#then they met an adult who had similar texture sensitivities

[dandylovesturtles]

Please tell me something about the Shape of Water AU I'm very curious

this is just the doc title for my "100 Feet and a World Away" AU! I have the lore post linked in my pinned.

tldr: the boys get kidnapped young and raised in a lab by humans who aren't aware they have human level intelligence, and they try to escape.

I posted a bit about Donnie (aka Turtle Four) eating french fries awhile ago but here, have the rest of the scene too:

April unwraps something. The smell assaults his nose - greasy meat, cheese, that red vegetable he’s seen sometimes - and he slips into the water and swims over, popping out just shy of the fence.

“I’m sorry, are you eating during our escape planning meeting?”

“Don’t start with me,” she says, holding up a hand. “I had to work through breakfast to catch up on my homework for my morning classes, then work through lunch to catch up on my homework for my afternoon classes, and then I worked through dinner to catch up on everything else.” She takes a bite, chews, swallows. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat all day.”

“Huff! Fine. But did you have to bring something with so much…” he flails his hands, “smell?”

“It’s just a burger. What, you never had a burger before?”

He stares at her. She catches his eye, and then lowers her gaze.

“Right. Stupid question.”

“Sometimes the humans bring those. The burgers, you said? They eat them around noon.” He thinks of it with distaste. He can remember exactly which of the humans tend to chew with their mouths open, or talk with food in their mouths. It makes him feel slimy when he watches. 

“We call that “lunch”,” April says. She looks at the burger, then back at Four. It’s with an expression he doesn’t understand, but he’s noticed from her more and more. “Do you want to try it?”

He hesitates. He doesn’t know if he wants to or not. The smell is overwhelming, and he isn’t sure how it will taste. How it will feel, in his mouth.

No one ever offers him food, though.

“...I’m perfectly fine with my nutrition blocks,” he finally says.

“Oh come on, Donnie, that’s not food.”

“It is. It gives me all the vitamins and minerals I need. And…” He stumbles over what he wants to say. He hates when he does that, but he doesn’t know the words for what he’s trying to convey. He wishes he had a bigger vocabulary. He wishes he were allowed to read.

Wishes get him nowhere. He has to focus on the task at hand. Only, April doesn’t seem to want to continue with their escape planning unless he makes a decision about the burger.

“...And?” she prompts, startling him.

“...I don’t know… some food… feels weird,” he finally says.

“Feels weird?”

“In my mouth.”

For a moment she just stares at him. He guesses he must have said something weird. Humans must not care about how food feels in their mouth. Maybe that’s just a turtle thing.

Or maybe his brothers don’t think that way either. Maybe it’s just a Four thing.

But then April’s eyes go a little wider, and she says, “Ooooh. You have texture issues, huh?”

“Texture?”

“Yeah. How the food feels. Some people get really bothered by it; guess you do, too.”

Oh. So it’s not just a Four thing. There’s a whole name for it. He learned something new! How exciting!

“Yes!” he declares. He feels more confident about it now. “I have texture issues!”

She laughs at that. It’s not a mean laugh. He’s not sure why what he said was funny, though, but before he can ask she’s tearing off a small piece of the meat on the side of the burger she didn’t bite.

“Here. Just try it.” She slips it through the gaps in the chain-link, where he can get to it. “If it feels bad, you can just spit it out. I won’t be mad.”

She’s always telling him that. That she won’t be mad. He doesn’t know why; he’s never seen her get mad, at least not at him. But she always tells him that anyway.

It makes him feel better, somehow, even though that’s illogical.

He takes the meat gingerly in his fingers and looks at it. It doesn’t look particularly appetizing. The smell is a lot, but not so bad now that he’s getting used to it. He likes meat - not that he’s had it much. Maybe it will be fine.

He puts it in his mouth and immediately knows it isn’t. He doesn’t like the way the meat falls apart. He can’t describe it, he just knows it’s wrong.

He spits it out. April said she wouldn’t be mad.

“No good, huh?” she asks. She doesn’t sound mad.

“No. It was bad, actually.”

“Hmm, alright…” She glances around, then grabs the sack and pulls out something else: a small container of something thin and golden brown. “Wanna try a french fry?”

