I'm not sure how this happened, but here it is. Harness fic as requested – those of you to blame know who you are haha. I couldn't bring myself to write an actual harness because I lost my nerve (also it was a work night so I couldn't drink), but I hope this is acceptable instead. It is ridiculous and I am sorry and I hope you enjoy xx

Funny, Intriguing

She hadn't been expecting to meet her husband at the front door in the small hours of the morning when she finally made it home from her trip to New York. Correction: she certainly hadn't been expecting to meet her drunk husband at the front door.

Elizabeth walked the last few steps from her car just as Henry walked – stumbled – the last few steps from the taxi that was just driving off down the street. "Henry?" she said.

His face lit up when he saw her. "Babe!" He held his arms open wide and pulled her into an exuberant hug as they met at the door.

She returned the hug, smelling the alcohol on him – definitely scotch, and quite a lot of it judging from the state of him – and feeling a smile tug at her lips against her better judgement at the thought of being able to rib him about this when he sobered up. "I take it you had a good night with Jeff," she said, when he eased up enough to let her pull back to breathe.

"Jeff…" Her husband's face turned serious and he gripped her shoulders in his hands, bending down slightly to look her in the eye, like he might talk to a child. "You're my wife, do you know that?"

The smile she was trying to hide threatened to break free. Elizabeth very carefully kept her expression neutral when she answered, "You know, I think I heard about that."

Henry shook his head like he was disappointed in her. "No, you don't get it." Then one of his hands left her shoulder to hold his own head and a look of mild distress coloured his face.

"The world spinning on you there, tiger?"

"Like you wouldn't believe." Henry took a deep lungful of the cold night air. He blinked rapidly like he was trying to clear his vision and carefully drew his hand away from his head like he was worried it might roll from his shoulders without the additional structural support. Body intact, he held Elizabeth's shoulders in his palms again. "But I need you to understand. We're married."

She frowned, confused and a little concerned. What the hell had gone on during Henry's drinking session with the congressman? "I know," she said. "Henry, what's going on?"

"Jeff and Val are getting a divorce," he said.

And then, before Elizabeth could react, he suddenly swayed violently, tripping over thin air and stumbling forwards into her, jostling her as she reached out to grab him and try to keep him steady. She was aware of her DS agents behind her, Matt getting out of the car to come and help. She waved him back. "It's OK, guys. I've got this."

Matt looked at her sceptically. He held his tongue but one eyebrow quirked up to let her know exactly what he thought of her handle on the situation.

She turned back to Henry. "Come on, let's go inside." She urged him up the steps to the front door, moving awkwardly as Henry seemed intent on plastering himself against her – whether to keep her as close as possible or simply to keep himself upright she wasn't quite sure, but it was making it difficult to get him inside. After a minute of struggling, she reluctantly turned back to Matt and the rest of her agents. She smiled sheepishly. "Hey, guys? I don't suppose you could get the door for me?"

It had taken almost half an hour to persuade Henry upstairs and to the bedroom. He had resisted every step of the way, mostly, it seemed, because every step he took sent his head spinning thanks to the scotch bath he had taken earlier that night.

He had kept up a steady commentary throughout the whole thing, so that by the time Elizabeth finally got him into the bedroom, ready to pour him into bed for a few hours' sleep before he woke up with the worst hangover he'd had since somewhere around 2008, she had managed to put together the story of what had happened on Henry's night out with the congressman.

It was sad, she thought, that the man's marriage was over. She also thought that Henry was a good friend, despite the little spat he'd had with the man, and it was the sympathy she felt towards her husband over his upset that kept her from getting annoyed when he took five whole minutes to take off his shirt and pants before finally collapsing onto the bed.

Instead, she sat next to him for a minute, stroking one hand through his hair as he lay with his eyes closed, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead as his body worked to process the toxins he'd experimentally thrown at it. Then she kissed him on the forehead and left him alone while she prepared for bed, unceremoniously dumping her outfit somewhere in the vicinity of the laundry basket before pulling on an old t-shirt of Henry's and climbing into her side of the bed.

"Night, babe," she said to Henry as she switched off the light. "If you're gonna hurl, do it in the bathroom, OK?"

There was a grunt from Henry's direction in response.

Elizabeth settled herself down, taking a calming breath and willing herself to forget the stresses of the day – and willing herself to fall asleep before Henry lest his inevitable drunken snoring keep her awake until her alarm went off.

There was sweet, blissful silence for five minutes. Then Henry said, "Jeff bought a harness."

