#a line in the sand

[icy-watch]

RIP you two. You will never be as cool as Kapau and Chope.

[renegadesstuff]

NOT THEM BREAKING UP IN A PARKING GARAGE 💔

[electricshoebox]

Sequel to: A Line in the Sand, it will make more sense to read that first.

Pairing: Deacon/MacCready, Minor/Background Preston/M!Sole Survivor Chapter Summary: Deacon and MacCready face the last night before the jump. In the morning, things don't quite go according to plan. Fic Summary: Deacon’s just like any other spy trying to have it all: juggling multiple identities, on thin ice with his boss, spreading himself too thin, and trying to help save the world. Perfect time to be figuring how to be in a relationship, too. As the Institute’s shadow grows ever longer, Deacon tries to balance his life, his work, and his love, and figure out how to keep it all together. Chapter Warnings: A spicy moment that might require caution (see beginning note for details), and brief nausea Noteworthy Tags: Established Relationship, Relationship Issues, Trust Issues, PTSD, Angst and Humor, Blood and Gore, Angst with a Happy Ending

I was absolutely determined to get this chapter done before the year ended. Please, please forgive the wait.

While not on purpose, this happily coincides with the birthday of the amazing @bardic-inspo, so happy birthday! Hope this is a nice birthday bonus.

[densi-mber]

A/N: Takes place between the fight and plane scenes in “A Line in the Sand”.

***

I’d Change it All

“What you’re saying to me is that if I don’t leave my job, you are leaving me.”

“That’s not fair and that’s not what I said.”

“That’s exactly what you said to me!”

He shouldn’t have said anything. He should have waited until the case was over, when they weren’t so stressed, when Mosley wasn’t set on destroying everything in her path to get her son back.

There were so many things he should have done differently.

Deeks pulls into the driveway, turning off the ignition, and resists the urge to smash his fist through the driver’s window. After he’d been summarily escorted from NCIS premises, he’d been too shocked to do anything other than go home.

His shock has settled into regret, and anger. Anger at himself. And Kensi. He can’t believe that she thinks so little of him and didn’t give him a chance to explain himself.

If he’d only had a few more minutes before Mosley had him forcibly removed, he could have reasoned with her. Could’ve explained that he never truly meant to give Kensi an ultimatum. He could have straightened things out.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference.

He drags himself inside, needing to move, but not sure what to do. If he goes anywhere near NCIS property, he wouldn’t put it above Mosley to have him arrested.

As he walks in the living room, Deeks’ eye catches on one of their engagement pictures. He’s holding Kensi in his arms, and they’re both grinning as they stare into one another’s eyes. His breath hitches, and he feels himself begin to spiral at the reality that he may be losing all of this. He might have already lost it, and a wave of grief hits him.

With a shaking hand, he grabs his phone, and taps out a text, asking Kensi to call him. It appears underneath her last message to him, something about grabbing takeout if they got the chance. He paces around the house, straightening random items to keep his mind from completely derailing.

When half an hours passes without a response, he dials Kensi’s number. It immediately goes to voicemail, and he pinches the bridge of his noise, and he inhales shallowing. “Hey Kens, I know you don’t want to hear from me right now, but I can’t leave things like this. Not if you’re going to Mexico. Please—“ he clears his throat. “Please call me back.”

Closing his eyes, he sinks to the floor.

***

Deeks is still awake when the sun rises the next morning. Kensi hadn’t responded to his call or any of his texts. In the light of day, his anger and disbelief has settled into a sort of resignation.

Even if Kensi and he are over, there’s no way he’s letting her go to Mexico without him.

Grabbing his phone again, he calls Bates’ direct line.

“Sir, I need a favor,” he says.

At least he’ll see Kensi one more time.

[soulinkpoetry]

If at childhood you had to trade your authenticity in order to receive love, you never learned how to set boundaries for yourself.

You must learn when to draw the line in the sand if you have self respect.

.

.

[bardic-inspo]

1, 14, and 50 for the fic writer asks!!!

