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fangirl-dot-com · 1 month

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🌑Track 3 - Big Reputations

guys, I was so proud of this chapter and then the instagram post. I always try to make them look cohesive and that the pictures were taken all together - and I think I was able to do that really well this time!

TAG LIST IS CLOSED

Oscar huffed while looking at the notification from the WhatsApp. Apparently two new numbers had been added in the past hour. However, no one has said anything. He opened the app and began to type, before he pressed the delete button.

What was he supposed to say?

Liam and Theo had been added weeks ago. The atmosphere of the group chat was a bit lighter with the two new additions. Despite what he had said in an interview a couple of months ago, the group chat did have a random meme or quirky text thrown around from time to time. The two new drivers had made themselves known immediately. Yet, these two “drivers” had yet to say anything.

Oscar’s eyebrows scrunched at the two unknowns invading the safe space. His apartment was quite empty. Lily wasn’t able to join him for the last few days of break. He was technically supposed to be packing to head to Bahrain in the morning, but he couldn’t find the want or energy to actually start.

He would have called Lando, but the Briton was already busy with Quadrant things. He thought about texting Logan, but immediately shut the idea down. The American had probably gotten a new number, since Oscar’s messages weren’t even delivered. And the sight of Logan’s Instagram being deactivated also meant that he didn’t want to be found in the first place.

Oscar’s heart clenched weirdly at the thought. How had they gone from being best friends to not even talking anymore.

To Oscar, it hurt. The Aussie was trying to justify his own acts against the American. If Logan had been just a bit more extroverted, or had done a better job at driving, or had actually tried to reach out, then maybe Oscar wouldn’t have distanced himself.

But then again, he had multiple unanswered texts and missed calls from Logan that he ignored.

Another notification had him glancing back down at his phone.

This time, George had taken the initiative to welcome to two, still unknown, rookies. The “hi, welcome to the grid” text was a standard for everyone who joined. His fingers itched to also welcome them, but he stopped himself and looked closer at the two contacts.

Racer #2 and Racer #95.

Oscar sighed at the sight of the familiar number. He guessed that someone had been wanting to take that number since Logan was no longer racing.

However, he just wondered who they were and why they didn’t use their real names. The answer came from the #95.

“What?” Oscar whispered to himself as he read over the text. Lamborghini didn’t want them using their names until they showed up at testing. How ridiculous it was in Oscar’s mind. He watched as Liam tried to make conversation with #95, asking if their number was a nod to the famous Cars movie.

Liam didn’t get a reply.

The Aussie had a bad gut feeling. Maybe this was all a joke. They could try to be civil, and maybe freaking answer? Oscar did not like the vibes he was getting from the two.

He didn’t even know if they were both males.

He had heard rumors that Lamborghini was looking at a possible female candidate. But that what they were supposed to be: just rumors. He cleared the app and opened the messages icon on his iPhone. George’s contact is what he pressed and immediately opened a call.

His phone rang for a moment before the Briton picked up.

“Hello mate,” George’s voice sounded from the phone.

“Hi George. I just wanted to ask about the two new numbers.”

“Ah the new drivers for Lamborghini?”

Oscar nodded before he realized that George was not on Facetime. “Yes.”

George sighed. “From what I got, they’re legit drivers. However, I got an email directly from Michael saying that Tonino wanted his drivers’ identities to not be compromised before testing.”

“Ah, well, I just didn’t want to say anything to them before I knew they were legitimate. It’s kind of weird.”

“I understand. It’s weird to see that someone else is going to use Logan’s old number.”

Oscar could hear, what was it, a touch of sadness in George’s voice? Why would he be sad?

“I meant that it’s weird that they don’t want their names to be known. I mean, it’s just a number George, I’m not upset about that.”

The Mercedes driver made noise.

“But it’s Logan’s number.”

Oscar rolled his eyes. “Well, if Logan wanted to keep it, he should have been a better driver.”

The line went silent, and Oscar really thought that George might have hung up. A quick glance to the screen told him otherwise.

“You don’t truly believe that, do you? Logan tried to hard.”

Oscar bit out, “Well, it wasn’t enough. He should have done better, been better. Maybe then I could still stand him. Thanks for your help George.”

With that, the Aussie hung up before George could even answer. He was furious. If Logan truly wanted to stay in F1, he should have done better and that was that. No need to be butthurt over someone who wasn’t going to be in his life anymore.

On the other side of London, George was still looking at his phone screen after Oscar hung up. But, the Briton was staring at the Driver #2’s WhatsApp number. His eyebrows furrowed as he tried to memorize the digits.

“What are you staring at?” Lewis sounded as he sat on George’s couch.

Oh, George kind of forgot that he was there.

The tall Briton didn’t answer as he opened his own messaging app and went directly to Logan’s new contact. The last message had been read but went unanswered. And that was almost a month ago.

But, as he stared at the info tab and the number he had down for Logan and then at the number for Driver #2, the digits matched up.

George’s eyes widened before he looked up at Lewis and smirked.

“How do you feel about the two new drivers?”

Lewis shrugged. “A bit stand-off-ish. But I understand, they were only added today.”

The brunet took a seat across from his older teammate and faux sighed.

“I’m just worried that the rookies are going to not be included. Ya know, like what happened with Logan.”

Lewis put a hand on George’s shoulder.

The man looked at him with big brown eyes. “It wasn’t your fault George. Williams had this planned for a long time. There was nothing you could do.”

George stood up immediately and threw his hands.

“But I could have been a better friend. He was struggling Lewis and no one did anything. Oscar was too busy making eye-babies with Lando to notice that his friend was falling. Alex was being an asshole. And no one else took the time to even get to know him, and now he’s gone.”

On the inside, George was congratulating himself on the performance that he was putting on. Of course he knew that driver #2 was Logan. And, he was guessing that driver #95 was possible that best friend that Logan spoke so highly of, the female ex-driver or Arrow.

Lewis stayed seated. “I know you’re upset George, but it won’t change anything in the past. All we can focus on is the future. I know for one that I will do my best to get to know the rookies so we don’t have another issue like last year. I know you’re not focusing on the chat but it looks like Max and Charles have been able to get a few answers out of them.”

George looked back down at his phone to see multiple notifications from WhatsApp. It looks like Lewis was telling the truth.

Multiple messages had been exchanged between the two rivals and the unknown numbers, well, unknown to everyone but him. George smirked.

“Looks like the rivals can get along.”

Lewis snorted. “I guess they also want to try to be a bit more welcoming. We can all learn from our mistakes last season.”

