Post-ME2, spoilers ahoy. Check my profile for a link if you want to see what Dylan looks like.

After-Action Reports
1. Vanguards

It wasn't a call Dylan had been expecting to have.

Certainly not one that he expected to go well. Neither had Joker, if the cheeky, shit-eating grin he'd been wearing when he'd said the three-headed dog himself was buzzing in for a chat was any indication. Joker was probably imagining Shepard tossing the Illusive Man into the star visible from his office, hologram or not.

"Shepard; finally on the way for repairs, I see?"


The alarm going off woke Dylan instantly, scheduled wake-ups long ingrained into him. He rolled from his side to his back, one arm still pinned under Joker next to him, but he had more than enough reach to tap the holographic clock on the nightstand. It barely got a full buzz, inspiring Joker to snore louder and tense up slightly, but he ultimately didn't wake up.

That they'd fooled around twice now seemed like a milestone to Dylan, if only for how long it'd been since he'd had any actual motivation to sleep with someone more than once. Really, it was also nice having someone to wake up next to. Having glowing lines on his face made the things that let him feel human all the more important.

It came with the usual problems, though, like how to move without waking Joker up, since he wasn't at-all a morning person and didn't need to be up just yet anyway. Fortunately, Dylan had options. Tugging his arm and finding it snug under Joker's shoulder, he raised his free hand and wiggled his fingers a little, concentrating on how much of an effort he wanted to make, not intending to throw anything through the skylight on the ceiling.

The final movement was a small flick of the wrist, a short snap of the fingers to toss out a weak biotic field, just enough to lighten Joker by a few pounds so he could slip his arm out without moving him so much. That accomplished, Dylan kept moving slowly, more for his own sake now as his muscles got used to moving again. Hit feet hitting the deck were met with clothes instead of floor, but the haphazard way everything was tossed about didn't bother him.

Shaking his head, Dylan put his hands up to his face and scrubbed up and down, shoving his thumbs into his eyes and rubbing as hard as he could without hurting himself. He was starting to get used to it, the way his new eyes didn't feel quite as squishy when he did this, and a part of him couldn't be satisfied, couldn't help but think getting used to it wasn't any better than being weirded out by it. It was the last thought that crept up on him before he forced it all back. It was time to get the day started, because none of these problems would be solved if he just sat there and felt depressed about them.

So, it was back to the matter at hand, namely his and Joker's clothes scattered about one side of the bed. Normally, he liked to be something of a neat-freak, at least as much as any Marine who took military discipline seriously, but he refused to regret this particular mess. Leaning down, he tossed Joker's pants aside, finding his underwear beneath.

Dressed enough, as far as he was concerned, for his morning PT routine, Dylan spared Joker another glance. His breathing was audible, half of his face mashed into the pillow but his mouth hanging open, hair just long enough to be messed up. He was almost tempted to stay there and watch for awhile, but he needed to get going, and Joker wouldn't be up anytime soon. Even if he didn't want to waste time, being lazy so early in the day would just make him want to be lethargic for a long time to come.

Once he was up and stretching, Dylan felt better. His shoulder still bothered him even though it didn't hurt, but it was more of an annoyance than anything. He glanced down at himself, rubbing a hand to the left side of his chest, half-hoping there might be something other than plain skin there.

The grated panels that made up the floor felt good under his feet. Plodding halfway towards the fish tanks to where the floor was more open, Dylan shook his arms and legs to get the last of the stiffness out and, arms out in front, let himself fall forward onto his hands. Taking a deep breath first, he started going through pushups.

Time flew as soon as he got his head into it; it wasn't his usual routine, he needed new weights for that, but until he had the time to think about that, this was enough. He could adapt, even without equipment, to the implants that went into putting him back together and the enhancements he'd gotten since then.

He'd gone to Mordin about it because Miranda assured him the cybernetics he'd 'required' on the Lazarus table were chosen on a per-need basis; prosthetic, not additions. The ocular implants were a package-deal with the L5n. The actual enhancements, those were a somewhat different story, the heavy weave running through his muscles gave him more strength and less a chance of pulling something, but it was a double-edged sword, a crutch when Dylan wasn't in combat that he had to compensate for. It hadn't been worth thinking about when he'd been concerned with getting any and all advantages possible against the Collectors, but now...

There was only one way he could think of to compensate, and that was pushing himself harder. Pushups eventually turned into diamond-pushups and into military crunches, more per rep and more reps than his old drill instructors would've put him through. Time passed and then-some, until he could long feel the sweat dripping off his face and the burn in his muscles, not just the natural process but the muscle-weave adapting to as well, keeping up. A half-hour after that and Dylan started his cool-down, resisting the temptation to go until he would have trouble standing.

Once he'd shaved, cut himself, swore under his breath about it and finally got under the shower, Dylan found himself hitting the moment where more than just the night before came back to him; his latest, unexpected conversation with the Illusive Man, the Normandy's state of disrepair, how the Collectors had been re-purposing humans, Harbinger's threats...he let his head roll down and hit the wall too hard, but he didn't feel it, he just concentrated on the water hitting his neck and running down his back, squeezing his eyes closed and fumbling for the temperature control.

That the water stopped getting hotter just short of scalding annoyed him. Fuck safety protocols, if he wanted to boil himself alive in his own shower...he realized he would probably have to convince EDI to make it happen, and Dylan was still fairly sure she didn't want to kill them all.