Thank you lovely!! 💜

[Fic Writer Asks]

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

Right now, Midnight Chimes is my only BG3 fic (hoping to change that very soon!) But honestly, its not a bad intro to my writing. It's an Astarion x Cursed Tav fic where the actual slow burn is between my Tav (Naomi) and the unfolding reveal of her curse/circumstances. Tav gets her own subplot, and the focus is on her/Astarion's subplots and less on the main BG3 plot (although that's sure there, too). It deals with a lot of themes I like exploring in my other work (grief, recovery, survival) with a more foreboding/haunted vibe that I've always wanted to toy with but haven't really in the past. Here's the summary/link:

[AO3 LINK]

For Fallout fic, I would say No Rest for the Wicked. It's technically set post-game, but doesn't really spoil the game itself. Featuring pining for old friends that aren't (yet) lovers, the seeds of a future OT3 (Deacon x MacCready x F! SoSu), domesticity, and the ache of just deep set emotional wounds that aren't healed yet. Angsty but hopeful, which is par for the course in most of my Fallout writing. Summary below.

[AO3 LINK]

Deacon gets it, he thinks. MacCready and Natasha are in love with each other. A kind of crazy, end-of-the-world, burn down bridges sort of in love with each other. And they’d be fine enough on their own without him. Right? “So, let me get this straight,” Deacon asks him. “You’re begging me to sleep with your girlfriend?”

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

I would read absolutely anything by @electricshoebox. Riss does not miss and I would follow her into the abyss (heh, rhymes). Her writing is cozy to me like a nice warm blanket even when it's like. Angsty and heartwrenching. I just wanna wrap up in it and when I do, all is good.

Honestly, there's not much I wouldn't try at least once, even if it's only out of morbid curiosity. I might never go back to it again, but hey, now I know.

50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!

Oh no, I have no idea what to talk about here! Haha. Um.

How about the fic that got me through the pandemic: @electricshoebox's beautiful Enemies to Lovers Slow Burn (featuring Deacon and MacCready from Fallout 4): A Line in the Sand. I don't have adequate words for how amazing this fic is, so I'm just going to drop the AO3 summary/link below, but you'll probably see me absolutely wailing (not always coherently) in Riss' comments if you take a gander down there. I'll never be normal about it ever.

[READ ON AO3]

[ejzah]

I was just thinking of “A Line in the Sand”, and you just know that Deeks didn’t sleep the whole night after his and Kensi’s argument. He probably paced the whole house. Started a thousand different texts to Kensi, but none of them seemed right. Sometimes a small flare of anger getting in the way. Or grief, for everything they were supposed to share. Then, he moved on to figuring out a way to join the rest of the team. He was still angry, still hurt, still completely devastated and broken, but he’d be damned if those few moments in that parking garage were the last he spent with Kensi.

[mae-peachie]

ALITS memes ft real texts sent to my best friend who recommended the fic at the time of reading

clearly I express my love best through silly goofy posting

( @electricshoebox sorry for the tag- just felt like I probably should LOL)

[glenncoco4]

Just realized that even though it’s not the exact episode count Densi’s baby/possibly quitting love fest in the penultimate episode will have happened 5 years (well 4 years and 359 days) after Densi baby/quitting epic fight in season 9 penultimate episode.

[harttiklr]

Jaime Ray Newman and Jon Bernthal have worked together four, yes FOUR times. How lucky is she?

The first was on stage at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, A Line in the Sand (2008), Eastwick (2009), Punisher (2017 - 2019)

@donald4spiderman thought you’d enjoy the info post. 😊

[serenityfails]

That book you made Electric shoebox with Macready and a bunch of other fliers on the front looks incredible!!

I was wondering how you managed to create and bind that book?

