Prompt 168, Nerd, "Overtime"
Title: Overtime
Author: Tiri
Series: Any
Word Count: 496
Rating: G
Characters: Roy Mustang, with mentions of his crew, plus one more (Alex Rivers, OC).
Summary: Paperwork's done; that means he can go home, right?
A/N: Gosh, World of Warcraft kind of ate my free time for those last two prompt weeks. But don't worry, I promised to spam more Alex fics, so that's just what I'll do. ;3 And in time, I'll go back and read what you wonderful people have written. <3 Anyway, this fic is more effective if you've read two of my previous prompts, but I would like to think is relatively standalone. Enjoy!
In the evening, the colonel strode leisurely, doing a contemplative lap around vacated desks. In part, he was celebrating a job well done -- circling the wagons one last time. Inboxes were empty, outboxes were filled in taunting preparation of the morning, and even his piled-up paperwork was done. For him, the overtime hours were over, and now that they were, he felt wonderfully satisfied. Soon he would go home, and sleep; he never wanted to work on those dull files again.
A white glove hovered over the bare surfaces of the desks in slow succession, skipping over cracks, one to the other, to gloat over familiar features one last time before he went home. Hawkeye's desk was always spotless, and Falman's was just the same. Breda's wasn't quite as organized, but had been wiped down, and Fuery's was similar, though this day a stray metal bolt had been swept just out of view. Idly, Roy wondered if it was important, though he was soon distracted by the dark spot his white glove pulled up when he let it linger across Havoc's desk. Roy should've expected the smoker to leave some ash behind.
That just left the cluttered desk of the Private, the greenhorn, the newbie -- Rivers, was it? The youth was always a bundle of energy; perhaps Roy shouldn't have pushed so much caffeine on her, but her inbox was empty, and wasn't that what mattered? He ran a team he could be proud of, and as he turned to leave, he was proud.
Then dark eyes caught on the paper-bound journal laid on the Private's desk.
Roy couldn't resist the curiosity, and he didn't want to. Rivers didn't talk about herself enough; a look at a girl's diary was too tempting. It wouldn't take long. Stepping almost secretively back toward her desk, and casting a sly glance from one end of the empty room to the other, he reached out, took the book, and opened it.
He was met with frantic chickenscratch, and meticulously-drawn circles -- alchemy. Rather than boys, the girl took an interest in science, and... obsessively. Every page was filled, with ink almost as fresh on the first page as on the last. How many of these journals could she go through in a month? These weren't a schoolgirl's notes. There were still holes in her research, of course, and unfinished problems she hadn't gotten to; her scatterbrained writing was juvenile, really, but....
There was talk of oxygen and hydrogen and bonds to be broken and reformed and before he knew it Roy was reaching for a pen, his gaze following Rivers' ramblings from one point to the next. As he popped the cap off between his teeth, he didn't realize when he'd settled down in her chair, but he began writing, pulling apart theories, filling his head with formulas, and while he corrected her work, his smile stretched wide as he uncovered brilliant, if unfulfilled ideas.
Morning caught him doing overtime again.