If you're still doing the ask prompts, I suggest Anahardt, 26.
Under 1k words! I swore to myself I was gonna keep these under 1k words!!
26. “You left your underwear at my place.”
Reinhardt stirred in his sleep as the first few beams of sunlight shined on his gray hair with the morning. He squinted and blinked his one good eye open, glancing down to see Ana splayed over him, her braid tickling across his collarbone. He breathed in a deep contented sigh and with the shifting of his chest, Ana shifted her head slightly and opened her one good eye at him.“Good morning, Captain,” he said with a smile.
“Good morning, lieutenant,” she replied, readjusting herself against his chest.
A long moment passed between them. Not an awkward silence, but one of those warm quiet moments, sustained and sunlit like when your breath crests with the knowledge that you actually got a good night’s sleep. Reinhardt had gotten so used to sleep as a sparse and bland luxury---just a few hours of darkness to buy a day’s energy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had woken up without the ache of his armor deep in his bones, but this was the first time in that long. Granted, there was a bit of an ache in his lower back and some soreness in his lower abdominals, but he was more than willing to bear those considering how he had gotten them.
He fiddled with the tied-off end of Ana’s braid, slipping that silver tuft between different fingers with his thumb. “So... going back to tracking down Reyes, then?”
Ana snorted a little. “I’m sure Jack can manage without me for a little bit,” she said, closing her eyes.
“I should probably leave then...” said Reinhardt, glancing off, “I wouldn’t like to impose on Fareeha...”
“She’s still on the Quezon mission, remember?” Ana shifted her head against him, “Just... stay. I like this.”
“Mm,” he grunted in response and stared at her as she not-quite-slept on his chest. A few sprigs of gray had found their way into her sharp brows and thick eyelashes, like quartz crystals in obsidian. He wondered about all those years wandering, surviving in the margins--he had done the same, but he had always played it off with a literally Quixotic sense of humor--he was just an old knight wandering, that was all--but for her...
He didn’t complete the thought as he traced a finger down the little rivulets of her braid. All those years alone. All those years heartbroken. All those years watching Overwatch collapse and burn. All those years hungry---
His stomach rumbled and Ana lazily opened one eye at him.
“Let me make you breakfast,” said Reinhardt.
“For me or for you?” said Ana.
“For both of us. Over easy with the crispy edges, yes?”
Ana smiled. “You remembered. And too much--”
“Too much black pepper,” said Reinhardt, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone.
“I don’t deserve you,” Ana said with a chuckle, brushing a hand down his chest.
“Deserve?” said Reinhardt, “There is no ‘Deserve’ in this, Lady Amari.”
Ana snorted. “Don’t call me that--!” she said, brushing her hair out of her face.
“There is only the demands of chivalry, and the demands are over-easy eggs with crispy edges and too much black pepper,” said Reinhardt, stroking a hand on the other side of Ana’s face.
“You’re ridiculous,” said Ana.
“I know,” said Reinhardt. He pushed himself up against the pillows with a grunt as Ana rolled off of him. He rolled the shoulder he had been bracing himself with the night before, and managed to get himself out of bed with a grunt. He stooped to kiss her on the side of the head before standing up and walking out.
“Too much black pepper,” he said with a finger gun to Ana as he walked out of the room.
“Too much black pepper,” said Ana with a wry grin, watching the scars on his back and armor-sculpted ass shift as he walked out of the room. Ana exhaled with a smile and propped herself up against the pillows, interlacing her fingers behind her head with contentment as she watched the morning light stretch across the ceiling. She closed her eyes, a smile on her face. A half-crazy part of her regretted not making contact with him when it was just her and Jack but... it was different. Reinhardt was different. The terrible tangle of her and Jack and Gabriel... she couldn’t bring him into that in good conscience. She couldn’t ask him to turn his hammer against one of the very people they fought the Omnic Crisis with... but if he understood now, there didn’t seem to be any reason he wouldn’t understand a few months ago. Jack probably wouldn’t like it in terms of logistics, but it would have felt good to have someone who seemed to have a real moral compass on the team--
Ana’s train of thought was interrupted but an earsplitting screech that activated every furious maternal instinct in her. In less than a second she was on her feet and had a bedsheet wrapped around herself and was violently opening the drawer of her bedside table to seize her sidearm before her brain managed to apply the instinct of “Fareeha screamed” to the implications of “Fareeha’s here.”
“REINHARDT!?” Ana heard Pharah through the walls and she swallowed hard.
“Oh! Fareeha! So good to see you! We thought you were still in the Philippines!” Reinhardt started awkwardly and Ana slapped a hand to her forehead.
“The mission ended early--WHY ARE YOU NAKED!?” Pharah squawked.
“I’m... making eggs?” Reinhardt stammered and Ana breathed a weary sigh. Oh Reinhardt you beautiful, beautiful idiot.
There were heavy footsteps and then the door to the bedroom swung open.
“...Fareeha came home early,” said Reinhardt, looking around the floor for his pants.
“Really? I had no idea,” said Ana, still wrapped in the bedsheet with her sidearm.
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