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punisheddonjuan · 2 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 building and setting up your own personal media server running Ubuntu and using Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media but to stream your media to your devices both locally at home, and remotely anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. It’s a tutorial on how by building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, television and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy ripping your own physical media to disk, you’ll be free to completely ditch paid streaming services altogether. 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) to watch your favourite films and television shows, instead you’ll have your own custom service that will only feature things you want to see, and where you have control over your own files and how they’re delivered to you. And for music fans, Jellyfin and Plex both support music collection streaming so you can even ditch the music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 collections (or FLAC collections).

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

On the software side I will walk you through, step-by-step, in installing Ubuntu as your server's OS, configuring your storage in a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection into your server from your Windows PC, and getting started with Plex/Jellyfin Media Server. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I will even share with you a custom #bash script that will make the 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, or Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic 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 enjoyed putting everything together, then I would encourage you to maybe go back in a year’s time, do your research and and redo everything so it’s set up with Docker Containers.

This is also 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 different Linux distributions (primarily 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 yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise from you. All you will need is a basic level of computer literacy (e.g. an understanding how directories work, being comfortable in settings menus) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at a glance, this is only because I want to be as thorough as possible so that you understand exactly what it is you're doing and you're not just blindly following steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you’ll be fine if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it really shouldn't take you more than an afternoon 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, there's almost no bloat and there are recent distributions out there right now that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Running Plex/Jellyfin media server isn’t very resource intensive either in 90% of use cases. We don’t an expensive or powerful system. So there are several options available to you: use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using, buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 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, do 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 be for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native 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, which means we should be looking for an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This 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 which takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and takes 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 on eBay for a used workstation.

Any Intel processor after second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that those cores support H.265 HEVC. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors support 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors give you AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to transcode a file encoded with H.265 through hardware, it will fall back to software transcoding when given a 10bit H.265 file. So 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 looking shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 for 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, only becoming available with first generation Ryzen and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could completely forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores with support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less than a good used workstation you can pick up a Mini-PC running 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. They offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw and otherwise perform equivalent to an i5-6500. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system. These are also remarkably efficient chips, they sip 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 over 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 the features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS, and 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 power adapter it is shipping with. The one 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, and the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a 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 simply buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this Western Digital or this Seagate external drive. One of these will cost you somewhere around $200 CDN/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up as detailed below.

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

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

Note: If you are using an old PC you already have 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 in your old 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 hree 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 configured in RAIDz 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, nothing with hardware RAID (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform just fine. Don’t worry about 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 some people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, look for drives that are specifically designed 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 use CMR (conventional magnetic recording) rather than SMR (shingled magnetic recording) which nets them a sizable performance bump. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS drives are both well regarded. 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 when there might be nothing at all wrong with that drive, and when it will likely 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, a way to make it into bootable media, and an .ISO of Ubuntu.

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 using the server release as having a GUI can be very helpful, not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through command line). 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 old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it in directly to your router with an ethernet cable, and plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key it is that 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 and not arbitrarily lowered, 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

Next, 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 something like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down 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 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, checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is on its way out 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". It will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command would look like this:

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

If for example you bought five HDDs and wanted more redundancy, and are okay with three disks worth of capacity, 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 would be able to survive two disk failures and is known as RAIDz2.

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 an array is ready to go immediately after creating the pool. 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 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 which we won't be dealing with 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 username 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. 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/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, while everything would appear to work fine, and you will be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, 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 that was next in the queue. It will reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around at the end, and 99% of the time they’ll go through, but this is a major pain in the ass if you’ve got a lot of data you need to transfer and 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 in this part 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 just result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and search 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 a 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 too 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, outside of some 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 the 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, the storage 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 simply 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 even run both simultaneously, it’s not that big 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 yearly subscription basis) for access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) and automated intro/credits detection and skipping, while Jellyfin offers this 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. Additionally the Plex Android/iOS apps are vastly unified in UI and functionality across platforms, offering a much more polished experience, while the Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and 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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eddiesghxst · 3 months