“A french fry?”

“It’s just a fried potato.” She pulls one of the thin stick-things (french fry) out of the container and pokes it through the fence. “Here!”

He takes it, looking it over suspiciously. It has the same greasy smell as the burger, but it’s not meat, it’s “potato,” so it must have a different texture.

He nibbles the end, and oh.

It’s actually good!

He devours the rest of the fry. She laughs again, and when he looks back at her she’s smiling.

“Alright, so the fries are a winner. Here, have some more!”

She slips a few more through the fence, and then a few more. Four happily eats all the fries she passes him. They taste nothing like the nutrition blocks, they taste better than the nutrition blocks, and they don’t feel bad in his mouth, not even a little.

“When I get out of here,” he says, after downing the last one, “I’ll eat like this every day.”

“Maybe not fries every day. They’re pretty unhealthy.” She shrugs. “But there’s all kinds of other things out there for you to try! We’ll figure out all the foods you like to eat.”

[jettingtothemoon]

Gentle

➳ pairing: dabi x shigaraki tomura ➳ genre: smut and a very tiny pinch of fluff ➳ warnings: biting, hand job, masturbation, orgasm denial, oral, rough sex, anal, fingering, unprotected sex, slight pain kink ➳ word count: 1058 ➳ rating: 18+ ➳ summary: In which neither of them really understand what they’re feeling. ➳ a/n: requested on ao3

No one said being a villain was a lonely business. Although, for most, it was. One particular soul, lost to loneliness his whole life, was Shigaraki Tomura. A boy with no family, no friends, and no home. The successor to the most dangerous villain in the world, All For One.

Shigaraki had grown into a young adult who did not know how to deal with his own emotions. The only ones he understood were anger, hate and frustration. There was no happiness, there was no joy, there was no love. He didn't know how to feel those emotions.

Even now he does not know. Although, he is trying to understand. Even if only a little bit more. He's trying to understand because of him, because of Dabi.

Their relationship was unlike most. If you could even call it a relationship. They both felt something, although Dabi simply denied it and Shigaraki just didn't understand it. Although, that certainly didn't stop them from acting on it.

As of right now, they sit in Shigaraki's room. Shigaraki playing video games whilst sitting in Dabi's lap. It was not a common scene, the two rarely sat holding each other, but for today, they decided that sitting like this for a while wouldn't hurt.

Dabi had his head on Shigaraki's shoulder, face turned to watch the other as he played. Shigaraki knew of the eyes looking at him, occasionally flickering to different features of his face. His dried skin, chapped lips, the small mole on the underside of his mouth. Then, they'd look at his ruby eyes, watching them shoot about as they looked at the screen.

Their peaceful sitting had unexpectedly lasted much longer than either of them had thought it would. It had been at least a couple of hours since they returned to the confinement of his room, shutting out the rest of the league to sit quietly. Of course, after such a long time watching Shigaraki playing games, Dabi was growing somewhat impatient. Or, perhaps, he simply wanted to tease and mess with the other to distract him from his game.

Shigaraki didn't move when he felt a hand over his crotch. He simply continued playing his game, eyes briefly flicking towards Dabi to try and decipher what he was up to. Although he already knew the answer to that question.

He continued playing, deciding to ignore the man as he began to palm him softly through his jeans. Dabi could feel him reacting under his touch, dick getting harder by the second, at yet he still offered no reaction. So, to gain that reaction he wanted, Dabi softly rubbed his lips along the sensitive skin on Shigaraki's neck. Skin that had been scratched red and raw.

Shigaraki groaned, tilting his head to the side slightly to allow those lips better access to his skin. Only, instead of lips, he was soon met with teeth. Not that he was at all surprised, Dabi had a thing for biting him it seemed, maybe he just liked to mark what he claimed as his.

Despite the little moans and groans, Shigaraki was feeling more stubborn than usual and still continued to play his game, trying to spare the other man no thought as he slowly began to defile him. Only when his cock was freed from his jeans did he pause for a brief second, looking down at the hand that was wrapping around him. Of course, the moment he heard the sound of his character taking damage, his attention went back to the game.

"Come on boss, pay me some attention." Dabi groaned into his ear, pulling at his lobe almost painfully with his teeth.

