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Two hours in the cabinet meeting, half an hour at a press conference, three trying to get from celebration to celebration for some minor holiday that made an excuse for a gala; thirty minutes for lunch, which he spends blissfully savoring a mediocre sandwich. Two more hours trying to convince a general to cede a post to a civilian. One hour preparing the civilian replacement, just in case it comes through. Twenty hideously boring minutes going over tomorrow’s schedule. An hour just for approving the requisitions someone else already approved, then another for appointments. A formal dinner. He does a lot of smiling. Not enough time to work.
The previous Führer had a rule: home by eight to see his family, no matter what that took. Roy can’t remember the last time he saw ten o’clock out of uniform. Since he put it on, maybe— when he was a new recruit and cruising he wore the damn thing to the bars.
Behind him Riza says softly, “All clear.”
“I thought we had an agreement about sneaking up on me,” Roy says, and tilts his chair back to look at her. “You know what I miss about being a colonel?”
“The hazard pay,” Riza says, coming around to sit on the desk. She pulls out her bun and begins to comb out her hair.
“Sometimes people didn’t show up to appointments,” he confides in her. “Sometimes they just didn’t come, and you could clear the whole afternoon. No one’s ever late to see me.”
“There’s always Emperor Yao,” Riza murmurs.
“Doesn’t count if it almost starts an international incident.”
“Oh.” She frowns. “That’s very restrictive.”
“True, true,” he sighs. “That’s another thing I miss.”
She rolls her eyes. She’s already started unbuttoning him. "I can get you a small audience for your vaudeville show if you'd like, sir."
"I thought I had one," he says plaintively as her fingers slide under the linen of the dress shirt. Not for the first time he thinks that he could've just about managed being blind, except that he'd never gotten his fill of looking at her even with working eyes. He kisses the line of her neck. She inhales, swift and loud, and he does it again.
"I think--" she says, ragged, so he really goes for it until he hears her groan and feels her hand tighten on the back of his neck. "Oh."
That's one of the forty thousand things he loves about her. The depth of her attention to the issue at hand. It's still an hour and a half till midnight and they have a lot to get through.