Finally done, Dylan nabbed a towel from its hanger on the wall, threw it around his waist, and realized instantly upon opening the door that Joker had woken up in the time he'd been in there.

"Zoom, zoom! 'I am the Vanguard of your destruction!' Oh yeah, well, here's a chunk of iron accelerated to near-relativistic speeds! 'Oh no, I'm dead!'"

Joker being Joker, Dylan wasn't surprised to find him doing something silly. Sitting around being bored wasn't really Joker's style, so Dylan was nothing if not a little entertained by the sight of Joker sitting at the desk, back to him, wearing nothing but pants and playing with the models Dylan had made a habit of building lately to kill time while they traveled to the ass-ends of the relay network, Sovereign in one hand, and the original Normandy in the other.

Leaning on the bathroom door's frame, one hand catching his towel when he felt it coming loose, Dylan said, "Joker, what are you doing?"

"Just killing some time while I wait for the shower," Joker shrugged. Beginning the process of putting the models back in the display case, a somewhat complicated task considering the way the pegs were laid out and how they balanced, he paused after getting Sovereign back on its perch to turn and say, "I figured it was either this or play with your hamster. Or dig through your holovid collection trying to find something interesting. Not that any of it is. I, uh...I can use it, right? I'd rather not head for the crew showers right from here, gossip's silly enough already."

Smiling, Dylan nodded and shoved off from his spot against the doorframe. He started wondering why he was bothering with the towel, it wasn't like Joker hadn't seen him naked even before they'd started sleeping together; he hadn't always had his own shower, certainly not on the SR-1. Deciding it wasn't worth contemplating, he took a step forward and pulled open one of the desk drawers next to Joker, retrieving an uninteresting bottle.

"What's wrong with my collection," Dylan asked he turned to the clear cage on the shelf, tapping on the side with the tip of a finger. When the hamster trotted out from its little house to squeak and stare at Dylan through the side of its cage, he unscrewed the bottle's cap and held it over the top, tapping it so some of the food pellets spilled out. As he moved to the locker to dig out a fresh set of clothes, he made a menta note to pick up some lettuce the next time they restocked.

"Too boring," Joker insisted. "Is everything you own all old-school pre-mass-effect human-versus-human war flicks or boring guys talking in monotone about every war ever? And that one Gunnery Chief from the early two-thousands, what a ham. Want me to swab your implant out?"

"Gunnery Sergeant," Dylan corrected him. Pants on, he sat down on the bed and pulled his boots from the discarded clothes. "They called them Gunnery Sergeants back then. Yeah, sure." Satisfied with getting his pants on for now, Dylan sat down on the side of the bed. He reached for the nightstand, finding a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the drawer and handed it to Joker with a cloth. "Easier than doing it myself."

Joker sat on the edge of the bed and shuffled back, carefully maneuvering his legs with efficiency he'd taught himself over the years. It was cumbersome, but it didn't take him long to settle behind Dylan.

For his part, Dylan reached both hands to the back of his head, fingers sliding down over his biotic amp, playing over it until the latch clicked and he could slide it out. It was something he did with care, his hands were large, fingers thick, and the amp almost looked like a small egg once it was out of the implant and in his palm.

For all the fuss, the visible part of his L5n didn't seem complicated without the little off-white bulb plugged in, just a small hole, large enough that Joker didn't need a Q-tip to get in. Up-close it looked like something out of an old sci-fi vid, but it was simple, nondescript. He held the cloth to the opened top of the bottle and upturned it once, stopping quickly, folding it over once before he traced the edge of the port with the damp part, repeating the process on the inside edges before poking around the corners and gently going over the contacts.

Far from concerned that someone was poking a finger literally inside his skull, Dylan breathed deeply, eyes closed, and relaxed. He balanced himself with his arms on his knees, his amp held in both hands while Joker worked.

Once he finished, Joker put the cloth down next to him and put the cap back on the bottle. Satisfied despite not being able to see any difference with his eyes, he reached around Dylan's waist; once it was handed to him, he set to putting the amp back with just as much care.

Fitting it to the slot, Joker put his thumbs on the bottom and pushed gently, his fingers anchored on the sides of Dylan's neck, pressed enough to turn the skin underneath white. Soon enough, the job was done, and Dylan's amp clicked into place.

Dylan let out a breath he didn't realize he'd started to hold. Maybe it was the L5n, but he could swear he felt a rush that wasn't there in the past, just a slight sensation tingling its way through his nerves, down to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his toes every time he put his amp back in.

Satisfied, Joker let his hands rest on Dylan's shoulders. He pulled, helping himself lean forward, and hugged him around the arms, Dylan's hand almost weightless on his kneecap, rubbing back and forth.

Once it was time to move on, Dylan stood up and turned, offering Joker a hand. "Thanks."

"Anytime." Finally heading for the shower, Joker held the door open long enough to turn back and resume their earlier conversation, just to get the last word in. "You know, Gunnery Chief's today know a real gun has a mass-effect field generator."

Chuckling and shaking his head slightly, Dylan let Joker retreat to his shower as he finished getting dressed. Finally taking the time to clean up their clutter, as it were, he set Joker's clothes out on the bed and stowed his day-old uniform.

Small as it was, starting the day off right made coming down from the stress of the mission much easier.