Shigaraki did not give in, although he knew the desire for attention all too well. Despite the lack of reaction, Dabi began to work his hand up and down, lips once again on Shigaraki's neck. With his other hand, he pulled at the loose t-shirt that hung over Shigaraki's body, allowing it to drape over his shoulder slightly so that his lips could wet the skin there too.

His skin was so interesting, so full of texture. Dry and flaky in places, sore and red in others. The most unusual, however, were the soft parts, so soft and baby-like. They were the places his nails had not once scratched, the places that were almost normal. Of course, Dabi had his own interesting skin littered with purple burns and scars. They were quite the pair, similar in many ways but alike in none.

The soft skin of Shigaraki's shoulder was quite the change from the skin of his neck and, in being so, it was much easier to mark. He sucked and nipped until small bruises began to form, not caring that his boss would later scold him for it. All the while, his hand worked its magic.

When Shigaraki began to buck his hips slightly, chasing the high he was on the verge of reaching, Dabi tightened his grip around the throbbing cock in his hand. Shigaraki involuntarily whined at the pain of being denied the orgasm he was so close to, eyes angrily snapping to Dabi with a scowl.

"Naughty boys don't get to come."

Shigaraki groaned again when a hand snaked up under his t-shirt, fingers almost delicately gliding over his skin as they searched for his nipple. He began scratching his neck, holding his controller in one hand as he tore at the already sore skin. Dabi, however, stopped him by releasing his hold on his cock to grab his hand, pulling it away from his neck before he could do any further damage.

He kissed each of his fingers before pulling his hand to his mouth, kissing it as he began to flick and tug at Shigaraki's nipple.

"Careful, you might turn to dust." Shigaraki sneered, his words almost sounding like a threat.

Dabi simply chuckled, "You think I'm stupid enough to let you kill me? You think you're stupid enough to try?"

His hand returned to his cock, beginning to slowly pump it again followed by a particularly harsh squeeze on his nipple. Shigaraki groaned, head rolling back against Dabi's shoulder at the sensation tingling through his body.

Before he knew it, the video game Shigaraki was playing became nothing but a distraction, a distraction they soon turned off.

Although tight in Dabi's hold, Shigaraki attempted to move around to face the other, which Dabi allowed, harsh hands pulling him back into his lap the moment he had turned around. In a second, their lips were connected, tongues intruding mouths as those rough hands tugged at his shaggy hair.

They broke apart for a moment, allowing Dabi to tug his own shirt off before stripping Tomura of his. Then, he pushed him away to stand up, pulling him along by the wrist before throwing him onto the bed.

He rid Shigaraki of his remaining clothes as he climbed onto the bed, crawling up until he was facing the leaking cock he had been teasing moments before. Without warning, he took him in his mouth, sucking patiently. Although that patience could also be seen as torture to Shigaraki, who so desperately needed nothing more than to release his load as soon as possible after already being denied that luxury earlier.

So, as Dabi slowly ran his tongue up the underside of his cock, although it felt so good, with how sensitive he already was from being denied once, it made his whole body shiver. 

"F- Fuck, suck it like you mean it." Shigaraki commanded, hands already pushing Dabi down onto him.

Usually, Dabi would snuff this dominant side right out of Tomura and show him that he is the one in charge but, today, he was less bothered than usual. He allowed Shigaraki to control his pace, pulling his head about as he bucked into him, face fucking him as he once again tried to reach that high.

He offered no warning when he came, allowing himself to spill into Dabi's mouth, a decision he would likely regret by the time they were through. Although, rather than spitting it out, Dabi, almost too obediently, swallowed it all.

Shigaraki smirked, lifting his head from where it had fallen back into the pillow to look at the other man, "I thought naughty boys didn't get to come?"

Dabi simply shrugged and began to crawl back up over Shigaraki, trapping him beneath him as he began to remove the last of his clothes.

"Maybe I was feeling generous."

With his words, he flipped the two of them over so that Shigaraki was straggling his lap, hands already pressing to his chest to stabilise him. Of course, with his pinkies raised.