Text

PRICE OF FAME (PART 12/12)

AHHH !! friends, we've come to the end of my first fully done series, and she's not perfect in a lot of ways but she's mine and I'm so happy and thankful to have shared it with you lovely folks

i hope I've done them justice, enjoy <3

18+ — MINORS DNI

pairing: rockstar!eddie x journalist!reader

summary: you decide to visit eddie for a chat

contains: enemies to lovers trope, drug and alcohol use, smut, oral (m receiving), mentions of anal, mentions of death (readers relative), sexual themes, angst, heavy mutual pining, fluff, and eddie being so head over heels that it's hot <3

word count: 10.6k

| previous part |

| series masterlist | -main masterlist- |

“So, from the new album— Wasting Love.”

Over time, Eddie’s learned that he can’t stand interviews— especially interviews with questions aimed towards nothing but tabloid gossip and headlines. The first big interview that Corroded Coffin booked was exciting because— well, it was their first one! Maybe the questions weren’t as intricate and thought-out as the ones they gave David Bowie on TV, but it was something.

That excitement wore off quickly, though, and unfortunately, interviews are one of the top ways to spread publicity so— “Wasting love,” Eddie huffs, tipping his hips forward as he shifts on the couch. He’s bored out of his mind, aching to leave and be done with the shitty questions about his love life or the people he hangs around or whatever. He taps the heel of his foot into the ground, lips twisting as he chews at the inside of his cheek, “What about it, man?” Eddie asks.

The rest of the band is in the fucking clouds— why would they answer a question about a song entirely unrelated to them? Plus, Eddie’s 99.9% sure they did a few lines without him, which, fucking assholes.

The interviewer shrugs, “Well, why didn’t it make it to the final cut? And what’s it about? Tell us more about that track.”

What a bullshit fucking question.

Wasting Love is one of the most, if not the most, straightforward songs Eddie’s ever fucking written. The only reason why he’s asking about this is because, well, there’s been rumors of Eddie and his most recent love affair— none of which are true, but Eddie doesn’t bother to come out and tell the truth because what’s the point? What’s the point in telling the truth if it will get twisted anyway?

Either way, Eddie shrugs, blinking behind his dark sunglasses, “I mean…” He purses his lips and tips his head side to side as if thinking, “Kinda self-explanatory with the lyrics, man.” He finally responds.

And in the background, Eddie can see Richie practically constructing his next ‘I know you hate it, but it’s good publicity’ lecture. So, Eddie relents— “It’s about… meaningless sex basically. And it didn’t make the cut because it was a shitty song.”

It wasn’t, actually, Eddie thinks it was a great fucking song, but the intentions behind it— not quite so.

“I think the fans would disagree on that.” The interviewer jokes.

Jeff takes a deep breath and shifts in his seat, “I mean, part of it was because it just didn’t flow with the essence of the album.” He adds, and Eddie mentally thanks him for taking over and so easily diverting the topic to something else. For the rest of the interview, Eddie’s mind is elsewhere, thinking about everything outside of this room, thinking about what he’ll eat later, thinking about the show tonight, thinking about you.

Yeah, you haven’t left his fucking mind in the past six months you’ve been apart from one another. It’s been six months, and Corroded Coffin has released two albums and started their second leg of tour since he last saw you— and you’re still all he thinks about.

You’re still in his dreams, still dancing behind his eyelids when he shuts his eyes, still vomiting all over his fucking journal when he writes. It’s madness, really. Eddie can’t remember the last time he was this hung up on someone— he wasn’t even this distraught when Chrissy left him.

Sure when he and Chrissy ended, he wallowed in it for a month or two, but it wasn’t long before he got fixed on uppers and groupies. Chrissy was heartbreaking in the sense that she was his first love, his first real relationship— but this… this is different. Eddie doesn’t know why it’s different, can’t really pinpoint where the colors change, and the memories start to jab at his chest differently, but he feels it.

