice Girl, appropriately enough, and the other is Japanese Lesbian Catwoman Mina Hazuki, who specifically has to kiss men and is not exactly pleased with this fact.
  • In Full Metal Panic! Sousuke, while pretending to be dating Mizuki, kisses her in order to maintain the illusion that they were going out after asking "Is that when you put your lips to theirs?" After being yelled at for kissing he says " I have kissed all sorts of men before. Some survived and some died." After Kaname realizes what he means all is forgiven.
  • In episode 15 of Brigadoon Marin and Melan, Marin consumes a mind-altering chocolate. Melan is able to neutralize the reaction by feeding her the antidote orally (that is, mouth-to-mouth style). This leads to some Japanese wordplay, since the words for "kiss" and "neutralize" sound very similar. Marin is considerably more flustered about the whole thing than Melan is, since kissing is a totally foreign concept to him.
  • In Episode 8 of Sengoku Otome Nobunaga gives an unconcious Hideyoshi medicine by kissing her.
  • In Oniisama e..., an ill and drugged up Rei takes an icy Shower of Angst. Her best friend Kaoru stops her, drags Rei to her bedroom, and then strips both of them naked before the two get into bed so Rei can warm up via body heat.
  • In Dragon Crisis, dragons can apparently heal humans by kissing them. In one episode, when Ryuji is severely injured in battle, Rose kisses him and he instantly heals.
  • In Michiyo Akaishi's Honoo no Alpen Rose, after escaping from the Count's castle via jumping into a river and hiding in an abandoned shack, an injured and soaked wet Lundi is this close to suffer hypothermia. His girlfriend Jeudi lays him down on a piled of hay, strips both of them naked and lays with him to warm him up. It works, and the next day Lundi is a little weakened but basically fine.
  • In chapter 23 of Pandora Hearts Vincent gives Echo the antidote to a poison by kissing her.
  • Ichika of Waiting in the Summer has a high-tech alien healing device; it ought to avert this trope, except she apparently has to kiss the person she wants it to heal.
  • In Saint Beast, Judas can heal with his lips making any healing fairly intimate by default.


Comic Books

  • This is how Talia al Ghul gives Batman some much needed antidote after he succumbs to a scorpion bite while duelling her father, under the pretense of giving him one last smooch.
  • In Liberty Meadows, Brandy does this with Frank. Frank (who's having an out-of-body experience) is quite pleased.
  • Used in Faker, a SF comic by Mike Carey involving college kids who get exposed to an experimental liquid data storage medium, and explicitly referred to as 'sexual healing'. Also provided the following quote:

Yvonne: "It was sort of like a transfusion, wasn't it Jess? Because you were still full of that stuff. It was the only way you could save Nick."
Jessie: "No. Just the only way that involved me coming like a train."

Superman: (narrating) They said that no one could bottle or contain or hold The Bleed except for The Monitors. But they were wrong. Superman can!


Fairy Tales

  • Sleeping Beauty (Dude, she's like in a coma!)
    • Sleeping Beauty is actually far more twisted in its original version. Prince Charming's kiss doesn't wake her up. Neither does his having sex with her while she's unconscious. Oh, and it gets worse. The princess actually gets pregnant from this and has two kids, all while still in an coma (Sadly Truth in Television, it happened multiple times on real coma victims - feel free to Squick now.) After giving birth, one of her children kisses her (or in some versions, sucks on her finger thinking it's her nipple and thus removes the magical splinter that's keeping her asleep) and that's what wakes her up. And probably results in her having a few damn questions for Prince Rapist.
      • The above mentioned story isn't really the original version of Sleeping Beauty; its more like an ancestor. The story referenced here is "Sun Moon and Talia" (Sun and Moon being the kids). Which doesn't just end there: turns out Rapist!Prince was already married, and when his wife catches on about Talia and is righteously pissed off, he kills her so he can marry his coma-raped baby-mama. UGH.
      • Well, to be fair, the wife was a horrible ogre who wanted to eat Talia's heart. Darn those evil, murderous, totally unreasonable wronged wives. No word on why she didn't just go for the cheating prince's heart (or on why he married an ogre in the first place.)
        • Evil ogre wife isn't content with just eating Talia's heart either. She also orders the cook to kill Sun and Moon, cook them, and serve them to the prince. The cook hides the kids and substitutes a couple of lambs, of course.
        • "Handsome Prince Marries Ogress Under Duress" is practically a genre unto itself in mythology.
      • Jim C. Hines' The Princess Series reveals that Talia woke up by her birthing pains, was forced to marry her "prince", and murdered him on their wedding night.
    • Also, Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples.
  • Snow White. To be fair, in the original story the prince falls in love with her beauty, and asks to take (what he thinks is) her body. When he lifts her into his arms, the piece of apple falls from her lips, and she awakens. The "kiss of life" is something that Disney added...apparently the dude had a thing for necrophilia?


