nonsexual acts of intimacy - ♧:Your muse playing with their hair
He hurt everywhere. From the crown of his head to the skin stretched tautly across the bones of his ankles, Spike was covered in bruises and gashes and cuts and more bruises, his body a canvas of torment suffered at the hands of the First Evil. Now he lay on a semi-soft, mostly flat surface -- the basement mattress, perhaps? -- and he realized what had woken him.
Buffy’s fingers coiled slowly through his matted, sweaty blond curls.
Buffy... Buffy was touching him. Willingly. And though his heart seemed to swell in happy contentment at the feeling, even the gentle sensation was almost too much for his tenderized head, and a quiet whimper escaped him. But minute by minute, he began to relax, tension draining out of him like grains of sand through an hourglass as Buffy played with his hair.
“Th-thank you, luv,” he whispered, throat ragged and rough. He needed to thank her... thank her for rescuing him from that place, for dragging him out of there when he could barely stand, for bringing him back into her home. He risked opening his eyes to look at her, even if he could only open one of them at the moment, the other swollen shut by bruises. “How long’ve I been out?”