If he had really wanted to kill Dabi, he would have. Before, when they first met, his threats were true but now they were empty. He didn't know why he wanted to keep Dabi around but that didn't change the fact that he did. He wanted to keep him close, to keep him near. Maybe he just liked the attention, maybe he just liked the sex, but maybe, just maybe, he felt something for him.

"Now, ride me like a good boy and maybe I'll let you come again." Dabi demanded, hands almost soothingly running along the dips in Tomura's waist.

Everything between them was like this. Every touch rough but still holding an underlying gentleness. It was their way of showing that they cared, even if they themselves didn't realise it. They would hurt each other but they would never leave their comfort zones, never push it too far. Even if they didn't know it, they wanted each other to be comfortable. They didn't want to push each other away. They were both afraid of losing this, whatever this was. They were both afraid of being alone again.

Shigaraki leaned to the side, reaching for the drawer beside his bed to grab the bottle of lube. As he removed the lid, he looked down at Dabi and poured the contents out over his fingers, not caring that some of it dripped down onto Dabi's chest.

He raised his hips, hand reaching around himself for his ass, and began to massage the muscle around his hole before slipping a finger in. He was used to this and so, before long, he inserted another. Dabi looked up, hooded turquoise eyes watching as Shigaraki prepared himself.

The latter closed his eyes, focusing on the feeling of his fingers as his cock began to grow once again. Of course, Dabi wasn't going to wait very long, even if the sight before him was a beautiful one.

He sat up, lips to Tomura's ear as he hummed, "My turn."

Shigaraki pulled his fingers out, rubbing what was left of the lube over Dabi's waiting cock before lining it up with himself. He sank down with a moan, enjoying the feeling of being stretched on the familiar length.

"Feel good?" Dabi asked, pulling Shigaraki's earlobe between his teeth.

Tomura hummed, nails already digging into Dabi's back as he adjusted to the feeling for a moment before the hands on his hips began to lift him only to suddenly drop him back down.

"F-fuck. Some warning next time?"

With a low chuckle, Dabi's lips were back on Tomura's shoulder, teeth gently sinking into the skin as he began to thrust up into him. The pace was a little too sudden for Tomura but he soon found himself adjusting to the familiar feeling. The more he grew used to it, the more he bounced his own hips, making sure that he would feel Dabi within the deepest part of him.

Not a word was said between them. They just held each other close, bodies pressed together as they chased their high. This was as passionate as it got between them, as gentle as their heated encounters would probably ever be. They both liked it rough, being any more gentle than this would probably take the enjoyment out of it. This was just right, perfect even.

Being careful not to touch Dabi with all five of his fingers, Shigaraki held tightly onto his shoulders for support. Before long, one of his hands was snaking between them, aiming to provide his cock with the friction it was throbbing for.

Shigaraki sucked in a breath when Dabi harshly bit into his shoulder, hand wrapping around Tomura's wrist, preventing him from touching himself. His tongue came out, lapping over the sore and broken skin as if trying to soothe it, and then he looked up into those crimson eyes with a tut.

"Show me how good I make you feel. Be a good boy and come only from the back." His sultry words had Shigaraki's back arching which allowed him to hit a particular sweet spot with his next thrust.

"F-fuck," Tomura groaned, biting down a brutally on his bottom lip, the metallic taste of blood spilling into his mouth, "There, right there!"

Dabi knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what Tomura needed, and continued to thrust upwards. He hit his prostate without fail every time. It wasn't surprising that Shigaraki came not long after, back arching as his head hung suspended in the air.

As he came, muscles clamping down around Dabi's length, the latter pushed his fingers into his hair, tugging at the silvery strands as he too finally reached his orgasm.

Heavy breathing followed as the two came down from their high. Shigaraki buried his head into Dabi's neck, body going limp in his arms.

Once he regained his strength, Shigaraki leaned back and climbed off of Dabi, whining ever so slightly as his, now limp, dick slid out of him. His legs gave way again and Dabi had to catch him as he fell back down onto his knees.

"You good?"

There was genuine concern lacing his voice and, although he didn't understand why, Tomura felt his heart flutter.

He nodded, "Y- Yeah. I'm okay. Just... tired."