Elizabeth blinked in the dark, turning her head towards Henry. "What?"

Henry's body was shaking with silent laughter, making the bed vibrate. "His marriage was failing, so he bought a sex harness to try to fix it."

She couldn't contain the snort. "Seriously?"

"Yep. He did that."

"I take it that it didn't work."

"No, he mostly just hurt his back when it broke and he's still getting a divorce."

She couldn't help herself. Elizabeth joined in with Henry's laughter, trying and failing to imagine what kind of dire marital situation she might find herself in where buying a sex swing was considered a good, viable solution to the problem.

Beneath the covers, Henry's hand reached out for hers and despite their laughter and his state of drunkenness, Elizabeth felt a moment of clarity. She hung on tight to Henry's hand.

Thirty seconds later he was snoring.

Damn.

She had been thinking about harnesses more than was probably appropriate for a day during which the keystone of Conrad's legacy was extravagantly and spectacularly failing to hold together.

But she couldn't help it. Ever since the night before and then the little conversation with Henry at the breakfast table, she kept coming back to the topic.

Funny ha ha or funny intriguing?

There had been something about the look on Henry's face when he asked the question – and when she gave her answer – that had made Elizabeth think that maybe he had been testing the waters. Maybe he was into the idea.

Or maybe he was just violently hungover. Maybe.

She had never really thought about the possibility of special furniture before, had never felt the need to. She and Henry had a great sex life – when they had time for one these days. Sure, there had been dry spells, such as when the kids were little or they were working away a lot or the last year when they had hit something of a rocky patch, to put it mildly. But mostly things were good. Excellent, even. They'd had their share of adventurous moments and had beneath it all a strong, loving centre that they weren't afraid to express physically and that helped to sustain them through the years. They had never needed to dress it up.

Which was why Elizabeth couldn't really explain why she found herself that night, sitting in bed with her laptop, effectively looking at porn on the internet.

She needed a distraction, she told herself, something to get her mind off the gathering shit show that was the Middle East, and tonight that something was sex. It had nothing to do with anything else. Not at all. And curiosity was healthy. Looking was fine.

She was so engrossed in scrolling through the images on the screen that she didn't notice Henry enter the room until his jacket landed on the bed next to her.

"What are you doing?" he asked, loosening his tie and tossing it down to join his jacket on the bed.

"Really hoping my computer doesn't get hacked by any more stalkers," she said, not taking her eyes off the screen. "Because this is one internet search I really do not need anyone to see."

"What?" Henry joined her on the bed, flopping down next to her and peering over her shoulder to see what she was up to. "Um. Babe?"

"Hmm?" She glanced up and looked at him to find his eyes wide as he looked between her and the screen.

"I ask again," he said. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to see what you see in this idea." She nodded towards the pictures on the screen, the result of an image search to see exactly what this harness thing was all about, to see if she couldn't definitively decide whether she thought it was funny ha ha or funny intriguing.

Henry held his hands up in protest. "Hey, I never said I'm into the idea."

"You implied it." She raised one eyebrow, daring him to deny it.

He didn't. "Hey, I just… asked a question, babe. I didn't mean anything by it. I wasn't saying that I… that I think we... oh, God."

Elizabeth decided to ask the blunt question. "Henry, are you bored?"

"What?" He pushed up from the bed and stood at the foot of it, looking down at her as she sat back against the pillows.

She looked down at the bedspread, tracing the pattern with one finger, feeling herself flushing uncontrollably and suddenly unable to meet her husband's eye. "Are you bored?" she repeated, quieter this time. "With sex, I mean… with the sex we have."

When he didn't answer for a long time she started to get genuinely worried and eventually forced her head up to look at him, only to find him gaping at her with what could only be described as disbelief on his face.

"Henry?" she prompted.

"Are you serious?" he said, sounding like he might be a little angry with her.

She found herself stuttering a little as she answered. "I just… don't want you to be bored with me."

She willed him to read between the lines: that she didn't want him to be dissatisfied with what they had – in any way - and start thinking about other options. Because he was her only option. And if that meant considering the harness thing… well. There were lines. But she needed to know where he stood.

Henry appeared in front of her, pushing the laptop off her lap as he knelt down at the side of the bed, looking up at her and cupping her face in his hands. "I'm not bored with you," he said adamantly. "I love you. I love what we have together. How the hell could you even think that?"

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "My mind got carried away with me." She gave Henry a tremulous smile, feeling better from his reassurance, but she still had to check: "So you don't want to do the crazy sex swing thing?"