Fan Works

  • In the fanfic Final Fantasy Legacy, the healers of Rupantao help heal patients by raising their "prana." What this process involves exactly is never revealed, but it starts with the healer disrobing completely.
  • In Lisa Is Pregnant, Bart and Lisa have sex on a snowy mountain in order to stay warm. Bart exhausts himself and dies, but Lisa survives because she did not have to exert herself, and becomes pregnant with Bart's child.
  • In Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, after Sakura cuts off her vagina to prove that she still loves Ronan, he has sex with her, and somehow, his semen heals her.
    • Ronan is also on the receiving end of this, as da cooger's ghost head can heal his injuries and even raise him from the dead by sucking on his penis.


Film

  • Played completely straight in The Day After Tomorrow. She gets him out of the wet clothes and then embraces him because "if the blood rushes back too fast, your heart could fail". He doesn't mind. She's his crush.
  • In The Saint (1997), the title character (played by Val Kilmer) hides from the villains by diving into the nearly frozen river Moskva and staying submerged for a prolonged time. After the villains drive off, his Love Interest leads him to a nearby housing block. Due to a gas and oil shortage, the house is unheated, so she strips down to her undergarments and cuddles with him to warm him up.
  • Featured in Tristan and Isolde (2006). Isolde and her maid discover Tristan washed up on the beach; guess what they do to keep him warm?
  • The Spy Who Loved Me. Anya suggests this to James Bond to keep warm while they're on the boat to Cairo.
  • Appears in The Great Race (with no nudity though).
  • Seen in Shogun Assassin. Ogami Ito and his son, pursued by a female ninja, swim from a burning ship to find shelter on land. (He fights and subdues her underwater before landfall, however.) Once inside an abandoned shack, Ogami ends up overpowering the ninja and stripping her. He likewise disrobes and pulls the ninja and his son closer so they won't freeze to death.
  • In the Jackie Chan movie The Myth, Jackie was an Imperial soldier in a past life who nearly drowns, and gets dragged to safety by a Korean princess, who does this to revive him.
  • The main characters in Without a Paddle have to attempt this to avoid catching hypothermia, to their great reluctance.
  • In Brokeback Mountain, Ennis is brought in to share Jack's tent after he's been sleeping outside in the frigid cold. Of course, they sleep fairly normally and clothed for a while before Jack decides to jump him.