Without a word, Dabi pulled him down so that he was lying on his chest, not caring for the cum that stained them both. He leaned down, pressing a kiss so gentle that it almost seemed as though it were from a lover, to Shigaraki's head.

[tumblunni]

The cafe at the hotel + a nice meal WITH TERROR LURKING

I specifically asked for no peas because peas are a problem for me with my autism but OH WELL I GUESS PEAS and i was too embarassed to ask the damn chef to take it back and like..bin everything that touched the peas.

Its so fuckin stupid i feel like such a child

BUT

I know its really fuckin dumb but i feel really accomplished to say this is the first time i have ever finished a plate of peas without throwing up.

Its my fuckin weirdest brain problem, i get really oversensitive to some textures and its the height of extreme embarassment whenever it happens. I wish so fuckin much that it was something i got over when i grew up, it sucks to be a full grown adult and still get an involuntary gag reflex and full on pulse racing panic just from your tongue touching ONE PEA IN A THING. (Also sweetcorn cos its similar in texture)

And all the years of my childhood being told i was 'just being picky' and somehow making up being sick and just getting slapped and given more goddamn peas to train me out of it. Well all that ever accomplished was getting me to panic at the mere sight of the things and have to compulsively pick them out and pick out everything that touched them like man i cant even eat a thing that looks like it was near a pea!!!!

BUT HOLY HELL IVE FINALLY CRACKED IT IVE FINALLY CONQUERED MY STUPIDEST GODDAMN FOE

Not by 'just manning up' and doing it again and again until something changes. No, turns out this entire time i could have just made a really minor change to avoid the cause of the freakout. Cos this is actually the first time ive tried MUSHY PEAS

Yes, the epitome of cliche boring british person food was actually the solution all along???

See it was entirely a texture thing, and when theyre mashed up it just doesnt do anything at all. This is actually my first time even knowing what peas actually taste like! I cant believe my friggin PEA JITTERS were so strong i never even registered one percent of wtf they taste like. They taste like nothing?? Like just..generic vegetable. Slightly vinegary i guess. (Or do they put vinegar in mushy peas?) I still dont like them but i dont hate them either, and more importantly they dont destroy my entire frontal cortex with The Terror Sweats

So i was able to eat all those peas and now i know the secret technique to eat all peas for the rest of time! And it was a super easy thing that my parents could have done for me with minimal effort and saved all that trouble if they just actually listened to me all those years ago. I cant belueve i was so locked into the whole 'its your fault you have to keep trying you cant try doing it another way' mindset that i never simply squashed the pea under my fork and tried to see if it was better...

Though it still wasnt exactly easy, i had to try and eat this stuff while not actually looking at the peas cos itd make my stomach churn just thinking about them. I think i can get past that gut reaction eventually if i keep eating them in Safe Non Anxiety Form and like..rewire my brain to see this as a New Food instead. I dunno. Maybe put food colouring so they arent green?

It sucks that i have to go to such weird lengths to deal with my brainweirds but im just glad to have figured something out so i dont have to embarass myself again.

Most of my other touch-based sensitivities are stuff i can deal with like just not being able to deal with those outer ear headphones puttibg pressure on the back of my head or also hats that are too tight. I think it actually might be part ptsd from how my mum used to pull me by the back of my head. My support workrr touched me on my shoulder near the back of my neck the other day and i had such a spike of panic but i felt too embarassed to tell her about it. Like she was just tapping me to get my attention but its just..just please dont. And aside from that im also working on my big taste sensitivity to mint and bitter stuff. Today i had a lightly bitter green tea boba and i feel so grateful to my buddy for helping me find one tea i can handle! And ive found that i can deal with mint if its mixed with a second thing thats equally as strong. I tried this mint and pepper drink that sounded like itd be awful but it was actually amazing how it cancelles out the mint entirely! So i dunno should i buy some of that novelty spicy chewing gum and chew a stick of that along with the mint stuff? I have a low tolerance for spice but its not like an overstimulation thing its just regular having white guy tastebuds lol. Id much rather have a burning hot tongue than a burning hot brain!

I will slowly but surely find out a way to deal with all of my things!! Even if i cant ever get rid of them i can find a way to live with them, ykno?