The shorter Briton looked down, slightly getting emotional. Lewis knew first-hand how detrimental Formula 1 was to childhood best friends. His own heart still hurt to see Nico on the weekends that he was there. He felt guilty that he let Brocedes happen once again with Logan and Oscar.

For a short time, George had been irate with Lewis about the switch to Ferrari. But now, seeing what happened with Logan last season, George didn’t want to miss precious moments with his friend.

George never responded to what Lewis said. He only sat down again, across from the couch, and sent a simple text to Logan.

Back in Milan, you and Logan were cackling over messing with the other drivers. You could tell that no one knew what to do with the secrecy of identities. But now that you were in a banter with Charles over ice cream flavors and Logan was having a deep conversation about air pollution with Max, the group chat seemed a little less daunting.

A ping from Logan’s phone had the two of you looking at it. Logan hadn’t expected a text from George after leaving him on read months ago. But now, the new messaged seemed to stare back at them.

All the message said was “Glad to see you back. Let me know when you get to Bahrain for testing.”

Logan winced as he forgot he had the same number for both iMessages and WhatsApp. You could definitely tell that he was spiraling. You placed a hand on his arm.

“Hey, Michael isn’t going to be upset. He knows that you and George are friends.”

A sigh of relief escaped his lips.

“I’m just so scared of messing up again.”

You rolled your eyes. “Logan, you didn’t mess up the first time. It wasn’t your fault.”

Your body leaned back, expecting Logan to retaliate. Except, the American only smiled at you, taking in your words.

“You’re right.”

You pushed his shoulder. “Like always.”

Instagram was pulled up on your phone. You refreshed the page to show that Lamborghini had posted something about the two of you. Your fingers quickly scrolled through the comments while you smirked at all the fan theories.

You pipped up as Logan sipped on a smoothie.

“Looks like everyone is talking about us.”

The man across from you smirked back. “But they don’t even know it’s us. I kind of like it. No one knows and can’t say anything. They just know that something big is happening. Also, George wants to meet up when we get to Bahrain.”

“You texted him back?” You never looked up from your phone, now scrolling through twitter.

“Yeah. George was actually the only one that was nice to me on a regular basis. I miss him.”

“Sounds like fun. I’m glad you had George last season. Are we going to play paddle?”

The typing sounds came from Logan’s phone as he texted George. A ping signaled that he answered.

“Yeah. Looks like Lewis, Max, and Charles might join.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like peculiar bunch?”

Logan shrugged. “I mean, Lewis is going to be Charles’s teammate next year. And then anywhere Charles goes, Max isn’t too behind.”

“Makes sense. Kind of like us?”

Logan sent you a lopsided smile. “Like us, except we aren’t childhood rivals.”

“Of course. Only because we never karted together.”

A sigh left Logan’s lips. He always wished you could have karted with him, but you were off in the Italian divisions while Logan stuck in the British divisions. However, the summers the two of you spent together in Florida would always trump the times apart.

Logan got lost in thought before he spoke again.

“Do you even know how to play paddle?”

A snort left your lips. “Of course. Maybe I’ll bring the one you sent me with your face on it.”

Red flushed Logan’s face. “Please don’t.”

“What would you do about it Mr. Sargeant?”

Logan just picks up one of the decorative pillows from the couch and chucks it at your head. You do not have time to react and it ends up hitting you square in the face. Your mouth lets out a squawk before you pick the pillow back up. You rise from the plush chair and stalk toward Logan, who has put his hands up to deter you.

“Please have mercy! I didn’t mean it.”

You stopped for a bit, giving Logan some false hope and enough time for him to put his hands down before you swing the pillow, hitting the side of his head. Logan splutters before reaching out and pulling you down on top of him.

The two of you tussle for a bit before Marissa walks into the room. She chuckles as she watched the two of you roll on the floor, both tugging on the pillow.

“I don’t even want to ask.”

The sound of her voice makes the two of you freeze. Your heads slowly turn toward her, before the two of you scramble to get up. You mock dust yourself off as Logan awkwardly chuckles.

Marissa cocks an eyebrow. “If the two of you are done, it’s time for the suit and helmet promo pictures along with some circuit testing.”

You and Logan have giant grins on your face as the two of you follow her out. Logan elbows you before walking quickly to Marissa’s side. You gawk at him before shaking your head.

Logan was going to be the death of you. But you’d let him.

At the test track, you were smiling behind your helmet as you watched Logan go lap after lap. The helmet was just a standard black one with multiple different sponsor logos on it, as well as the Lambo one being the biggest. You and Logan had worn them while walking into the circuit, just in case there were any cameras or paparazzi around. The last thing you wanted was to be outed before testing.

You watched as Logan finally pulled in, the car looking fast.

Logan’s hands automatically went to take his helmet off as a force of habit, but he quickly put them down. Like you, he also didn’t want to outed.

Marissa beckoned the two of you over.

“All right, that looks good for Logan. Y/n you’ll run 15 laps and then you’re done for today. I’ve already talked to Michael and he’s fine with the two of you playing paddle. He’s rented out a building for the day, just in case, but he wants the two of you to have fun. The flight you need to catch is early at 5 am. Please be on time.”

As you and Logan were running to the gate the next morning, you should have headed Marissa’s warnings a bit more. The two of you were huffing and puffing by the time you got to the lounge, with only 15 minutes to spare. Many older, fancy-looking people gave you weird looks. You tried to smile at them, but it came out as more as a grimace.

You were able to catch a few hours of sleep while Logan went over some more data. He was always the one to go over things like that, trying to find the sweet spot of the car. Logan had done the same at Williams, but it rarely made a difference. He had just found the perfect balance of the car in Austin last year, and then they made him switch with Alex. And then he didn’t even get his car back. The rebuilt chassis was terrible.

Logan smiled to himself as he felt the familiar weight of your head on his shoulder. He barely turned and kissed the top of your head. A blush ran through his face as you leaned more into him, trying to snuggle closer.

Benny was watching with a small smile as he saw Logan place his head on top of yours. The older man had sworn that he wouldn’t be returning. But the moment Michael had reached out with an offer than he couldn’t refuse, he accepted it without hesitation. He would do anything for Logan. His wife was also very understanding and was thankful for the compensation that Lamborghini was going to provide for her family. Logan was like their eldest son, and they couldn’t, wouldn’t, let him down again.

You were still pretty tired on the way to the hotel, but were now buzzing with energy as Logan drove you to the paddle courts. He was driving one of the company’s Lamborghini Urus since your Aventador and his Huracan hadn’t been able to be shipped in time. They were done and ready to be driven when they shipped them to Jeddah.