He grinned at her. "Well, babe, if you're offering…"

She laughed at the twinkle in his eye. "I can admit there's a part of me that finds it funny intriguing, OK?" Just a part of her – and very definitely not the part that knew without even trying out the harness idea she'd only end up throwing her back out. But the part of her that loved her husband and wanted him madly and wanted to try new things with him - yeah, that part of her got it.

"Shame we're not thirty years younger, right?" Henry said, sounding like he was thinking about his knee that sometimes hurt when he put too much stress on it.

"I know," she said. "And where would we even put the thing?"

They both looked around the room. "Nowhere the kids could accidentally find it," Henry said.

"The kids? What about Diplomatic Security? They sweep this place every week."

Henry looked horrified at the thought. "Oh God. OK. We're definitely not getting a sex harness. At least until you're done being Secretary of State."

Feeling like teasing him a little, she said, "What if I decide to run for President? You'd have to wait longer." She grinned and raised her eyebrows, wondering if he'd play along.

Of course he did. "Oh no. That'd change things. In that case we'd definitely have to get one in the Lincoln bedroom."

Elizabeth laughed. "OK, I'll give you that. If I ever become President, we can get a harness."

"OK, deal." Henry grinned at her, stretching up for a kiss as he smoothed her hair behind her ear. His gaze landed on the laptop when he broke away and he reached out for it, pulling it towards himself and leaning across Elizabeth's lap to get a better look. "Wait, what the hell is that?"

She looked down to see what he was looking at, her eyes quickly finding the image Henry was pointing to. "I know, right? I don't care how young and athletic they are, I have no idea how the hell they managed to get themselves into that position."

"How is that possible?" Henry was peering at the screen, squinting to get a better look at the contortion the couple in the picture had managed to get themselves into with the aid of a harness.

Elizabeth felt herself flush with warmth. Now that she'd sought reassurance from Henry, she could admit that there was a part of her that had been quite aroused looking through the images and imagining how it might be if she and Henry tried them out. Quite a large part of her. OK. Completely. She was completely aroused and not ashamed to admit it. She let out a shaky breath. "Maybe they're acrobats," she said.

Henry must have caught something in her tone because he looked back up at her sharply, gaze flicking over her face. A small smile appeared on his lips. "Yeah, maybe," he said, sounding himself like he wasn't completely unaffected by the discussion. Then he looked back at the computer screen. "But seriously, how..?" He stood, gaze still fixed on the screen as he reached down to tug at Elizabeth's arm, urging her up. "Come here."

She followed him up, her body brushing his as they stood next to the bed. She could feel his arousal through the layers of their clothing but wondered slightly if maybe it wasn't the physics of the photo that was turning him on at that precise moment. She put her face into his line of sight to attract his attention. "Um, Henry?"

"I can't work it out." He took her hand in his and pulled her across the room, pausing to spin the laptop on the bed to face the other way, so he could see it from the opposite side of the bed. He stopped in the open doorway to their closet, positioning her in the empty frame.

She wanted to laugh at the concentration on his face. She shifted her stance and became aware of the moisture gathering between her legs and oh, God, if he whipped out a harness right now she couldn't say she'd be against it.

Henry turned back to her and wrapped his hands around her ribs. His palms were hot through the silk of her nightgown. "Jump," he said.

She did laugh them. "Excuse me?"

"Jump up. I have to see how this is possible."

"Henry, believe me, it's not possible." Then she sighed and said, "OK, I'll jump." She jumped up, bracing her palms on the doorframe in lieu of any other, uh, supports, trusting Henry to hold her up with his hands at her ribcage.

He craned his neck to see the screen again. "OK, wrap one leg around my waist… yeah, that's it. Then I just have to… wait, I can't see the screen. Can you..?"

She tilted her head to see behind Henry. "Yeah, you're gonna need to jump, too."

"Take some more of your weight, OK? Just for a sec. I just have to…" Henry took one hand from her ribs to brace next to hers on the door frame. "Maybe if I climb..?"

She would have looked down to see what he was doing if she didn't think moving at all would be a massive error. She could feel her arms starting to strain from holding her weight – and some of Henry's as his fingers dug into her ribs and he used her for leverage as he tried to manoeuvre himself into position. She could also feel the strain in her chest from trying not to laugh.

"Are you stable?" Henry said with absolute seriousness as he prepared to climb the doorframe, and that was what broke her.