He feels it when he’s sitting backstage before a show, feels it when he steps into a new hotel room every night, feels it when he’s ruffling through his suitcase and comes across that journal that’s been haunting him for ages now, and he definitely feels it when he reads the fifth page in the Rolling Stone magazine where the description of Eddie resides, the one where you’d crafted and molded Eddie into a shape he’d never been able to see before, the one where Eddie first came to terms with the true sight of you and your intentions.

Yeah, it’s fucking bullshit, Eddie thinks.

He doesn’t know how he ended up in this predicament, but by god, he would never fucking recommend it because— fuck, you won’t even talk to him!

And sure, you don’t owe Eddie anything, you don’t owe him a call or a chance to visit or anything of the sort, but Eddie was holding onto that sliver of hope you gave him before you left.

He asks about you when he can, because, unbeknownst to you, Eddie’s quite familiar with your boss, Anna, and she’s like an annoying older sister to him. Anna tells Eddie how much of an idiot he is occasionally, but she always cracks and tells Eddie that you’ve been good and how you sometimes mention him, but it’s always quick, and nobody ever has room to pry about it. And when Anna tells Eddie about how you crossed paths backstage with a certain red-headed girl and read her to filth, Eddie chuckles and mumbles something along the lines of, “That’s my girl.”

Anna nearly gagged then.

Still, Eddie only catches glimpses and whispers of you, never really getting the full fix to last him a day, but it’s enough to keep him alive and wanting.

“Maybe she doesn’t get your calls, man.” Gareth shrugs, leaning into the mirror as he ruffles his hair. It’s been hours since the interview now, and showtime is in… Eddie doesn’t know when because he didn’t listen when Richie was rambling on about tonight’s schedule.

“She gets my calls, dude; Anna said she does,” Eddie grumbles.

“Okay, well, then maybe she’s just, like, over it. I don’t blame her; you're a pain in the ass.”

Eddie kicks his boot into Gareth’s shin, and the boy hisses, tossing a red Rillos wrapper at him. “Ow, asshole. It’s not my fault she hates your music.” He snips. Eddie makes a face, “It’s your music too, dumbass.”

Gareth scoffs, “Yeah, but you wrote an entire fucking album about her. Our album is literally about her, you know that, right?” And Eddie thinks he should just kick Gareth’s teeth in at this point, maybe that’ll get him to shut up. “How would you know it’s about her if I never told you it was?” Eddie prods.

Gareth rolls his eyes, dark eyeliner casting a shadow on his face as he turns to glare at his friend. “Is there another chick you’ve been fucking that’s got you by the balls that we seem to have forgotten about?” Gareth sarcastically asks. Eddie glares at him, reaching for the cigarettes on the vanity table and sparking up.

He speaks around a cloud of smoke when he answers, “No.”

Gareth makes a face, eyebrows raising in an ‘I rest my case' manner. “And she’s not a chick,” Eddie adds.

Gareth hums with a tight grin, reaching out to poke at his friend's face, causing Eddie to grimace and bat him away, “You’re in love, Munson. Fix it or get over it,” He says shortly before making his way toward the door. Eddie can hear the dull scream of fans when Gareth opens the door, and Eddie thinks about the tickets he’s sent you every show— prays to whatever false god there is that you decided tonight is the night before he decides hope is useless and you’ve gotten over him. Gareth cuts through Eddie’s thoughts, “Come on, I can hear Richie’s bitching from here.”

Eddie’s mind is never in the game until he steps onto the stage, with bright lights blinding him, screaming fans, and his adrenaline at an all-time high. He comes back to earth then, comes back, and does the fuck out of his job— because this is the best part. The best fucking part, and it’s always been that way.