Logan had given you the DJ privileges for this ride, but he claimed it on the way back. You were going through his phone, letting George know that the two of you would be the first to arrive. He texted back that him, Lewis, Max, and Charles would all arrive together. You thumbed up the text, after telling him to give him Logan’s last name at the counter so that they could be let in.

George was smirking in the Mercedes that Lewis was currently driving. Charles and Max were banned to the back seat (yet they claimed they wanted to be back there because they couldn’t afford to be caught riding in a Mercedes).

Once they parked, he turned his body to face the group.

“Now, I’m going to give the front a last name so that we can get in, but do not overreact, ok?”

The lanky-Briton didn’t wait for an answer before he got out of the car. He could feel the presence of the three drivers and held the door open. The lady at the front stared at them weirdly. George watched as she opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.

“We’re a part of the group that’s playing today.”

“Name please?”

The lady typed something on her computer.

George smiled. “Sargeant.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw heads whip toward him, but he decided to ignore the shocked looks as well.

Typing resumed as he tapped the desk, a bit impatient to see his friend after a while. A grin grew on her face as she finally looked up at him.

“Court 3. Extra paddles are in the small boxes if you don’t have any. Enjoy your time.”

George took the initiative and led the group around the corner. Lewis tugged on his sleeve, but he didn’t stop, not when he heard the familiar laugh.

The door squeaked as he opened it, letting the figure in the room notice the arrival of the group of four. George’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Logan.

To him, the American had filled out a lot. He often looked too skinny during race weekends, especially after Benny left. The Briton wanted to ask him about his nutrition but had always been nervous to. He was also more tan that he had been. His hair looked fluffy and there were no more purple eyebags under his eyes. Overall, he just looked so much better than end of the 2023 season Logan. Where had the sick child gone and who was this man in front of George? The brunet thought for a moment that he had been played, until Logan started walking toward him.

“Mate, are you going to ogle or are you going to say something?” Logan asked as he stepped toward George, arm stretched out.

He clasped George’s hand and pulled him into a hug. Once the bro-moment was done, George still kept looking at Logan.

“You look good mate.”

Logan’s head leaned back as he laughed.

“Thanks.”

It was then he noticed that the other three drivers had yet to move from the door. Their eyes were still wide and looking at the duo. Logan smirked as he saw you sneak up behind them.

“Hi guys!” you semi-yelled, making them jump. Your giggle sounded in the big court. That was the icebreaker that they needed as they finally walked into the room. You immediately stood next to Logan as he introduced you.

You rolled your eyes and elbowed Logan. “I know their names. We had good conversations about how chocolate is the best ice cream flavor. Isn’t that right Charles?”

Charles had a pout on his lips. “I said no such thing. I believe we agreed that vanilla was the best non?”

You rolled your eyes. “Sure.”

Max raised his hand. “You are both wrong. The best flavor is clearly mint chocolate chip.”

You all just deadpanned at him.

“It’s true.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Logan, you don’t have an opinion when your favorite is literally the Superman flavor.”

“Shut up Y/n.”

“Are we going to play paddle now?”

“Yes Lewis, we’ll play paddle.”

It was quiet for a moment until you yelled, “I call Charles as a teammate.”

Logan and Max whipped toward you.

“That’s just unfair.”

“I’m leading, he pushed me, I pushed him back, and after, he pushed me off the track. It’s just unfair.”

Logan followed your lead. “Charles, what happened with Max?”

“Nothing just an inchident on the race.”

“That’s it. Lewis is my teammate.”

“Back off Leclerc. You have him for next year, he’s mine.”

“What if I wanted Lewis?”

“Max, you win every race. You can lose at paddle.”

“Ok, but I still get Charles right?”

georgerussell63 has posted

tagged: charles_leclerc, maxverstappen1, lewishamilton, venus2, and phoenix95

georgerussell63 going into the season strong 💪 (max lost)

liked by phoenix&venus, y/n.nation, venus2, and 3,204,184 others

russellgeorge oh we are so back (I'm delusional)

mercganggang WRITE IT DOWN WRITE IT DOWN

lambof1 hold on - GEORGE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE??

lamborghini_duo we've been known 🙃

phoenix95 glad to see verstappen on his knees - I'm taking his emotional support rival tho

maxverstappen1 uh, exCUSE me 🤨 get your own emotional support rival

venus2 do I mean nothing to you?

charles_leclerc you don't like vanilla so I refuse

maxverstappen1 Charlie I like vanilla

lewishamilton this is so pitiful to watch 🤦🏾

russell63 George really said "I'm getting the band back together"

sargeantgirlie ok - I think I have everything figured out

TAG LIST: @fionaschicken @myxticmoon @cherry-piee @blueberry64857959 @glitterquadricorn @lizzypiastri @disneyprincemuke @sam-is-lost @spilled-coffee-cup @ilove-tswizzle @the-untamed-soul @allenajade-ite @starssfall @torchbearerkyle @judespoision @halfdeadsage @juniper-july19 @severewobblerlightdragon @thatgirlmj @gods-menace @ineedafictionalman @namgification @dark-night-sky-99 @samantha-chicago @2pagenumb @treehouse-mouse @fangirl125reader @megatrilss1885 @kagatinkita @itsjustkhaos @nikfigueiredo @awekbachira @vellicora @skepvids @sunrizef1 @stan-josie @fanficweasley @hiireadstuff @barcelonaloverf1life @c-losur3 @graciewrote @bruhhhhhhhhehhhhhhh @tallrock35 @ashy-kit @kat-s2 @minkyungseokie @lozzamez3 @leslieis-crying @adventuresofrose @lighttsoutlewis

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punisheddonjuan · 3 months

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How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on how to build and set up your own personal media server using Ubuntu as an operating system and Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media,, but to stream that media to your devices both locally at home, and remotely to anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. This is a tutorial about how building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, television shows and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy various legal methods like ripping your own physical media to disk, you’ll be free to completely ditch paid streaming services. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+, Crave or any other streaming service that is not named Criterion Channel (which is actually good). If you want to watch your favourite films and television shows, you’ll have your own custom service that only features things that you want to see, and where you have control over your own files and how they’re delivered to you. And for music fans out there, both Jellyfin and Plex support music streaming, meaning you can even ditch music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 (or FLAC) collections.