Literature

  • 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.
  • Deconstructed in 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...
    • While it's not healing, White Night of The Dresden Files has kiss-fueled (well, lust-fueled, but the kiss helped) magic used to create a shield powerful enough to protect Harry and Lara Raith from an explosion strong enough to shoot them like a cannon ball with enough force that when they landed (unharmed by this particular bit except for their clothing - and that was mostly just the result of his kissing a hungry succubus), it was after crashing through several floors of her mansion.
    • 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.
    • Not to mention Elaine's Reiki, which is a massage used to stimulate Harry's healing. Made more intimate by Harry and Elaine's past relationship.
  • Sort of averted 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.
  • In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age Nell uses this to transfer hunter-killer nanomachines to save her adoptive mother from a deadly Nano Machine computation.
  • Anita Blake, 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. In the later books the vampiric arduer turns Anita into a Horny Devil. So she may act like a slut, but she's clearly not a slut because it's NOT HER FAULT.
    • 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.
  • Rand of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time does this after being caught in a blizzard with a certain female, 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...
    • As soon as she revives, that certain female jumps Rand's bones, but afterwards turns her prude back on and actively tortures Rand with blueballs for the rest of the series.
  • Mord-Sith in the Sword of Truth have the a Kiss 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:
    • Occurs between the titular characters in the Free Bards novel The Lark and the Wren, complicated by their Unresolved Sexual Tension.
    • The "Osage blanket ritual" mentioned a few times in Sacred Ground.
  • In Marc Laidlaw's The Neon Lotus, a female practicioner 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 Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse, 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...
  • Anakin Solo and Tahiri Veila in Edge of Victory II: Rebirth, in the rapidly-depressurizing Yag'dhul station (yes, yes, I 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.
    • A somewhat less appealing version 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 Minds 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.
  • 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?)
  • 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. On another occasion, taking place before the beginning of the series, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish is wounded in battle and allowed to recuperate in the home of his attacker's family. Said attacker'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.


Live Action Television

  • Chuck tries this with Casey once, because he thinks the antidote will be transferred through saliva. Hilariously, it doesn't work that way.
  • Stargate SG-1: A clothed version was used by O'Neill & Carter in "Solitudes". Added here if only to get the quote in:

Carter: Colonel...?
O'Neill: (quickly) It's my sidearm, I swear.

    • The actual healing bit had actually already taken place. That line was given just because it was very cold (it was supposed to be Antarctica...and the set was made with real ice) and they were huddling together for warmth while they slept.
  • In Xena: Warrior Princess Gabrielle does this to Xena in the series finale.
  • Another clothed version happened in one episode of Cadfael, involving perpetual Butt Monkey Brother Oswin and a young lady, stuck in a shack during a snowstorm. Poor Brother Oswin spent the rest of the episode fretting over whether doing this had broken his vow of celibacy until Cadfael reassured him that it didn't.
  • While not exactly intimate, this happened in one part of the miniseries The Voyage of the Mimi, when the eponyomous ship's captain had hypothermia. The captain being an old man, the thought of this is pretty darn Squicky. At least the crewmembers kept their pants on...
  • Another non-romantic example: in The Big Bang Theory, when the guys went to the Arctic, and one night the heat went out, they had to sleep together, naked.
  • Done in an episode of the 2008 version of Knight Rider between Michael Knight and a British intelligence agent.
  • "Victoria's Secret", episode of Due South.
  • Implied, especially by Slashers, that this was one of the methods Glitch used to revive a hypothermic Cain in Tin Man.
  • An episode of Step by Step had J.T. and Sam, his ex trapped in a car in a snow drift. Sam tells him that she used this technique (fully naked) to help keep him alive, but it turns out she tells him she was just screwing with his head.
    • It is implied this might have been to get him to shut up about it.
  • Mentioned, but never done in The X-Files episode "Detour." Unfortunately.

Mulder: I was told once that the best way to regenerate body heat is to crawl naked into a sleeping bag with somebody else who was already naked.
Scully: Well, maybe if it rains sleeping bags, you'll get lucky.