And it gets better when Eddie scans the crowd, coming down from the first song of the night and finally taking a look at his audience, and there he sees it— he sees you. There you are under flashing lights, drowning in a sea of people with that glint in your eyes.

Eddie thinks he’s imagining it because, fuck, he’s been dreaming of this for weeks on end; surely his delusion can reach the heights of hallucinations, right? But no, you’re real.

You’re so fucking real. So fucking insanely real beneath Eddie’s fingertips when he reaches out, ignoring the screams and clawing of fans as his fingers loop around your wrists and he says your name.

God, you’re really fucking here.

Eddie looks prettier than you remember when you first see him— curly mane draped over his shoulders and dark tattoos glistening on a bare torso, white lights framing him like he’s some kind of fucking archangel.

He’s gotten thicker in the few months, beefier around his arms and chest, and the long chains and pendants he wears from his neck rest down the valley of his torso, smeared in sweat and sin. You want to drag your tongue across his chest, taste the salt and his cologne, tug the silver cross between your lips, and suck and make him whimper.

His eyeliner is smudged and dark, and his smile when he gets a moment to take in the crowd makes your chest ache. He’s so pretty it hurts. He’s a dream and a nightmare all at once.

You missed him. God, you missed him so much.

His smile falters when he sees you, and you don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but his eyebrows pinch like he’s in pain, and you only want to wrap yourself around him and breathe in that scent that’s been haunting for nights on end.

He’s insane for jumping down to the barricade, like, completely-lost-his-fucking-mind, down-in-the-gutter, insane. But you can’t find it in you to protest when he steps up to the fence, reaching out and looping his warm finger around your wrist. “What the fuck?”

Your lips twitch into a smile at his words, but the crowd is getting rowdy with their beloved rockstar so up close and an elbow is being shoved into your side and Eddie moves quicker than you can comprehend, tugging you forward to the very front and motioning you to jump over.

“You’re insane!” You yell over the noise of the crowd. Eddie grins, damp curls dangling over his eyes as he peers down at you, “Unless if you wanna get crushed, be my guest.”

It’s slightly difficult, and there are a lot of gangly limbs and yearning hands reaching out everywhere, but Eddie eventually gets you over the barricade, and you’re gazing up at him with a warm grin when you sway on your feet. You wish you and Eddie could just walk away and have each other like you’ve been imagining for months, but Eddie has a job, and he’s working.

His eyes are blown wide, and his lips are so kissable, and his warm hand is squeezing your hip as he nods toward a security guard. “Keep an eye on this one, Rob,” He shouts over the screaming fans. You’re eyeing Eddie as he steps back toward the stage, sinking his in-ear back into place with a sly grin as he winks, “She’s real sneaky.”

The show is great, as it always is, and Eddie tries to be deft about it, but it’s evident to just about everyone how he practically clings to the side of the stage where you’re standing in front of. It’s cute, you’ll admit, but you feel bad for the fans, so you try to move around a bit.

The last song comes, and the show ends with Eddie and Jeff practically climbing over one another as they shred their guitars and the crowd goes insane when Eddie leans forward to drag his tongue up the side of Jeff’s face, grinning when the other boy rolls his eyes and walks off.

You’re being pulled backstage quicker than you know it, just in time to meet the group as they jog off the smokey stage with big grins on their faces.

Jeff is smothering Naomi in a sweaty hug and smattering kisses all over her face, and you’re glad to see they’re still together. Gareth is twirling his drumstick between his fingers and scanning the room for someone, but you don’t have time to try and figure out who because the one person you’ve been waiting for steps out next, and he’s got the biggest grin on his face as he practically jogs up to you.

You’re smiling and giggling out a greeting as he steps up to you and grasps your face between his hands, “No kisses!” You warn before he can lean in, and Eddie’s too excited to even pout about it. “You’re gonna fucking kill me, you know that?”