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards differing budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server up and running using this guide will cost you anywhere from $450 CDN/$325 USD at the entry level to $1500 CDN/$1100 USD at the high end. My own server was priced closer to the higher figure, with much of that cost being hard drives. If that seems excessive, consider for a moment, maybe you have a roommate, a close friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project provided they get a share of the bounty. This is how my server was funded. It might also be worth thinking about cost over time, how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting up a server. Additionally there's just the joy of being able to scream "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, movie deleting, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios through denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you step-by-step through installing Ubuntu as your server's operating system, configuring your storage as a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection between your server and your Windows PC, and then a little about started with Plex/Jellyfin. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I even share a custom #bash script that will make used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic and using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and had fun putting everything together, then I would encourage you to return in a year’s time, do your research and set up everything with Docker Containers.

Lastly, this is a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with various Linux distributions (mostly Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users, but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up for yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise. All you will need is a basic computer literacy (i.e. an understanding of what a filesystem and directory are, and a degree of comfort in the settings menu) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at first glance, it is only because I want to be as thorough as possible. I want you to understand exactly what it is you're doing, I don't want you to just blindly follow steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you will be much better prepared if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it shouldn't take more than a weekend to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, depending on the distribution there's close to no bloat. There are recent distributions available at this very moment that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, running Plex or Jellyfin isn’t resource intensive in 90% of use cases. All this is to say, we don’t require an expensive or powerful computer. This means that there are several options available: 1) use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using 2) buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 3) order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution being lower than the file's internal resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware. This means we should be looking for a computer with an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This specialized hardware makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software. This takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and requires much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop for a used workstation on eBay

Any Intel processor from second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) onwards has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that the cores support the H.265 HEVC codec. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors introduce support for 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors brought with them hardware AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to hardware transcode a H.265 encoded file, it will fall back to software transcoding if given a 10bit H.265 file. If you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go shopping shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 on a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CDN/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology. It was only introduced with the first generation Ryzen CPUs and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores that feature support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less of a used workstation you can pick up a Mini-PC with an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync cores. These little processors offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw. Otherwise they perform equivalent to an i5-6500, which isn't a terrible CPU. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system and it does everything up to 6th generation consoles just fine. The N100 is also a remarkably efficient chip, it sips power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CDN/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CDN/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS. A 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive, but going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the type of power adapter it ships with. The mini-PC I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as a barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are plentiful and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build. It is also the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also the most easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a more limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this one from Western Digital or this one from Seagate. One of these external drives will cost you in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up such as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people with larger media libraries (12TB+), who prefer media in 4k, or care who about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC or used workstatiom as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives into the case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with three to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives, if we configured our drives in a RAIDz1 array we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, we don't need anything with hardware RAID controls (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform perfectly fine. Don’t worry too much about USB speed bottlenecks. A mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but many people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, search for drives designed specifically for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7. They will also often make use of CMR (conventional magnetic recording) as opposed to SMR (shingled magnetic recording). This nets them a sizable read/write performance bump over typical desktop drives. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS are both well regarded brands when it comes to NAS drives. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark quite often when there is nothing at all wrong with that drive. It will likely even be good for another six, seven, or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, an .ISO of Ubuntu, and a way to make that thumbdrive bootable media.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against the server release. The server release is strictly command line interface only, and having a GUI is very helpful for most people. Not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through the command line, I'm certainly not one of them, and I grew up with DOS 6.0. 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC. BalenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or you old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it directly into your router with an ethernet cable, and then plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Now, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running, and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down as we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing by two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, as it is capable of automatically checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving in this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is dying well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". This poil will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command will look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If as an example you bought five HDDs and decided you wanted more redundancy dedicating two drive to this purpose, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this is known as RAIDz2 and is able to survive two disk failures.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that a pool is ready to go immediately after creation. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go right out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but we won't be dealing with them extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your Ubuntu user password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable. Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Our next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read and write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = home/"yourlinuxusername"/defree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, everything will appear to work fine, and you will even be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, but you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file next in the queue. And at the end it would reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around. 99% of the time they’ll go through that second try, but this is still all a major pain in the ass. Especially if you’ve got a lot of data to transfer or you want to step away from the computer for a while.

It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and look for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window. In the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is sluggish, adjust the display options. Lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, barring edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub (this is important!!!) to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in a corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running. We’ve got Ubuntu up and running, our storage array is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex. It just works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too, even if it is rougher around the edges. Some people run both simultaneously, it’s not that big of an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers, but as a quick run down, consider some of the following points:

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things: for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly or yearly subscription basis) in order to access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) or automated intro/credits detection and skipping. jellyfish features for free. On the other hand, Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said Jellyfin's Android/iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android/iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. But that $6 fee gets you a mobile app that is much more functional and features a unified UI across Android and iOS platforms, the Plex mobile apps are simply a more polished experience. The Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and the iOS and Android versions are very different from each other.

Jellyfin’s actual media player itself is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet, that sort of thing. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

#long post #streaming #plex #tutorial #linux #piracy #major works

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bloatedandalone04 · 3 months

Text

Something Borrowed

➪the one where you and jake run into his ex at a friends wedding.

Warnings: angst, smut, fluff, oral (f receiving), fingering, public smut, swearing, dirty talk, insecurities, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, car sex, a real bitchy ex

Word Count: 6k - last post got deleted or something :( idk where it went

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When Jake asked you to be his plus one to his old college friends wedding, you were ecstatic

Not only was it an excuse to show off how ridiculously hot your boyfriend of three years is, it was also the opportunity to see him in a suit all night. While he looked Godly in his flight suit and uniforms, seeing him in something different but equally as formal was always a treat.

You had bought - actually Jake insisted he buy you - a new dress that went well with his tux. While it was all black with a white button up, your dress was a champagne color that was just the right amount of contrast and went well with the ‘fine wining’ theme.

Yeah, you two were that couple.

You didn’t get the opportunity to dress up very often with how hectic both yours and Jake’s schedules are, with date nights being something simple like takeout and a movie or a stroll around the beach that often ended up with you and him jumping each other in the shower when you were supposed to be ridding yourselves of the sand.

So when he asked you to tag along, you agreed right away.

But he failed to inform you that his ex-girlfriend would also be there.

To be fair, he had no idea that she was going to be there, but he probably could’ve guessed since she was also a friend of Trent, the Groom himself, and his wife-to-be, Gemma.

