"Your body's cold, but you're alive, Lain. Mine, too. See?"
Intimate gestures take a lot of different forms...a kiss on the cheek or forehead, a hug, touching someone's hand or cheek, head pats, there's too many to try to cite. One particular gesture that is shared between two people is for one to take the hand of another and place it on their chest so the other person can feel their heartbeat. This tends to be done when the person doing the hand-taking wants to convey or solidify their immediate presence to the other, usually as a means of comfort or support. It can also be done as a way to state that their heart beats for the other person, as an expression of love or affection. It may also serve as a variant on a Cooldown Hug, grounding a person in distress by providing a familiar sensation they can latch on to.
If a woman is doing this, there's an added layer that can complicate this gesture. The person whose hand she has taken is almost certainly going to be touching her breasts to some degree, which can cause them to be embarrassed or flustered, especially if they're a guy. In this case, the woman is usually so focused on expressing her feeling for the other person that she doesn't notice the contact or doesn't care if she does. However, if she's of a particularly mischievous or spicy personality, or is actually attracted to the other person, she may be very aware of the contact but does it anyway to get a kick out of their reaction, to gauge how they react, or to share a moment of intimate contact that doesn't have the immediacy of a kiss or other, more sensual touching.
This can also be done as an embrace, with one person holding the other's head against their chest so that person can feel or hear the first's heartbeat.
This gesture, whatever the meaning, can carry a strong fanservice element depending on the circumstances. It can also be used by the work's writers to set up Ship Tease between those characters.
Compare Feeling the Baby Kick, another intimate gesture where a pregnant character places another's hand on her belly to feel the baby moving.
Contrast Skinship Grope and Marshmallow Hell; both also involve chest touching, but are far more invasive (even in cases where consent is given) and are almost exclusively about fanservice.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Bloom Into You: Subverted in episode 5. When Touko can’t concentrate on studying, it escalates to her saying that her heart is beating fast, inviting Yuu to touch her chest to confirm it. However, Yuu instead feels Touko's pulse through her wrist.
- Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction: Invoked in ch. 85 when Ontan is teasingly talking to Kadode about getting back together with Watarase.
Ontan: Skulk into his room, watch some dumb YouTuber and chat suggestively...before gently taking his hand [...] Then place his hand on your breast and whisper "Can you feel my heart pounding?" The voltage between you will skyrocket...and you know what's next. Passionate! Wild! Hard-core sex!
Kadode: Argh! Ontan! Stop! Stop! - Fruits Basket: In a flashback to their childhoods, Shigure places Akito’s hand on his chest as he reassures her of his love for her.
- Love Hina: In the opening chapters, not long after Keitaro meets the girls, Mitsune quickly picks up on his naivety with women and makes a show of trying to hit on him when they're alone. This ends with her taking his hand and putting it right on her breast, saying her heart is racing because of him. Of course, Naru and the other girls barge in just afterward, and Mitsune immediately changes gears, accusing Keitaro of being a pervert and feeling her up.
- Millennium Snow: Chiyuki takes Touya's hand and places it on her chest, reminding him that he saved her life.
- Monster Girl Doctor: Doctor Glenn conducts a private examination of Skadi Dragenfelt, who suffers from a progressive illness and has lost the will to live. She has a hard, bluish patch directly over her heart, which throbs in rhythm with her heartbeat. Doctor Glenn touches this patch, and is surprised by its hardness, worrying that it's a malignant tumor beginning to ossify. While his intentions are perfectly innocent, him touching the tumor, and then continuing the exam along her tail and wings, causes her a great deal of Fantastic Arousal, which infuriates her bodyguard Kunai when she walks into the room and sees Skadi mostly undressed and crying. Glenn's assistant, who had walked in with Kunai, also lampshades how the situation appears.
- Sasaki and Miyano: In episode 12, after Sasaki said that Miyano's heart was loud, he grabbed Miyano’s hand and put it on his own chest, showing that he was the same.
- Serial Experiments Lain: In a tender moment between Alice and Lain, Alice puts her hand on Lain's cheek, then puts Lain's hand over her own heart to try and remind Lain of her own humanity after she is nearly consumed by The Wired.
- Usagi-chan de Cue!!: After Inaba has defeated Dekao on the public beach, she switches to her Mimika form. As Haru tries to sit up after being beaten down by the Muscle Beach Bums, Mimika burbles that she'd been so scared that her heart is racing. She puts Haru's left hand on her sternum, urging him to feel her heartbeat. Miku protests that Haru is getting to feel Mimika's huge boobs.
Comic Books
- Lanfeust Odyssey: In volume 1, Cixi, the Baron's daughter, asks her suitor Ignatius to play a prank on the man she is forced to marry. As he shows reluctance, she tells him that doing so would make her heart beat very fast and takes his hand to put it on her breasts so he can feel it. Young Ignatius is so aroused that he has to put his hand in a barrel of water to cool it off. Cixi then tells him that once he's done he can check how fast her heart is beating again (and advises him to clean up the stain on his pants).