You reach up to slink your fingers around his wrists as his thumbs caress the soft skin beneath your eyes, “Got enough life left in you to talk?” You ask. Eddie’s eyes dance across your face, taking you in like it’s the last time he’ll ever get the chance to before he nods. “Always.”

The dressing room seems to be the altar of truth for you and Eddie.

It’s dawning on you that most of the pivotal moments between you and Eddie have been in a dressing room, so it’s not irrational for you to feel a bit uneasy when you step in, and Eddie closes the door.

He’s like a kid in a candy store, trying not to touch what he sees. His eyes are so bright, but you can tell he’s holding himself back from doing and saying the things he wants, and you appreciate that he’s giving you the space, waiting for you to give him your yes or no.

Eddie plops onto the couch in the middle of the room and looks at you with a glint in his eyes. You deeply breathe, shifting in your spot before leaning back against the door, tipping your head as you study him; thighs comfortably spread, inked stories fluttering to life with each rise and fall of his bare torso. He’s a dream.

“I thought you’d be way more upset.”

Eddie’s lips tug like he wants to smile at the sound of your voice, or maybe it’s the sight of you, and he shifts in his seat with a shrug, reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it between his lips, and when you see him pat himself down, you’re already moving like it’s muscle memory.

You pick up the lighter on the coffee table and walk over to Eddie, sparking the flame as you speak, “You’re allowed to be upset, you know?” You remind him. Eddie’s gaze flickers in color as he looks up at you, and you try to ignore the goosebumps that rise up on your skin when his hand reaches up to rest on your hip, thumb caressing you over the material of your skintight dress. Streams of fire are licking up your spine as he leans forward to burn the end of the paper stick, and your center aches when he gently squeezes the fat of your hip. All throughout this, Eddie never lets his eyes fall from you.

He mumbles a short thank you once the cigarette lights, leaning back to rest against the seat as he looks up at you. You fight the urge to comb your fingers through his hair or do something dumb like climb into his lap. No doubt talking would fly out the window then.

You gently toss the lighter onto the coffee table and sit on the loveseat across from the pinnacle of your thoughts from the last six months. Eddie speaks around a cloud of smoke, “Do you want me to be upset?” He asks.

You shrug, trying your hardest not to break beneath his unwavering eye. “I don’t know.”

Eddie smiles then, and the strings of your heart play a symphony to the notes of his voice when he speaks, “I was for a little bit,” He admits, tapping ash onto the carpet, “But then Wayne told me to get my head out of my ass.”

You huff out a laugh at that, and Eddie grins. “How is he?” You ask. Eddie tips his head back and forth like he’s thinking, “Same old man as before. Think he’s got a girlfriend now. He’s being an asshole about the details, though.” He rolls his eyes, and you snort. You’re happy to hear Wayne has a person for himself now; if anyone deserves it, it’s him.

You shift, like you can’t seem to get comfortable enough, and you know you’re stalling, and you can see Eddie fighting to not call you out, so you try to ease into it; “Is that when you stopped calling?” You ask.

Eddie stiffens under the question, and you know the answer. He grimaces and runs a hand over his face with a soft groan, “Fuck,” he curses, “Fuck, yeah, it was.” He answers. “I’m sorry, I’m a fuckin’ hothead. I had made it a goal to call every night and then—” “I upset you.”

Eddie’s eyes are soft, and you have to force yourself to keep your eyes on his, “It wasn’t fair what I did, Eddie; I’m sorry—”

Eddie shakes his head, briefly shutting his eyes as he waves you off, “Nah, fuck that. You don’t need to apologize—” “But I do. I told you I wanted space, and then a week later, I’m plastered on a fucking cover with Baine fucking Carter.”

Baine Carter is a well-known songwriter within the industry. He’s got tracks spread all over the top charts, and he has a way of talking that can make just about anyone fall into a trance until you realize most of what he’s saying is just made-up bullshit. In hindsight, Baine wasn’t much different than most people in the music industry— it was a moment of weakness and pure vodka-weighted thinking. And, of course, it’s the moment when cameras find you.