You were sitting at the table assigned to you, Jake and a few others during the reception part of the wedding when Trent came up to you. He looked a bit tipsy, but that was to be expected. “Hey, man! Thanks for coming,”

Jake’s arms were secured around your middle, your back pressed right up against his front since he couldn’t seem to keep his hands to himself after watching you walk out of your shared room a few hours ago in the same dress you’re wearing now. “Hey, Trent,” he greets, taking his eyes off you for the first time since you sat down at the table. “Congrats, buddy.”

“Thanks,” Trent grins, holding up his left hand and showing off the silver wedding band. “This is gonna take some getting used to.”

Jake shakes his head and teases the skin of your thigh with the tips of his fingers. This dress was probably your favorite thing you own, and the long slit on the left leg area was definitely Jake’s favorite part of it. “I’m sure you’ll manage,”

Trent grinned down at the two of you before leaning in and muttering, “Hey, have you seen Mara yet?”

Your ears perked up at that, the name being somewhat familiar to you and definitely to Jake. “Mara?” He questioned, quirking a brow and glancing at you. “Why would I have seen her?”

“‘Cause she’s here, man,” Trent answered as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.

Jake’s smile faded a bit and he tightened his arm around you. “She’s…here?” He wasn’t looking at you anymore, even though you tried meeting his eyes. “As in…here, here?”

“Uh, yeah,” Trent laughed as he reached over and tugged Gemma away from a conversation with a few other guests. “We kept in contact with her after the two of you broke up.”

Gemma lifted a brow in confusion before she nodded, “Mara? Oh, yeah, she’s around here somewhere,” then she looked at you with barely-hidden concern. “I hope this won’t be awkward for you.”

You wave her off with a small smile as you drape your arm around Jake’s shoulders. “It shouldn’t be,” you assure both the newly-weds as well as Jake, who gave you a cautious look. “I’ll be civil if we see her, I promise.”

Jake nodded then leaned in to press a kiss to your neck. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t know she’d be here.”

Jake had been yours for the last three years, Mara was a long way back in his past. Really, you had nothing to be concerned or worried about at all. “It’s okay, baby, really,” you say and kiss his cheek. “Totally fine.”

He nods, his fingers going back to tracing random shapes onto your thigh as Trent and Gemma walk away. “There’s a lot of people here, anyway,” he said. “We might not even see her at all.”

One could only hope you wanted to say but didn’t. Instead you just smile at him and run your fingers through the hair on the back of his neck. “Maybe,”

Jake finished off his drink and set it down before gently gripping the back of your neck and bringing your mouth down to meet his. Your lips connected in a searing yet chaste kiss before he pulled away and smirked at the smudge of lipstick on your chin. He wipes it away with his thumb and leans in to ask, “Dance with me?”

You grin, “As long as I can lead,”

He scoffed as you stood up. “Please,” he murmured as he took your hand in his after standing up as well. “I always lead.”

You hold back a smirk as he guides you towards the middle of the room. “I know,” you whine, resting your other hand on his shoulder when he stops and pulls your body close to his. “It’s not fair.”

“Oh, it’s fair,” he replied as his free arm reached down to wrap around your waist. “You’re a terrible dancer, baby.”

You gasp, “Hey! I thought my dance moves were what made you ask me out,”

“They were,” he confirmed, pulling your body up against his. “I remember the first time I ever saw you dancing. It was at that awful excuse of a dive bar downtown, and some dumb remix was playing. Then there you were. You didn’t care that you couldn’t keep up with the beat, and definitely didn’t care about all the people staring at you because of it. I knew then that I wanted you and that I had to have you.”

You blush at the memory. “And look at us now,”

“Look at us now,” he repeated, glancing around the room discreetly before leaning in to whisper in your ear, “I get to go home with the prettiest and most perfect girl here.”

Your blush deepens as you lean up to brush your lips against his. “You’ve always been such a flirt, Seresin,” you tell him, pressing a proper kiss to his mouth afterwards. “But it’s the reason why I said yes when you asked me out that night at that terrible dive bar.”

“You sent a lot of sad guys away that night,” he reminisced. “Almost made me too nervous to try out my own luck with you.”

“I’m glad you did,” you mumble before kissing him again, this time more deeply. It was a pretty intense kiss to be shared in public, but Jake was all about PDA with you, and he couldn’t care less about being told to ‘get a room’ when those fuckers had no idea what it was like to be with you.

“Me too, sweetheart,” he murmured and kissed you again.

Your heart always skipped a beat when he called you sweetheart, and he knew it, too. You were convinced your reaction to it is the main reason he called you it, the cheeky fucker.

Jake’s hands slid further down your body, but before they could get past your lower back, a voice said, “Jake? Is that really you?”

It had you pulling away from him and looking to your left, where you see a tall brunette standing there with a wide grin on her face, her white teeth on full display.

Jake, too, looked over at her, and when they met eyes, she beamed, “Oh, my God, it really is you!” A laugh escaped her lips as she leaned in and pulled him in for a hug. “It’s been so long.”

“Mara,” Jake greeted as he wrapped one arm around her, his other keeping you close to him. “Yeah, I guess it’s been a while, huh?”

“Too long, in my opinion, we used to be friends,” she teased and pulled away before looking over at you. “Hi! I’m Mara.”

“Y/n,” you say as Jake wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you into his side.

“God, you’re pretty,” Mara compliments as she looks between you and Jake. “Are you two...”

“Together,” he finished her sentence, making you smile up at him as her own faded just a bit. “Yeah.”

Mara nodded and sipped on her wine glass. “I can see why,” she observed, looking you up and down. “You two make a great pairing. So unlike him and I. We were so bad for each other.”

She ended it with a laugh, making your brows furrow as you tried to hold back a scoff. “We don’t need to get into that,” Jake tried to change the subject, his hand running up and down your back in a comforting manner. “It’s Trent’s wedding, after all.”

“Oh, of course,” Mara waved him off then looked over at you. “I love weddings. They’re so romantic.”

“I have to agree with you there,” you reply and look around at the pretty flowers and decorations. “It’s a beautiful venue.”

“You should’ve seen the one Jake and I were looking at when we were together,” she said nonchalantly and sipped more of the wine.

“Oh? Um,” you trail off and look up at your boyfriend who had his brows drawn together in confusion and irritation.

“Oh, don’t worry, we weren’t engaged or anything like that,” Mara added. “Just wanted to see what the options were if the time came, you know?”

You hesitantly nod, growing more and more uncomfortable with each passing second. “Right,”

Mara smiled then quickly said, “Oh! He’s like my ‘something borrowed’!”

Jake stuttered out a laugh of disbelief. “Your what?”