Thank you!! I'm so glad it turned out the way I hoped it would ;~;

(Link for SPNblrites who don't also follow my roommate haha)

I didn't bind it myself, I used Lulu.com to put it all together and have it printed, but I designed the cover and formatted the pages myself using Clip Studio Paint and Google Docs. The cover's a mix of stock photos, game assets (like the comic books), and hand drawn stuff, like the MacCready wanted poster and the drawing from Duncan. Used a lot of old paper textures to give it the grungy Fallout look and then pieced it together.

The cover in raw form, without being folded over and book-shaped, looks like this:

I have all the individual parts saved as separate images, so it's just a matter of arranging them together and adding some drop shadows so they look like they're all piled on top of each other. (I had fun with the sunglasses bc I had to cut out the frames by hand and make them a separate, partially transparent layer so you could see the paper behind them... ~digital magic~)

For the inside, I designed title pages and used Railroad callsigns as section breaks, so I had to find and replace all the old section breaks by hand and add in indentations for every paragraph (i figured out halfway thru you DON'T have to do this by hand. whoops). And then there's some funky fiddling you have to do with Docs to get it to number the pages on alternating sides so it looks correct when printed. I figured a lot of this out by frantically googling and hoping things would work lmfao.

[icy-watch]

Thank goodness.

[parastish]

Give me back what's mine!

[electricshoebox]

wip wednesday... ish

Tagged by @bardic-inspo, thank you!

I'm late on the draw so I'll refrain from tagging but here's another snippet of Ch. 24 of the Eye of the Storm.

"Good morning. Did you locate your Geiger counter?"

Deacon glances at the synth. K3 keeps his hands level at his side, his face neutral, as he stands between Deacon and whatever might be seen of him from the cafeteria counter. It looks completely natural, but the position is too perfect. He's done this before.

Deacon wishes he had the time to ask. How many secrets have the synths inside carried on their own? Codes and gestures and clandestine meetings right under the Institute's nose? How much that even the Railroad could only guess at? Or maybe K3 is just a natural.

Deacon tries to mimic K3's formal tone as he answers, "I believe I located it in the shop."

"I'm very glad to hear it. Did you wish me to pass anything on?"

Deacon slips his hand into the pocket at his thigh. He pulls out the envelope Carrington had given him a couple weeks ago. He'd just called the contents "sleeping pills." He hadn't given Deacon much more than that, except the promise it would knock out anyone who drinks the coffee K3's about to slip it into. Deacon passes the envelope forward, keeping it carefully between them.

K3 slips it inside the chest of his jumpsuit. "Thank you. I will ensure this is received timely." He glances quickly up at the stairs behind Deacon, then to the hall on either side. In a sharp whisper, with far more emotion than before, he says, "Thank you."

Deacon's face doesn't move. He gives K3 little more than a single nod.

K3 turns away without another word.

[tripleefs]

One of my fav og sbi moments thats not in any compilation vids since it takes place over the course of a heated mexican lmanberg negotiations stream and completely off camera...

(I finally compiled it myself because I couldn't find it anywhere and for your viewing pleasure!)

Edit: keeping this up for technoblade crumbs but f wilbur soot

Bonus:

[teleportzz]

assimilationism is so wack i actually can't. like do you idiots not understand that queerphobes can't tell any of us apart and don't care to? in the eyes of conservatives, we are all faggots. kissing ass and throwing the rest of us under the bus for table scraps of liberty only creates the false image of progress if you're white, abled, neurotypical, and fall under one of the few labels they can easily understand. yet even for you, it's not real. they'll create the illusion of a good life for you in exchange for oppressing your own community members and then turn around and feed your face to the leopards.

like sorry not sorry, man, but we are all in this together whether you like and appreciate it or not. you're sharing your labels and safe spaces with neopronoun users, he/him lesbians, slur reclaimers, old label adopters, drag queens, loveless aromantics, gnc folks, and the kinksters. we've always been part of the community. it isn't our fault you don't value your own history and vehemently refuse to learn it. we still aren't going anywhere. cope.

how sweet is the blood of your queer siblings as you lick it up clean from the boots of your own oppressors? hope it tastes real fucking good