  • Parodied in Doctor Who. In "The Unicorn and the Wasp", the Doctor concocts an impromptu cure from regular foodstuffs to help rid his (alien) body of cyanide poisoning, and the final element is "a shock". So Donna kisses him.
    • Played straight in "The Parting of the Ways" when the 9th Doctor kisses Rose to take the heart of the TARDIS from her so it doesn't kill her.
  • Jack kissing Ianto in the Torchwood episode "Cyberwoman" is either this or Kiss of Life. They never actually say whether Ianto was dead or just injured at the time.
  • In the dying days of Supernatural Soap Opera Port Charles, the only way Ian could suppress his vampire tendencies and keep from feeding off people was to have sex with Lucy, who was a slayer.
  • Merlin: Prince Arthur is under the effects of a love spell which only True Love's Kiss will cure. Merlin asks Guinevere to kiss him. It works.
    • In a later episode Guinevere is shot in the upper thigh with an arrow. Whilst she's unconscious Merlin pulls the arrow out and heals her with a spell that involves placing one hand on her thigh and the other on her forehead. Given that she was rather scantily-clad at the time, and the assortment of moaning, muttering, shivering and sighing from both of them, the scene was giving off signals that the producers probably didn't intend.
  • A variation occurs in an episode of the new Outer Limits where the way to get an alien that kills men through sex out of the female host's body is by having sex (well, starting to, anyway) with her boyfriend. The explanation is that "love" was what the alien was really looking for in the first place so when it experiences that through the host's contact with her boyfriend, it can finally leave her body.
  • In the Korean Drama Best Love, Dokko Jin uses his need to 'recharge' by cupping Ae Jung's face in his hands or by pressing their foreheads together.
  • In Game of Thrones, Jon Snow and Ygritte, the barbarian woman he takes prisoner, do the "sharing body warmth" thing when forced to sleep in the middle of freezing wilderness. She keeps grinding against him, and he gets annoyed by the teasing.


Music


Mythology

  • Older Than Print: In Norse legend, sorcery was derived from receiving male fluids, limiting it to women and homosexual males on the "bottom" of the coupling. If you were on the receiving end, as it were, you lost your manliness regardless of orientation or whether it was voluntary or not. There are famous instances where a man handing another man a pair of trousers was considered an insult that had to be washed away in blood. Lots of it.
  • Daoism says that the sex act involved a transfer of mystical power. The woman can't lose power, but she can transfer power to the man, and the man can lose power by ejaculating. So the man was encouraged to have and satisfy multiple partners in order to keep from going in the red. This might be a cultural basis for some of the Mana-transfer tropes about sex.


Toys

  • The Japan-only "Kiss Players" line of Transformers toys focused on a group of Moe Moe girls who can merge with and "power up" their Autobot partners by kissing them. Many, many people wish that was just a joke. Little of the full extent is known to the US, since it was mainly a radio program, but the three manga issues that were made tell you all you need to know.


Tabletop Games

  • Bliss Stage: Trauma Relief and, to a lesser extent, Stress Relief actions; the former heals major damage to a Pilot, the latter wear and tear on their EmpathicWeapons.
  • The French RPG Qin has a magical ability ("The Union of Yin and Yang") which allows you to have sex to recharge your Chi.
  • The Book of Erotic Fantasy introduces a character class known as the "Sacred Prostitute", whose powers involve doing this to restore various stats.
    • And a resurrection spell that requires you to kiss the target, appropriately entitled kiss of life.
  • Maid RPG lets you remove Stress by doing intimate things with your partner.
  • Sharess, a minor goddess in the Forgotten Realms AD&D world, has as her portfolio lust/sex and sensual fulfillment. Hence, her way to healing is to lay on hands, on erogenous zones.