“I had him first, and now you do, so it’s like you’re borrowing him from me,” she answered, and you weren’t sure if she was joking or being completely serious.

Jake’s eyes widened as he moved you away from her. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I’m very happy with Y/n here, and she’s not borrowing me from anyone. We’re each others.”

Mara nodded with wide eyes as she raised her hands in defense. “Right, of course,”

Your smile was gone now and Jake must’ve sensed that you were growing more annoyed by the minute as he moved to rest his hand on the small of your back. “Well, we better go finish off dessert,” he tried to end the conversation. “Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

“Have at it,” she responded and you felt her eyes on you as Jake guided you back towards the table.

“She just totally interrupted our moment,” you pouted and Jake pouted back at you as he raised his free hand and tugged at your bottom lip with his thumb.

“How will we ever survive?” He teased as he pulled out your chair for you.

You sit down and glance back at the brown haired girl who was still looking in your direction. “Your ex is kind of fucking weird,” you say and he laughs as he sits next to you and drapes his arm across the back of your chair.

“It’s easy for my girlfriend to say that about my ex,” he pointed out and glanced back at her. “She wasn’t that weird when we were together, which was a long time ago.”

He was clearly trying to reassure you, and you could appreciate it to an extent. “She’s pretty,” but still, you were quite stubborn.

Jake leaned in and kissed your cheek, making you look back over at his forest green eyes. “Is she? I wasn’t paying attention as I was far too busy looking at my sexy and drop dead gorgeous date,”

You blush and feel your insecurities disappear at his words. “That’s a good response,” you mumble and the two of you share a knowing look before he grabs the fork from off the table and begins feeding you pieces of the lemon flavored cake.

An hour or so later, you were pressed against the wall of the hallway that was next to the room the wedding was being held in with Jake standing in front of you. His lips were on yours as he pressed his front against your chest and softly ground his hips against your own.

Your moans were lost to his mouth as he pressed you harder against the wall, his tongue poking out to run along your lips. “You taste so good,” he rasped, the faint remnants of lemon cake coating his taste buds. “Sweetest fucking thing, aren’t you?”

His words go right through you and you grip his biceps tightly as he begins placing kisses to your neck and shoulders. “Jake,” you moan and tilt your head back. “I want you so bad, fuck.”

“Yeah?” You could practically hear the smirk in his voice and the image of it that flashed through your mind had you whining quietly. “You want me right here? Want me to take you right here in this hallway?”

You nod frantically as you grip his hair. “I want it,”

Jake reached down and ran his hand up your exposed thigh through the slit in your dress. “Look at what you’re wearing,” he teased, pushing the fabric further up your body. “It’d be so easy for me to fuck you in this dress. No one would even know.”

You moan loudly and watch as he sinks to his knees and pulls down your white lace panties with him. “Jake,” you gasp as he places a kiss on your inner thigh. You look around the empty hallway with excitement evident in your eyes, and Jake caught onto it almost instantly.

“You’d love to get caught, huh?” He mocked as he ran the tip of his index finger along your slit before sinking it into your wet core. “Love to have someone see how fucking needy we are for each other.”

“Baby,” you whimper as he leans in and circles your clit with the tip of his tongue. “Oh, God. Jake.”

Just as you reached down to grab hold of his hair, the sound of someone calling for Jake had him pulling away from you. “Jake?” The person called again as he stood up and helped you fix your dress. “Jake..oh, there you are.”

You wanted to roll your eyes as Mara left the room and stepped into the hallway with you and Jake. “Here I am,” he said and moved to stand halfway behind you in an attempt to hide his obvious erection. “Did you need something?”

“Oh, Trent asked me if I knew where you were since he hadn’t seen you for a while now,” she explained and you crossed your arms as you stared at her. “I offered to go look for you since he’s had a few drinks now and is well past the point of being able to see clearly.”

Jake nodded and adjusted himself in his dress pants before stepping around you. “Do you know what he wants?” He asked as he took your hand in his.

“No idea,” Mara answered as she avoided looking at you and instead kept her eyes on Jake. “Better go find out.”

It sounded like she was trying to get him to leave you and go with her, but she was out of her fucking mind if she thought he was going to leave you out in the hall while he went off with his ex. “Oh, okay,” he trailed off. “Thanks.”

Then he was pulling you with him as he entered the room again, missing the brief look of annoyance that flashed across her face, but you definitely didn’t.

After a quick conversation with Trent that ended with the two men saying goodbye and setting up a date to grab a beer together, Jake pulled you with him towards the exit of the building.

Your body was on fire and was aching for him in every way, and the moment you had with him in the hall felt like a massive tease. You wanted him so badly, you were practically drooling as Jake hauled you to his truck and pulled you onto his lap in the driver’s seat.

The dark parking lot of the venue was pretty much empty by now, with the exception of a few cars here and there. You and Jake could fuck right in the abandoned lot without anyone seeing you, and you were so desperate that you were sure you couldn’t wait until you got home.

“I swear,” you mutter as you loosened his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt. “If we get interrupted again, I’ll scream, and I only want you to make me do that.”

Jake huffed out a laugh and pulled your dress up and bunched it around your waist. “Fuck, baby,” he mumbled as he gripped your hips and rocked your core against his thigh. “You’re all worked up too, huh?”

You moan and nod quickly, forgetting about your task of ridding him of his shirt and instead gripping his shoulders as you ground yourself against him. “Oh, fuck, Jake,” you whine as he helped guide your frantic movements. “I need you so bad, please. Please.”

Jake leaned in and pressed a deep kiss to your mouth that you quickly reciprocated. “You need me to make you come, baby? You want to come right on my thigh?”

You nod again and tilt your head back as he kisses along your neck, his finger pulling at the thin straps of your dress and pulling them down your shoulders. “I want it so bad, Jake,” you whimper as you drag your core against his thigh. “I want you so bad, it’s driving me crazy.”

Jake groaned when your hand reached between your bodies and brushed against his groin. “You drive me crazy, too, sweetheart,” he confessed, bucking his hips against you and making you let out a surprised moan. “Had me so fucking hard for hours.”

Your dress slipped past your shoulders and exposed your chest to him, and when he leaned down to wrap his mouth around your nipple, you whined, “I want you inside me,” you begged as you felt your high approaching with just a few grounds of your hips. You were that worked up. “I’m gonna come, Jake, fuck.”

Jake tugged on your hardened peak with his teeth before pulling away. “Come, baby,” he requested and you were more than happy to oblige, except just as you were about to, the sound of someone knocking on the driver’s side window had you squealing in surprise as you pressed your body against Jake’s. He wrapped his arms around you and shielded your body away from the eyes of whoever knocked, and when he looked over to see who it was, he met Mara’s gaze.