Elizabeth shook with laughter, unable to stop herself even as she felt herself starting to slip from position. "I am, but I'm not so sure about you." She lowered her arms carefully to wrap around Henry, clinging to him like a koala as her body was wracked with laughter.

A moment later, he joined in, a chuckle rising in his throat until he joined her in hysterics, wrapping his arms around her. He stumbled a step with the force of his laughter and then his knees buckled, his legs giving out and only serving to make them laugh harder.

Henry lowered them to the floor, almost making it all the way down without incident before he slipped and Elizabeth lost her grasp on him, landing on the floor of the closet with a thunk, Henry on top of her and knocking the wind out of her for a second.

Henry pushed himself up onto his arms and looked down at her beneath him and they both sobered instantly. Elizabeth watched her husband's pupils dilate as he looked at her and she was sure her own must be doing something similar as he lowered his pelvis to hers and started a very deliberate slow thrust against her, letting her feel just how much he was enjoying this.

"See," she whispered. "That position is impossible."

She might have gone on to say something else but then Henry's mouth was on hers, his tongue pushing past her lips as he took her hands in his and stretched her arms out over her head, moving to hold her wrists to keep her there as he plundered her mouth and quickened the pace of his thrusts against her.

Elizabeth moaned, feeling a rush of arousal thrum through her. Henry's chest rubbed sensuously over hers and she was aware of her nipples hardening against the silk of the nightgown she wore. She pressed up against him, wanting more.

Henry pulled back to yank off his shirt and quickly take off his suit trousers and underwear while she watched him, her eyes immediately going to his erection as he cast his clothes aside and crawled back over her. She didn't think it was going to take much to send him over.

She reached for him and he let her pull him down for a steamy kiss as she ran her hands over his back and chest, loving the feel of his skin beneath her palms. Then Henry ran his hands up her legs and tugged down her underwear, tossing them over his shoulder.

Elizabeth reached for the hem of her nightgown.

Henry's hand on her wrist stopped her. "You'll get carpet burn," he said.

"Planning on taking me on the floor, professor?" she murmured.

His head dropped to her ear. She could feel his breath hot against the shell. "With enthusiasm," he said. He moved to kiss her neck, sucking at her pulse point before moving to the juncture where her neck met her shoulder and the spot that always made her shiver and moan. His hands moved between them to cup her breasts in his palms, stroking his thumbs over her nipples, the combined friction of his hands and the fabric of her nightgown sending her wild.

Then Henry tugged down the straps of her nightgown so he could pull the fabric from her chest, trapping her in place with the strappy sleeves halfway down her arms. Elizabeth felt another rush of moisture gathering at the core of her at the feeling of being constricted and the look on Henry's face as he lowered his head to her chest.

He spent long minutes driving her crazy with his lips and fingers and then, when she was bucking against him and practically frantic, he pulled himself up to look down into her eyes, holding her wrists in his hands at her sides. "OK?" he said, the wild look in his eyes telling her that he was just as far gone.

She nodded distractedly, pressing her hips into him, desperate for him. Henry gave her what she wanted, pressing inside of her in one smooth stroke. He groaned loudly as she parted her legs wider for him and wrapped her legs around his waist. He lifted one hand to hitch her left leg higher around him, holding her there as he started to thrust into her, setting a fast pace that Elizabeth knew would have both of them coming in no time at all.

She cried out, needing release, desperate for it. "Henry!"

He let go of her wrist so he could instead palm her breast and squeeze her nipple between two fingers, a little harder than normal, the increased pressure setting off a buzz inside of her that radiated throughout her whole body and she came, bucking her hips and only vaguely aware of Henry's increasingly erratic thrusts as he too lost himself to bliss.

He collapsed over her a moment later, breathing heavily and landing with his head on her chest, his fingers threading through hers. "Wow," he said.

"Yeah."

They lay there for a couple of minutes, getting their breath back. Then Elizabeth said, "So you're really not bored?"

He pinched her nipple and made her squeal and then laugh as he tickled her briefly. "Really not, babe" he said. He turned his head to press a kiss to the centre of her chest, directly over her heart. "I love you."

Her heart thumped loudly in response and she lifted her heavy arms to cradle Henry's head against her, enjoying the closeness even as her back started to protest at lying on the floor for so long. "Good," she said. "Even without the harness?"

"Even without." Henry tilted his head to look up at her, a soft smile on his face that turned slightly cheeky when he saw the flirty look on her own face. "But what's your answer now?" he asked. "Funny ha ha or funny intriguing?"

She didn't even have to think about it. "I'll always be intrigued with you."