An obvious yet effective way to put a stealth hug between two characters, especially in No Hugging, No Kissing worlds.
One of the characters, usually the female, trips over something or feels faint. Or maybe is jumping from a high place. Then, the other character, usually the male, catches him/her just in time to prevent him/her to hit the ground.
However, both characters don't move away from each other right away. They take their time. Maybe to comfort each other (which may evolve to Cry into Chest). Or maybe they are too busy looking into each other's eyes. Some extreme cases can even involve an Accidental Kiss, and some more moderate ones can lead to an Almost Kiss.
Compare to Accidental Hug and The Glomp. May overlap with Falling into His Arms.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- In Fruits Basket, Tohru trips and falls down a slope, prompting both Yuki and Kyo to try to rescue her, accidentally hug her, and turn into animals.
- In a Maison Ikkoku comic book, Kyoko is trying to fix the porch globe light when Yusaku arrives, startling her. Kyoko falls off the ladder and not only do they end up hugging as he catches her, but their lips touch as well. Since no one else saw it happen, and they're both supposed to be dating other people, they decide to pretend all that happened was that Kyoko slipped and dropped the globe.
- In PandoraHearts Gil frequently does this to Oz.
- Pokémon: The Original Series: In "The Heartbreak of Brock", Brock grabs the Girl of the Week when she trips and falls, leading to a Rescue Romance that's one-sided on her part. Turns out, she does that every man she meets and ironically, this happens to be the one time where Brock doesn't want have a relationship with (at first).
- Tactics: Haruka once does this to Kantarou.
Film — Animated
- In Aladdin, when the titular character leads Jasmine to his hideaway, the girl trips and falls into Aladdin's arms. Needless to say, they don't break the embrace right away.
- Casting agent Farley Wink nearly throws his secretary Sawyer into Danny's arms in Turner Features Animation's Cats Don't Dance. "He's new in town. Be nice." It doesn't help that Sawyer encountered Danny previously and regards him as a frenetic lunatic.
Film — Live-Action
- Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back: While the Millennium Falcon is inside the asteroid, there's a sudden tremor. Princess Leia falls backward and Han Solo catches her. He doesn't let go immediately and continues to hold her even after she gets uncomfortable and asks him to let go. They then have a bit of banter that's intended to foreshadow their growing attraction to each other.
Han: Don't get excited!Leia: Captain, being held by you isn't quite enough to get me excited.
Live-Action TV
- Used more than once as an explanation by Rene in 'Allo 'Allo! to his wife as to why she had just caught him and one of his mistresses wrapped around each other.
"You stew-pid woman, can you not see the poor girl has just tripped and I was 'elping steady her."
- Jane the Virgin: In Season 1, after Petra is held captive in the Everglades by Roman Zazo, who had faked his own death and posed as his twin brother, she manages to call Michael, whom she had told of her suspicions, and give her location. She manages to run from Roman who catches up with her and she accidentally kills him in self-defence. When Michael finds her she is distraught and traumatised and hugs him. He comforts her.
- In heavy overlap with Falling into His Arms, Once Upon a Time's Rumplestiltskin catches and saves Belle when she falls off a ladder—and the two immediately spend way too long staring at each other in amazement.
Video Games
- In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, when Zelda wakes up from her thousand years of slumber, she falls down but Link catches her just in time in what looks like a tender hug.
- In Metal Gear Solid's good ending Meryl drops from the remnants of Metal Gear REX into Snake's arms. The whole base is falling apart around them, but they just don't seem to care.
- In The Sexy Brutale, Clay Rockridge does something approaching this when the player saves him and his wife Trinity.
- In Tales of Vesperia, after Estelle manages to break Alexei's mental control, she is in mid-air. She falls down and Yuri catches her. They don't seem to be in any rush of breaking the "catch" afterwards.
Western Animation
- Happens twice with Kim and Ron in the Grand Finale of Kim Possible; First when they were reunited on the Lowardians' ship, and again after Ron defeated Warhok and Warmonga. Drakken and Shego nearly did this as well, but backpedaled once they realized what they were doing.