“Kinda my fault too,” Eddie shrugs, “Camera’s wouldn’t have found you if I didn’t have press riding me.” And he’s right, but shitty press isn’t his fault, so how much of that can you really blame him for?

Eddie snickers at the memory of you painted on the cover of several magazines, “Think you’ve got a type, sweetheart.” He teases. Your face screws up in defense, and you scoff, “What does that mean?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, “Come on, you’re gonna tell me you didn’t say my name when he—” “We didn’t do anything— firstly— and even if I did say your name, I would never in a million years admit it.” You point out with a raised eyebrow.

Eddie smirks with a playful glint in his eye and he deeply breathes as he ashes his cigarette and rises to his feet. “I don’t care that you hooked up with Bain fucking Carter,” Eddie softly admits with a hint of a mocking grin, “Did it deeply wound me to the point where I almost thought I was gonna die? Yes.” He jokingly says, to which you want to roll your eyes at, but he’s stalking over to you like he’s some lion on the prowl, and all you can muster is a small huff with a mumbled, “You’re dramatic.”

Eddie stands in front of you and leans over to press his palms onto each side of your seat, leaning down until his face hovers above yours, “I’m kinda known for it, darling.” He winks.

Your core stirs at the proximity, and you can feel his breath against your top lip. “I will admit, though,” Eddie lets his hand drop to round over your bare knee, callused fingertips caressing your soft skin, “It gave me a huge ego boost seeing you with a literal replica of me.” He snickers, fingers dancing into the inside of your thigh. You huff, a playful glint in your eyes as you run your tongue across your teeth, “Yeah, I imagine your head couldn’t fit through the door for at least a month, huh?”

Eddie shrugs, “Depends. Which head we talking about, honey?”

You huff out a laugh, rolling your eyes when he gently squeezes at the warm skin of your thigh. You tip your head lower, holding your gaze on Eddie as you lowly speak, “I’m not having sex with you tonight, Eddie.”

Brown eyes flash with a familiar look you’d missed before they drop to your lips. “What about a kiss? Just one.” He presses. Your eyes narrow, “I doubt you could ever do just one.”

“You’ll never know if you never try.” His lips twitch up into a sly grin, taunting you and pushing you until your brain is just a muddled mess of yes, no, yes, no, yes, n— fuck it.

It’s like a sigh of relief to have Eddie’s lips on yours after such a long time. Weeks of nights and days spent trying to remember how it felt having his plump lips pressed onto yours, how he tasted, how warm his tongue was when it slunk into your mouth. None of those times you’d try to remember, none of those phantom feelings that would breeze through your body could ever amount to how it actually feels— it’s as if you’re seeing color for the first time.

It’s a fucking kiss, that’s for sure.

It’s long, and it takes you both a second to relearn the kinks and maneuvers you both favor, but then it’s as if time never passed between your bodies— you’re moving like one unit, like every second of your lives has built up to this moment.

Unfortunately, air is a necessity to living, so you’re pulling away sooner than you’d wanted to. Eddie’s other hand is digging into the cushion beneath you, and you can practically hear his thoughts spinning as he wills himself to pull back. You shiver as his fingers squeeze your thigh one last time before slipping away.

“How's that for a kiss?”

Brown eyes with pools of liquid gold, you missed the searing pain it gave you each time you reached out and touched. You purse your lips, tasting him on your tongue as you tip your head in thought— menthol and whiskey. “Care to answer a few questions? Pick up on our game?”

Eddie huffs out a laugh, breath tickling your nose as he snickers with a glint in his eyes. He studies you for a moment, like you might pull out and say never mind, but you only raise an eyebrow as you await an answer. “Your place or mine, honey?” He drawls.

You preen at the open door he’s lent you, “It’s your city, isn’t it?”

You don’t take the same car with Eddie to his place.