Video Games

  • In Ganbare Goemon: Kuru Nara Koi! Ayashige Ikka no Kuroi Kage, Goemon's injury prevents him from being able to drink the required medicine, leading to the use of this trope. The game makes it seem like the beautiful kunoichi Yae will be the one to perform the act, but she instead asks pudgy, Ambiguously Gay Ebisumaru to do it. Goemon is not pleased with this.
  • This isn't exactly a 'magical' instance, but in the video game Bully, unless you feel like running around like an idiot for a while the favoured way of most players to regain main character Jimmy's health is as the result of passionately kissing the nearest sympathetic student, be they boy or girl. Hence, a LOT of yaoi moments, and a LOT of very happy female players.
  • Of course, one can't forget prostitute-powered healing in Grand Theft Auto. When Bully's protagonist grows older it seems he can still recover using the same tactics, if taken to a more extreme level.
  • Older than 3D: The main ways of healing in the NES game Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode are to kill enemies or to just die and continue, but at a few points in the game Golgo gets nookie. As the lights of the hotel window dim, his health meter fills to full. This might on the other hand just be a sexy, sexy Trauma Inn, since we never see him sleeping alone.
  • Forget 3D, even ASCII graphics get in on this. Nethack has succubi and incubi, which will charm, strip, and share a vague intimate moment with players of the opposite sex. The effects are random, and bonuses range from healing to stat boosts to gaining a level ("That was a very educational experience"). Unpleasant consequences, besides the trouble of suddenly being naked in the middle of a dungeon, are also possible, and fooling around too rashly can even result in death. They will take all the player's visible cash after the encounter, for "services."
  • This is next to the only way to regain health in Spelunky.
  • In Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game Kim Pine can call Knives Chau to give her a kiss that heals her for a fair amount of health.
  • Practiced by Sorceress Philippa Eilhart on Saskia the Dragonslayer in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, as part of the healing spell against a rare poison she presses a rose petal on her lips with her own lips. Lampshaded by a crude onlooker: ""My favourite type of magic: Lesbomancy."
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Ms. Mowz's Ultra-rank skill is a kiss move that allows her to restore health to Mario. This isn't surprising, given that Ms. Mowz loves to flirt with Mario. Even before she joins the party.
  • This was used by Princess Elise to revive Sonic in |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006.
  • Used a lot in various Kirby games that give you allies - after consuming a healing food item you can kiss (or hug, in some games) your team mates to heal them. The manga goes back and forth on whether this is an actual kiss or the healer throwing the food up in the patient's mouth, whichever is funnier at the time.
  • Played for laughs in Idea no Hi. Gentleman Adventurer Manakata is first found lying on the floor of a cave because a snake bit him on the ass, and he asks Rinko, a high school girl, to suck the poison out of him. You can accept, and Rinko will get some iron arrows (better than the wood ones that can be bought at this point and handy for the upcoming boss) for her trouble.

Visual Novels

  • In the Nasuverse (most prominently Fate/stay night, but also Kagetsu Tohya), sex is used to establish magical contracts for the purpose of "mana replenishment".
    • In Tsukihime there's also the Meido twins who have this as their super-power. Quite literally, they have the ability to restore life-force by swapping bodily fluids. Though this is taken to a bit of an extreme level. Also done in Ciel's route. In fact, let's just say Nasu loves this trope and be done with it.
  • In Private Nurse, Maria uses this, among other techniques, in her attempts to cure Haroki of his mysterious ailment.
  • Sengoku Rance does this when Rance idiotically went to a freezing mountain because he was following a panda and catch it to impress the ladies. Cue Kenshin warming him up, except they actually go all the way. Strangely though, that part was actually off-screen even though it has the daaaaaaaaaawwww moment.
  • The Hentai game Jewel Knights Crusaders is a bit of a parody of the more traditional Sentai team, except in this case, the three girls in the titular (heh) team discover that the best way for them to get powered-up is to have sex with the protagonist of the story. (i.e. you) The bad guys are seen doing this earlier being their standard M.O.
  • In Atlach=Nacha, a giant spider has two ways of recovering her mana: eating people or having sex with them.
  • Nocturnal Illusion used this twice. The first time occurs at the beginning of the game, where Shin'ichi gets caught in a massive storm and is almost killed. However, the Mistress of the mansion he finds himself in saves him. How? By getting naked and having sex with him while he is mostly in a coma! The second time is when Maya ends up in a coma (and naked). In an attempt to revive her, the Mistress sucks on Maya's nipples and strokes Maya's vulva. The attempt is only partially successful, with Maya's body being able to move, but with her soul missing (does this sound like a zombie to you?).


Web Original

Milerna: Okay, I am now going to attempt to heal him with the Laying On of Hands.
Allen: There is no part of that sentence that I didn't like!
Hitomi: That's not where he's hurt, you perv!

  • Done quite awkwardly in The Legend of Neil.
  • In the Sex Mage World stories by Salamando, one of the side-effects of Sex Magic is automatically generating a healing aura which enables nigh-infinite stamina and prevents physical injury while engaged in extreme acts of physical intimacy. Beyond that, however, trained Sex Mages can direct the healing aura for use as an all-purpose healing magic. Supposedly, it can even be used to cure terminal illnesses in extended sessions with highly skilled Mages.


