salute ➳ 〚h.s.〛 〚a.u.〛

the one where harry goes back to work

"How does it feel to be back?"

Harry let out a long sigh as he looked around his office. He took a couple of steps into the room, running his hand over the top of his desk and scrunching his face up when his fingers came back covered in dust. The carpet hadn't been vacuumed in ages and the windows had strange smudges on them.

"It's like they thought I'd actually died so they didn't bother cleaning up."

Piper tsked as she shut the door behind her, following Harry into his office. She hadn't been in here many times so it still felt strange thinking of it as Harry's, as a place in which he used to spend a substantial amount of time. In her mind, he never really had an office — he just floated around MI6 like he owned the place and spent a great deal of his time sitting by her desk in T branch, acting as her favourite distraction.

He had his diplomas on the wall, a couple of knickknacks here and there. On a shelf to the side there were a couple of books, old editions of books that Harry had even older editions of back at home, which led her to guess that they were gifts. She assumed the dead potted plant sitting in the corner had been a gift as well, judging by the 'get well soon' tag stuck on the side. The first thing she did was cross over to the credenza it was sitting on and toss it in the bin.

When she turned back around, Harry was perched in his chair, slouching down a bit as he pushed the chair back and forth between a 45 degree angle. He glanced up and over at her, and when she quirked her brow he just shrugged.

"I thought I was so keen to come back," he muttered, "but now I'm sort of wishing I was back home still, reading my books in the library."

"It's my dream too," Piper said wistfully as she walked toward Harry's desk and then around it, leaning against the front just beside his chair, "but unfortunately we need jobs."

"Do we?" Harry had a playful little grin on his face as his hands found her hips, dragging her toward him so she was standing in between his legs. His palms drifted up her sides to her waist before dragging back down and around so he had a good grip on her bum. "I'm rich. Let's quit and move to some island somewhere in the Mediterranean and do nothing except lie in the sun and have lots of sex."

Piper hummed appreciatively as her eyes drifted shut, already picturing the two of them out on a yacht, her lying spread out on her front as Harry rubbed sunblock onto her bare back. She could picture him letting his hands wander, slipping under the paltry strings of her bikini while he leaned over, kissing the nape of her neck and marking up her tanned skin (not that she was capable of tanning but this was a fantasy — anything could happen).

"Sounds lovely," Piper murmured as Harry's hands squeezed her bum gently before drifting down her thighs and back up. She opened her eyes and glanced down at Harry, who was watching the trail his hands were making while he bit his lip. She tucked her finger under his chin and dragged it upward, shaking her head. "But it's not going to happen."

"Shame," Harry said with a tilt of his shoulder, the action teasingly mysterious in a way that made Piper hot all over. "Our Mediterranean island would have been clothing optional."

Piper tried to subtly press her legs shut as an image of the endless possibilities of that gave her body the wrong impression about what was happening here. "The problem is," she pointed out, "that I doubt MI6 is going to let you just quit. Even if you stopped going out in the field, they'd make you do training or supervising or something."

Harry pouted miserably. "Right. Forgot that part."

Piper ran her hand through his hair, tousling his curls which had been looking a little too neat. Harry had been a little overeager for his first day back, wearing a good suit and actually taking time to do something with his hair instead of just letting it be, curls flying all over the place. It didn't suit him as much as his natural, slightly untamed look did.