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“Achoo!” Backpedaling from the force of his sneeze, Lúcio tripped and knocked over a crate of expired rations. The packages of years-old dried lunch meals spilled onto the floor into a messy pile and sent up yet another cloud of dust rising up.
“Gesundheit! Perhaps we should have brought all of these outside before opening them, ja? There is much more dust in here than I last remember.” Reinhardt helped the younger man steady himself back onto his feet.
“Ist’salright! We jhust hab one more to g—choo! I’m fhine!” Lúcio wiped at his watering eyes but managed to give the older man a thumbs up and a wide smile regardless.
Reinhardt cracked open the lid of the last crate with the help of a crowbar. “Ah, let us see what is in—mein Gott!”
“Whadt?” Standing on the tip of his toes, Lúcio peeked over the side of the crate and wrinkled his nose at the dust and odd smells coming out of it. “Isd thad real paper? I thougdt we all switdched to holos a long thime ago?”
“Ahah! I remember these!” With a booming laugh and a smile that stretched clear across his face, Reinhardt sifted through a few of the many rolled up sheets of laminated posters in the crate and pulled one out. He unrolled it and then grinned as he turned it around to show Lúcio.
With flashy and stylized font spelling We want YOU to join Overwatch! across the top, the poster depicted Lena Oxton, a handful of years younger, poised cheekily in a skin-tight neon orange and yellow swimsuit and flashing a grin that showed all of her pearly white teeth against a tropical beach backdrop. Posed similarly next to her was Angela Ziegler in a white and gold bikini while holding a margarita glass up to her glossy lips.
“Are they not absolutely beautiful in this?! I remember that the photographer almost quit because Lena tried to sneak away in-between camera shootings to swim!”
“I, uh… yes?” Lúcio squeaked and stared at the poster, the tips of his ears flushing visibly.
“And this one!” Reinhardt crowed in delight and handed over the poster to Lúcio and pulled out another one out of the crate.
He unrolled it, revealing a beach-themed poster splashed with Join Overwatch today and see the world! and Jack Morrison in a pair of American flag swim shorts smiling brilliantly off to the side with a custom-made Super Soaker underneath one arm and his other slung over Gabriel Reyes’ shoulder. Dressed in a pair of swim shorts that had flaming red chili peppers on it, a straw hat, and holding onto a surfboard, Reyes’ lopsided grin was uncharacteristically loose and was indirectly aimed at Morrison. In the far background was Torbjörn, in a red Hawaiian shirt and sandals, sulking underneath a beach umbrella and practically a shining beacon from the amount of sunscreen plastered on him. Lounging in a chair next to the short Swedish man was Ana Amari, dressed in a loose and flowy beach-appropriate clothing, practical sunglasses, and holding onto a coconut drink decked out with a paper umbrella as she watched her young daughter build up a sandcastle in front of her.
“Whoah! I used to have that back… when I still lived with my mom.” Lúcio’s flush spread further, this time darkening his cheeks. He took the poster from Reinhardt and hugged it to his chest. “Reinhardt? Do you think I can keep these?”
“Ach, I do not think anyone will mind after all of this time.” Reinhardt’s smile grew larger when he pulled out another poster from the crate and unrolled it with a wistful sigh. “Ah, my hair was amazing back then! I cannot believe how young I look in this!”
“Really— ai meu Deus!” Lúcio took one look at the poster and then quickly turned away, his entire face red. “Y—you look very…”
“Handsome, I know! I was hardly a day older than fifty-two when this had been taken!” Reinhardt proudly held up the poster and copied the pose that his decade-younger self had immortalized onto the laminated paper.
The poster, accompanied at the top by blocky script spelling out Join Overwatch and make a DIFFERENCE!, depicted a beaming Reinhardt with his prematurely grayed hair slicked back and dressed only in a tight black speedo. His wet, muscular, and gloriously furred chest was exposed to anyone with working eyes, and he was surrounded by a handful of much younger and scantily clad men and women that had at least one hand on some part of Reinhardt.
“Now ain’t that a sight. I remember back in the day having that poster up in my old dorm just to annoy my roommate.” A low whistle from the doorway to the storage room interrupted Reinhardt’s flexing and Lúcio’s stammering. McCree sauntered into the room, his cigar held loosely between prosthetic fingers.
“Jesse! Perhaps I can find yours in here. I remember you did one of these promotions as well!” Reinhardt handed his poster over to Lúcio and dove back into rummaging through the crate.
“Now hold on a moment—”
“Ah, here it is!”
Lúcio squeaked and hid his entirely red face behind the pile of posters he was holding.
“Oh lord, I thought I burned all of ‘em.”
“Nonsense! You look positively dashing with your little serape and cowboy hat and inflatable horse-head water tube—“
“Old man, gimmie that!”
“Nein! I think I shall keep this one!”
“Reinhardt! Give m—”
“Lúcio, I believe we have finished our task! Let us leave before your allergies worsen!”
“Aye aye!”
“YOU DANG OLD MAN, GET BACK HERE—”