“Hey,” she greeted in a drunken tone. It was so dark out, he was sure she wasn’t able to see much of you in the truck, only that you were situated on top of him. “I’m sorry, my ride ditched me. Can you drive me home? Please?”

You keep your body pressed to his as you pull your dress back up and lift your head with a pissed off expression on your face. Jake met your angry gaze with guilty eyes as he looked around the dark surroundings, and you knew he wouldn’t leave her here alone.

Sometimes you really hated how much of a good guy he is.

Huffing, you push your dress back down and crawl over the center console and slump against the passenger seat. “Sure, hop in the back,” he answered and reached over to brush his knuckles against your cheek as you crossed your arms. “I’m sorry, baby, I promise, I’m all yours as soon as we get home.”

“I thought you were already all mine,” you grunted as you gently pushed his hand away and put on your seatbelt.

“You know what I mean,” he sighed just as Mara opened the backseat door and hopped up into the truck. “Where do you live?” He asked as he pulled out of the parking space and left the lot of the venue.

You look back at her as she smirks. “You know where I live,”

With an eye roll, you turn back around with another huff and turn away from both of them, facing the window and watching the dark scenery.

“You’re in the same house as before?” He asked for clarification as he looked over at you and tried to get you to meet his eyes, but he knew you were pissed off by this point.

“Yep,” she replied and you hold back a scoff at the flirty edge to her voice. “I’m sure you remember how to get there.”

You had to grip onto the seat to physically stop yourself from opening the door and jumping out of the moving truck. She was fucking with you for fun now as if she had a chance with him again now that he was with you.

The ache in your core wasn’t helping your bad mood, either, and every time Jake tried to help you relieve, she showed up. She seemed convinced that her and Jake were still close, or maybe she thought they were friends, but you knew better. Jake wasn’t one to keep a friendship with an ex-fling, yes - he considered her a fling and has told you on multiple occasions that you were pretty much his first real girlfriend.

He slept around a lot and never settled down until he met you, and then he cleaned his act up and became a better man for you. He stopped his ‘fuckboy ways’ and actually put in an effort, and now three years later he was like a completely different person. A way different person to the one Mara knew. That version of Jake was long gone, but she couldn’t seem to comprehend that.

How could she ever think he was her ‘something borrowed’? The nerve of her had your blood boiling a bit.

The fifteen minute car ride was silent, though Jake did try to make small talk with you, but you weren’t having it. You knew it wasn’t really fair to be mad at him, but he really was the only person that could tell Mara to take the hint and fuck off, and he wasn’t doing that.

Jake parked on the street beside her driveway and reached for your hand as he turned to face Mara. “There you go,” he said without emotion and when you, too, looked back at her, she was smirking as she opened the door.

“I knew you’d remember where I lived,” she purred as she got out. “Thanks, Jake, I owe you one.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he brushed her off. “It’s no problem.”

She waved at him, and Jake being the decent guy he is, waited until she was inside her house before he turned to you.

You were tense as he gently rubbed his thumb against the back of your hand, and he was almost afraid to break the silence, but he couldn’t sit in it any longer. “Baby,” he called softly, trying to get you to meet his eyes. “Can you look at me, please?”

With a huff, you glance over at him. He looked good in the dim lighting of the truck and you still felt that ache in your body for him, but you were also so upset about how things turned out. “What?”

Jake sighed and laced his fingers with yours, bringing your joined hands up to his mouth and pressing a kiss to your knuckles. “I’m sorry about Mara,” he started and you soften your gaze just the smallest bit. “I didn’t think she would be there, honestly, and the first time she came up to us, I should’ve shut her down. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

You lean back against the seat as you play with his long fingers. “She wants you,” you stated. “She acted as if I wasn’t even there the whole night.”

“But you were,” he said, turning to face you fully. “You were there with me, Mara wasn’t. And I don’t care if she wants me, because I don’t want her. I mean, you know the kind of guy I was when I was with her, and I’m not going back to that. I want you, always, all the time.”

You stubbornly mumble, “She wants to fuck you,”

Jake lifted a brow as he leaned in, “But I want you,” he rasped, tightening his hold on your hand. “You’ve had me hard from the second I saw you in this fucking dress.”

You playfully roll your eyes as you smooth out the champagne colored fabric. “Right,”

“It’s true,” he insisted, reaching over with his free hand and firmly gripping your chin. He turned your head so you were looking at him again, and you felt your anger begin to fade away and the lust return. “But I don’t just want to fuck you, I want to be with you for the rest of my life, baby. Mara can look all she wants, but I’m yours and that isn’t changing.”

You bite down harshly on your lip as you hold back a whine. “Jake,”

He smirks a bit at your reaction, but then his phone went off and he recognized the number as Mara’s. You assumed it was hers, as well, and let out a sound of frustration as you turned to open the door and practically ripped off your seatbelt.

Before you could go into her house and have your way with her, Jake reaches over and pulls you back and onto his lap. His lips connect with yours as he tightly grips either side of your face and keeps you close to him. “Forget about her,” he muttered against your mouth and tossed his phone aside.

“Jake-”

“She can go fuck herself, because she’s sure as hell not fucking me,” he continued and you whimper against his mouth. “The only person who gets to have me like this is you.”

You moan as you take off his seatbelt. “Jake,”

“This,” he murmured, grinding upwards and making you whine loudly. “Is all yours, baby. It’s only yours, for as long as you want me, though I’m hoping it’s forever because you’re it for me, sweetheart. There’s no one after you.”

You gasp before pressing a deep his to his mouth, and he returns it immediately as your tongue pokes out and brushes against his. “God, Jake, I need you so bad,” you say as you reach down and palm him through his dress pants. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait, I need you inside me.”

Jake grunted as he pushed your dress up around your hips and the scene mirrored the one in the parking lot. “I can’t wait, either, baby,” he admitted and you unzipped his pants and reached into his boxer briefs. “I want to fuck you so badly.”

“Please,” you begged, grabbing the back of his neck and bringing his mouth to yours. “Please, fuck me. No one can see us, it’s almost one AM, Jake. Please, I need it.”

Jake had never seen you this needy and desperate before, and the sight had him refraining from coming right then and there. “Oh, sweetheart,” he mumbled, pushing down the straps of your dress and pinching your hardened nipples between his thumb and index fingers. “I know no one can see us, but I wouldn’t give a fuck even if they could. I need you, too, baby. Right fucking here.”