Also i need to try and buy a fidget toy, i need to stop being too embarassed about that. My friend i met today is also autistic and she has a chew ring and im like WHOA i wish i could get over my anxiety enough to do that! Chewing on stuff is my biggest damn stim, i would destroy all my pens and pencils and chew bottlecaps so long they ended up as rubber, not to mention how much i wreck my nails and get so many cuts all over my hands whenever i get nervous. But it just seems like chewing on stuff is seem as the most immature type of autism symptom by neurotypical society. so im stuck too ashamed to buy the stuff actually designed to help us and instead i just keep doing it anyway and still embarassing myself but like also with a choking risk. I still remember when i accidentally choked on a coin and my dad spent the entire time i was in the emergency room making fun of me for it and saying i was a burden on the nhs for getting hospitalized and like..taking resources away from real problems. And how i was childish and r-worded and etc etc cant ever survive on your own cant ever be a fully sentient human being

Gahhh this has been a long tangeant but anyway this is why autism awareness and acceptance is good and also why you shouldnt make fun of people who have the 'weird version' of symptoms. Im not choosing to do this, seriously im way more upset by it than you are...

[newstfionline]

No hugging: are we living through a crisis of touch?

Paula Cocozza, The Guardian, 7 Mar 2018

When did you last touch someone outside your family or intimate relationship? I don’t mean a brush of the fingers when you took your parcel from the delivery guy. I mean: when did you pat the arm or back of a stranger, colleague or friend? My own touch diary says that I have touched five people to whom I’m not related in the past seven days. One was a newborn and two were accidental (that was the delivery guy). Touch is the first sense humans develop in the womb, possessed even of 1.5cm embryos. But somewhere in adulthood what was instinctive to us as children has come to feel awkward, out of bounds.

In countless ways social touch is being nudged from our lives. In the UK, doctors were warned last month to avoid comforting patients with hugs lest they provoke legal action, and a government report found that foster carers were frightened to hug children in their care for the same reason. In the US the girl scouts caused a furore last December when it admonished parents for telling their daughters to hug relatives because “she doesn’t owe anyone a hug”. Teachers hesitate to touch pupils. And in the UK, in a loneliness epidemic, half a million older people go at least five days a week without seeing or touching a soul.

Sensing this deficit, a touch industry is burgeoning in Europe, Australia and the US, where professional cuddlers operate workshops, parties and one-to-one sessions to soothe the touch-deprived. At Cuddle Up To Me, a cuddle “retail centre” in Portland, Oregon, clients browse a 72-cuddle menu. Poses includes the Alligator, the Mamma Bear and, less appealingly, the Tarantino. In Japan, a “Tranquility chair” has been developed, its soft arms wrapping the sitter in a floppy embrace.

Is this what a crisis of touch looks like? And if so, what do humans risk losing, when we lose touch?

“Of course we are moving away from touch!” exclaims Francis McGlone, a professor in neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores university and a leader in the field of affective touch. He is worried. “We have demonised touch to a level at which it sparks off hysterical responses, it sparks off legislative processes, and this lack of touch is not good for mental health.” He has heard of teachers asking children to stick on a plaster themselves, rather than touch them and risk a complaint. “We seem to have been creating a touch-averse world,” he says. “It’s time to recover the social power of touch.”

Touch is commonly thought of as a single sense, but it is much more complex than that. Some nerve endings recognise itch, others vibration, pain, pressure and texture. And one exists solely to recognise a gentle stroking touch.

Known as c tactile afferents, this last is the one that McGlone has studied for years. To find it, a needle is inserted into the skin to “fish”. “It’s like sitting on the banks of the river,” McGlone says. “One’s a pain fish. One’s an itch fish.” Hours can pass before anyone catches a gentle touch nerve, but this elusive fibre has helped to teach scientists why humans need touch.

By watching the nerve’s discharge behaviour while the skin is stroked, scientists have learned that the optimum speed of a human caress is 3cm to 5cm a second.

This may sound like a diverting snippet of touch trivia, but its application is far-reaching. “We are destined to cuddle and stroke each other at predetermined velocities,” McGlone says. The pleasantness encourages us to keep touching, nourishes babies and binds adults, and threads wellbeing into the fabric of our being. It could also teach us more about the touch-averse, including how and when autism and eating disorders develop, and even lead us to a cure for loneliness.

