Two characters from the heart of friendly, intimate circle (7)
I believe the answer is:
enclose
'friendly intimate circle' is the definition.
'enclose' can be an answer for 'circle' (thesaurus). I am not sure about the 'friendly intimate' bit.
'two characters from the heart' is the wordplay.
'two characters' means two replacements for 'character'.
'character' becomes 'e'.
'character' becomes 'n'.
'from the heart' becomes 'close' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'e'+'n'+'close'='ENCLOSE'
'of' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for enclose that I've seen before include "Totally surround" , "Encompass" , "embrace" , "Fence in (common land)" , "Surround, envelop" .)