“Please,” you whimper again and Jake reaches down to push your soaked panties to the side, guiding you to run your folds up and down the length of his hard dick. “Fuck me, Jake. I want it.”

“Yeah?” He breathlessly asked as his tip poked at your entrance. “You need me to fuck you, pretty girl?”

“Yes,” you answer instantly as you arch your back. He drops his hands and grips his base as he guides himself slowly into you. “Yes, fuck yes, Jake.”

He bottoms out and you both moan in relief. You were so turned on and wet, it was easy for him to slip inside of you and fill up every inch you had to give. “Fuck yeah, baby,” he groaned as you gripped his shoulders tightly and lifted yourself up. “Show me how much you need me, sweetheart. Fuck me.”

How could you possibly say no to that?

You drop yourself back down and moan loudly as he reaches even deeper than before, and you tilt your head back to allow his mouth to connect with your neck. “God, you’re big,” you slur as your chest runs up and down his with every lift of your hips. “I needed you so badly, Jake, I was going insane.”

Jake groaned and kissed his way up your neck to your lips. He kissed you deeply, still able to taste that lemon cake from dessert. “I know, baby, I’m sorry we had to wait so long,” he apologized and you clenched tightly around him. “Fuck, I wanted to make you come so badly in that damn hallway.”

You moan and grind down onto him harder. “Me too,”

Jake grabbed hold of your hips as he fucked up into you roughly. “I’m gonna make up for it now,” he muttered as he took control of your body and helped guide you up and down on him. “I’m gonna make you come.”

“Please,” you cry out as you go limp on top of him and give him full control to do whatever he wants with you. You were so worked up, you were close to coming already, and he knew this as he reached down to rub slow circles onto your throbbing clit. “Oh, my God, fuck.”

You clenched helplessly around him as your whole body tensed up. “Come for me, baby,” he demanded in a soft tone. “All over me.”

A loud cry left your lips as you come hard and fuck yourself onto him when he stills and lets you ride out your high. Uneven breaths escape you as you writhe on top of him, already feeling so overly-sensitive but still needing more.

“Slow down, baby,” he said gently and grabbed your hips to help you slowly roll your body against his. “You’re so sensitive when you come, don’t wear yourself out.”

“Then fuck me, Jake,” you request and he stops you completely. He kissed you multiple times before lifting your body up and letting you rest against his thigh. Reaching down, he runs the tips of his fingers along your slit before sinking them into you, making you moan softly as he slowly works you back up again.

“Get in the back, sweetheart,” he said and you reach down to pull your dress off your body, leaving you almost entirely bare in front of him. His dark eyes trail all over your body as you crawl into the back and lay down on the seat, kicking off your heels and panties as you do so. Jake cursed under his breath as he cleaned you from his fingers before shrugging off his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt.

He crawls back there with you and licks a stripe up your sopping core, making you shudder a bit, before he hovers over you and slides back into you. “Fuck,” you whimper as you wrap your arms around him and press your lips to his chest.

“I know it’s not very romantic,” he started as he slowly fucked into you. “But hopefully I’ll be able to make up for it when we get back home.”

You shake your head as you wrap your legs around his waist. “You’re perfect, Jake,” you tell him and bury your face against the side of his neck. “So perfect for me, I love you so fucking much. I’m sorry I was such a bitch to you-”

“Hey,” he cut you off and gave one sharp thrust, effectively shutting you up. “Don’t ever apologize to me when you’ve done nothing wrong. There’s nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart, you hear me?”

You nodded and closed your eyes as he quickened his pace a bit.

“I love you, baby, so damn much,” he said and kissed the base of your throat before sucking a mark there. “I’m sorry I was such a dick earlier by not sending her away the second I saw her.”

“It’s okay,” you replied breathlessly. “We’re okay, Jake.”

“Yeah,” he agreed as he began fucking you roughly. “We’re okay, baby, we’re us. Just us.”

You whimper and wrap your arms tightly around his body. “Just us,”

Jake braced one hand on the doorframe and held you close to him with the other as his hips hit yours at a brutal pace. “Fuck yeah, sweet girl, you’re taking me so well,”

You nod and bite down gently on the skin of his shoulder. “You’re so deep,”

“Yeah?” He asked as he pulled nearly all the way out before burying himself deep within your wet walls. “You feel so good, baby, so fucking tight.”

His filthy words had you seeing stars for a few seconds and you couldn’t stop yourself from clenching around him. “I can’t,” you gasp. “I’m gonna come again, Jake, it’s too much.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he cooed, kissing your jaw and chin as his hips rutted into yours. “I want you to come for me again. You deserve it.”

“I want you to come, too, Jake,” you mumble, reaching up and tugging on his hair. “Please, come with me. I want it so bad.”

Jake grunted as you pressed your heel against his lower back and drove him deeper into you. “You want it?” He asked, already knowing your answer as he held back his own release in order to get you there first.

“I want it,” you reply immediately and pull him impossibly closer to you.

“Come for me first, baby,” he rasped. “Then I’ll come for you.”

You moan and lift your back off the seat as you clamp down around him and come for the second time.

“There you go, sweet girl,” he praised kissing you through your high as he felt his own take over his body. “Fuck, I’m coming.”

You keep your heel pressed against him and hold him close as he paints your hidden walls white and thrusts his release deeper into you. You moan with each uneven jerk of his hips and when he falls against your chest, you run your hands through his sweaty hair and make it messy. “I love you,”

“I love you more,” he murmured and pressed a few kisses to your damp shoulder. “And I’m sorry again.” He pulls out of you and gently fucks his fingers into you to keep his seed deep within your core before he tugs your panties up your legs and wraps his button up around your body.

“It’s alright, baby,” you kiss him one last time before crawling onto the passenger seat. “Just know that I probably won’t be able to resist punching Mara square in the face if I ever see her again.”

Jake laughed as he picked up his phone and got back into the driver’s seat. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” he said and you gave him a confused look as he showed you his phone screen. Somehow, when he threw his phone aside, he accidentally accepted her call and she had listened to around three minutes of the thirty minute fucking session you and Jake just got finished doing.

“Oh, my God,” you laugh and cover your face as he smirks and calls her back.

“She blocked me,” he informed you after a few seconds and dropped his phone into the cup holder before running his hand through his messy hair and starting the truck.

You laugh again. “Yeah, well,” you shrugged and wrapped his shirt tighter around your body as you leaned back. “At least she got the message now and took the hint.”