- Murena: In the third volume, Agrippina goes to see Vespasian, one of the friends of her son Nero, to question him about Nero's plans concerning her. During their conversation, she seduces him by telling him that her mother's heart suffers and takes his hand to put it on her chest to show him before putting it on her cheek. The two then sleep together and Vespasian reveals to Agrippina everything she wanted to know (and in the next panel, she's pissed off both because of Nero's plans and because Vespasian didn't get her off).
Fan Works
- There's a Frozen (2013) fanart
◊ where Elsa gets a traumatic flashback about Anna turning into ice during the movie's climax, so Anna puts Elsa's hand on her chest to feel the heartbeat.
- In Beyond The Storm, when Max is crying into Chloe's chest, what breaks her out of it is realizing that she can hear Chloe's heartbeat.
- In one MoringMark - TOH Comics comic, Amity presses her head to Luz's back so she can hear Luz's heartbeat, noting that it's her favorite sound because it tells her that Luz is alive and well.
Films — Animation
- Tarzan: When Kala tries to assure her adopted son Tarzan that they're the same despite her being a gorilla and he a human, she has him listen to his own heartbeat and then hers. Later when Tarzan is an adult and meets Jane, he listens to her heartbeat and then has her feel his in an effort to connect.
Films — Live-Action
- Cloud Atlas: While Hae-Joo sleeps, Sonmi~451 listens to his heartbeat. Because she is an Artificial Human, his heart beats much slower than hers.
- A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night features this as the climax to an scene where The Girl takes an inebriated Arash home and they listen to music together in her room. The scene is a silent oner which at face value looks like a teenage Meet Cute scene, but the important context is that unbeknownst to Arash, the Girl is a vampire who's already been shown killing someone for their blood. The direction of the scene makes it look like she's to lean into his face for a kiss (which she doesn't), before gazing at his neck for a bite (which she doesn't), finally settling on resting her head on his chest, quietly listening to his heartbeat.
Live-Action TV
- Bridgerton: Anthony's father died from a bee sting when he was young, making him very fearful of this happening to anyone around him. When Kate is stung by a bee, he starts to have a panic attack, but she calms him down by putting one of his hands on her chest with one hand, then holding his other hand to his chest with her other and gently talking to him. This is an exceptionally intimate gesture due to such physical contact being rather taboo at the time the show is set, and it highlights the growing romantic tension between them.
- Doctor Who: Because of the Doctor's unique double heartbeat, this happens more than once in the show to prove the human-seeming character is an alien.
- In "Journey's End", the Metacrisis Doctor discovers that he only has one heart, prompting Donna to feel his chest and make the same realization. Downplayed, since Donna is established to have no romantic attraction to the Doctor, but the gesture does establish their connection since the Metacrisis Doctor grew partly from Donna herself (which he is not initially pleased with).
- In "Dark Water", Missy invites the Doctor to feel her heartbeat. What he feels seems to trouble him, but he doesn't immediately say. By the end of the episode, it's revealed she has two hearts, like the Doctor and all other Time Lords. She then drops a major Wham Line:
Missy: Please try to keep up. I'm Missy. Short for Mistress. Well... I couldn't well keep calling myself 'the Master', now could I?"
- Interview with the Vampire (2022):
- "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...": After Lestat de Lioncourt heals the wounds on Louis de Pointe du Lac's neck from his Kiss of the Vampire, Louis slowly moves Lestat's hand across his bare chest until it rests over his heart. Combined with their Held Gaze, having Lestat feel Louis' heart beating enhances the tenderness shared between them after Their First Time.
- "...The Ruthless Pursuit of Blood with All a Child's Demanding": Lestat briefly rests his hand on Louis' chest where the latter's heart is during Claudia's birthday party. It's a simple gesture that helps Lestat feel close to his boyfriend.
Music
Video Games
- Honkai Impact 3rd: In the "Aponia Counseling Room" event, one of the stories Aponia tells about her past is an encounter between her and Kalpas in which she tries to talk him out of a temper fit. He tries to egg her into a confrontation, but she blows off his fury and puts one of his hands on her chest, apologizing for not seeing how wound up he was inside and asking to be allowed to soothe him. He gets very put off by his inability to rile her and quickly apologizes just to get away from her.
Visual Novels
- Fate/stay night: Played with in the PS2 version's Unlimited Blade Works route when Rin transplants her Crest onto Shirou. Rather than putting his hand on her chest, she puts one hand on her chest and the other on his.
Shirou: [narration] My breathing trembles as she says her spell. I can feel the magical energy coursing through Tohsaka's body through her hand. Her slender fingers are upon my chest. My heartbeat, and Tohsaka's pulse.
Western Animation
- The Legend of Vox Machina: A rare villainous example. A flashback to the Briarwoods' origin in Episode 9 shows Silas dying of an undisclosed illness. When Delilah puts her hand and head to his chest, his heartbeat is faltering. After she resurrects him through unholy means, she discovers he has become a vampire first from his lack of reflection, and then from putting her hand on his chest to find no heartbeat.
Real Life
- The Ainu word for "How are you?", irankarapte, translates to "Let me softly touch your heart."