Last year, researchers from University College London showed that slow, gentle stroking by a stranger reduced feelings of social exclusion.

“Bang on!” McGlone says. “This nerve fibre is responsible for so many aspects of our wellbeing across our lifespan. I call it the Higgs boson of the social brain. The missing particle that glues everything social together.” Ironically, having been brought up in the 50s, when parental affection was thought to encourage mawkish children, he is himself sensitive to touch, and feels a gentle stroke “like an electric shock”.

As a society, we instinctively understand the power of touch. That is why, after the tragic shooting at his school, the head of Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida promised “to hug each and every one” of his 3,300 students. A single, small touch can change countless lives. Princess Diana knew this when she held the hand of an Aids patient in 1987. So did Barack Obama when he stooped to let a young black boy pat his hair, so that he could feel his own potential in the palm of his hand.

Tiffany Field founded the Touch Research Institute at Miami Medical School to study this neglected sense and its impact on health. She enjoys a weekly massage and happily lists the positive effects of being touched. “We know from the science of what goes on under the skin that when the skin is moved, pressure receptors are stimulated,” she says. This “slows down heart rate, blood pressure and the release of cortisol”, which gives people better control over their stress hormones.

Being touched increases the number of natural killer cells, “the frontline of the immune system. Serotonin increases. That’s the body’s natural antidepressant. It enables deeper sleep,” Field says. Her appraisal is borne out by the experience of Kira “Cuddles” from Cuddle Up To Me in Portland, who has to remind her clients to check for phone, keys, wallet. “They leave with a dose of oxytocin. They are floating on a cloud.”

Mary Carlson is 78. She worked as a student assistant with the legendary scientist Harry Harlow, whose experiments with monkeys found that the hankering for touch is so innate that an infant, removed from its mother, would cling to a cloth-covered wire surrogate rather than a cold wire one with milk. It would choose to feel nourished rather than be nourished.

Carlson met Harlow as a freshman. At the first lecture she attended, “he came out hooting and running around on all fours”. In his laboratory, she witnessed monkeys that as infants had been deprived of their mother’s touch. In social groups, they would “go off in a corner, self-grasping, staring into space.” She saw similar patterns of behaviour in humans three decades later when she visited orphanages in Romania, a legacy of Ceausescu’s regime, where tens of thousands of infants were raised with minimal human touch.

“You just don’t see people touching each other these days,” Field complains. She has just come from a restaurant. “And everybody was on their cellphones.” At LaGuardia airport recently, she walked around the waiting area. “Not a soul was touching another. Even two-year-olds were sitting in carriages with iPads on their laps.” (Getting touch from their touch screens.) Then, at the Coconut Grove art festival, “There were people bumping into each other because it was so packed. I heard people say, ‘I’m sorry! Excuse me!’ and move off in a way that made it look like they were really embarrassed.”

Kellie Payne, research and policy manager at the Campaign to End Loneliness, says that loneliness is fatal precisely because it puts people “into a kind of defensive state where the levels of cortisol are raised. Having had negative experiences, they anticipate that their connection with people will also be negative,” which makes it hard to reinstate contact. To add to the challenge for the elderly, touch sensation is in decline. According to David J Linden, author of Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind, “Humans have their strongest touch sensation at around 20, after which it goes down by a percent a year for your whole life”.

Field, meanwhile, is worried about the rise in paediatric pain syndromes, such as irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia, previously common only in adults. She thinks this is due to stress and the absence of touch, and is also worried that “kids are getting more and more aggressive because there is less and less touch”.

Humans love touch. We love it so much that the word has the power to sell a heap of products from soft-touch pillows to velvet touch tights, expert touch saucepans and even smooth, perfecting touch face creams. But touching each other in an age of pervasive and historical sexual abuse and harassment no longer feels safe.

There is a hypervigilance of boundaries that makes it hard to find the right approach. “I think twice about hugging a colleague at work in a way that I didn’t a couple of years ago,” Linden says. “I’m thinking, maybe this is going to be misinterpreted. Maybe this is going to make somebody feel bad.”