Webcomics

  • Another non-magical example is in the webcomic Narbonic. The sex change serum is reversed by swapping bodily fluids with somebody else that has taken the serum in the past. The easiest way to do this is through saliva, which can be done fastest by, well, you know.

Helen: It's not pleasant, but Dave and I will have to swap spit!
(Beat Panel)
Mell: Um... I don't think that came out the way you meant it--
Helen: Oh, yes it did.

  • Fairy Pibgorn uses her "Baiser de la Fie" (sp?) to activate her magic. Actually, any physical contact will do, she just prefers kissing. Her romantic rival, a succubus, on the other hand...
  • Three words: "Indian method of relaxation." (It always works.)
  • This might apply. In this page of Looking for Group Benny and Pella are required to have a sexy pillow fight in order to do a spell that would get them to a shaman's hut. Then in said shaman's hut they use Pella to channel Richard, whom had been banished, and physically separate him from her to get him back. The Unfortunate Implications of Richard's last line in that page are...well....let's say they fuel the Richard/Pella shippers.
  • While it's not life-saving, in this Order of the Stick strip, Durkon has to cast "Cat's Grace" on Elan to make him put his clothes back on (through an extremely funny misunderstanding, Elan believes that the less clothes he has on, the less he'll be seen). The problem? "'Cat's Grace' is a touch spell..."
    • In a more straight example of this trope, there's the time that Roy refuses female paladin Miko's offer to heal him with a "Lay On Hands" spell out of embarrassment, opting for his dwarf companion Durkon to heal him instead. Not surprisingly, Belkar calls him out on this. Miko doesn't get it at all.

Western Animation

  • Lampshaded in Code Lyoko; in one episode where XANA causes snow storm on Paris, Sissi and Herve get trapped together inside a car, and try to find a way to keep warm. Herve suggest the trop, stating it's "scientifically proven". Sissi replies by slapping him.


Real Life

  • According to William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and other sources, a Nazi scientist named Sigmund Rascher actually experimented with such a method to find out how to treat Luftwaffe pilots downed into the icy polar waters. He induced hypothermia in concentration camp prisoners, then put them into bed with one or two naked women. He came to the conclusion that hot baths are more effective.
    • It had something to do with Nazi admiration towards Vikings - old tales told how a Viking rescued from icy Nordic waters had to be quickly rewarmed to life, and in the wilderness they placed him as intimately as possible with one or two volunteer women from the party (the fattest of them) and covered them tightly in whatever blankets or furs available.
  • In the wilderness when one is camping or otherwise cut off from amenities such as plumbing, however, when a hot bath is not readily availible but a sleeping bag and a warm body are, the best thing is to strip victim and volunteer to their undies and snuggle in. Modesty is the least of your worries in an actual emergency.
    • Also very important in cases of falling through the ice (or other forms of water-induced or water-aided hypothermia) that the victim be got out of the wet clothes and fast. Contrary to popular belief, few people die from drowning when they fall into frigid water. A bizarre but effective alternative in very cold weather is to have the victim roll in the snow, freezing their soaking clothing, which is better than having damp clothes on.
      • None of these treatments are very effective for really serious hypothermia either. If the victim is in a stupor or worse, about to die, hospitals (if it's an emergency emergency, it's preferable to spend the thousands of dollars required to bring in a helicopter than try to treat the patient in the field) tend to rely on far less sexy methods like cutting holes in the patient to squirt hot water into the chest and abdominal cavities, hot IVs and enemas, and other unpleasant things.
  • Tom Sullivan reported that his wife once treated him this way after he was accidentally locked outside once during a winter night. According to him, it worked pretty well.
  • Cracked.com's 5 Doctors Who Just Gave The World's Worst Medical Advice retells a CBS13 Sacramento story about a doctor who saw a woman with an oversensitive gag reflex and prescribed giving fellatio to her husband. PONOS to MOOTH, indeed.
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