It’s not that you didn’t want to take the same car, but something about that look in Eddie’s eyes said that he absolutely wouldn’t be behaving on that car ride, and you immediately suggested separate vehicles. You’re unsure if you trust yourself to hold your promise in a confined space with Eddie… or maybe you don’t trust him… or— yeah, it’s both of you. Eddie wasn’t ecstatic about it, but you don’t care because you swear to god you aren’t going to fuck Eddie before you talk— like, really talk.

There are things that you both need to say, uncover, and express feelings about, and god forbid you get dicknotized before the words can come out correctly.

Eddie’s home is everything you thought it would be: chaotic in taste, lively, musical, whimsical, and all things that scream Eddie. The entryway is open and vast, with a clear view into the living room, where you can see a sunken living room build with guitars and papers strewn about.

Eddie’s ushering you further into his home before you can look deeper into the entrance, but you don’t mind because his living area is like an artist's wet dream. There are comfy couches, red, cream, and colors alike, and there’s a rug in the middle that looks like a psychedelic trip of dark colors, and along one of the walls is a long shelf of endless records.

“I moved in like a year ago, so it’s not perfect, but… this is me,” Eddie says. You hadn’t been paying attention, but now that he walks into your line of vision, you can see his shoes are off, and his loose blouse is fully open. He looks like a fantasy; lean body dripped in expensive clothes and clinking jewelry, shoulders broad and sculpted beneath his wavy hair. Fuck.

You slip your shoes off and let your feet sink into his home's fluffy, deep red carpet, never once dropping your gaze from him as you walk over to the couch. “It’s beautiful, Eddie. It’s very you.”

You sink into his couch, turning so you can face him with your arms crossed over the back of the sofa as you watch him pick a record and set it up. Through the surround system of his home, the familiar riff to Tommy Bolin’s Shake The Devil rings. You watch Eddie sink a hand into his hair, shaking out his messy curls before pausing. The guitar is loud and you’re leaning forward when he snaps his head to dramatically look over his shoulder. You stifle a laugh, intrigued to see where he’s going with this— and you hate to admit that you begin enjoying the show when he turns around, fingers crafted and messily playing an air guitar to the track.

His stomach and chest flex with each of his moves, the buckle and button to his jeans open to flash you a dangerously low view of his happy trail leading to sinful places. He’s walking sex; head tilted back as he shreds the imaginary guitar, hips moving with the song as he walks toward you. He sinks to his knees in front of you, and with his living room being sunken and him still being on the higher level, you’re just in line with the view of his spread legs, crotch on full display. His teeth sink into his bottom lip as he gazes at you, switching to air drums before the words kick in. You can’t hide the smile that graces your lips as he dramatically sings along, leaning forward until his face is just inches in front of yours, ringed fingers reaching to cup your face. Standing face to face with the devil, huh?

Your hands have a mind of their own apparently because they reach out and coast up Eddie’s jean-clad thighs, nails scratching up against the material until your fingers hook into the belt loops of his jeans. You lean forward on your knees, sharing a breath with the pretty boy, and you smile. Eddie groans low in his throat, the breakdown of the song blasting in both your ears and your heart racing. His teeth dig into his lips like he’s trying to physically hold himself back, and you softly laugh. “Laughin’ at my misery?” He asks.

You shrug, “Maybe. You look fuckin’ hot.”

Eddie groans again, eyes rolling back into his head before he dives forward, nuzzling his face into your neck and faking a bite as you squeal. “Can’t say shit like that to me, princess. Wanna fuck the shit out of you.” His teeth drag against your pulse, and you squirm with a louder squeal, causing him to tumble forward, collapsing onto the couch with you, and your limbs mix like one big painting as he dramatically grunts on impact. He shifts until he’s laid on his back, head resting in your lap as he peers up at you.

“You staying the night?” He asks.

You snort, brushing a strand of hair from his face, “Didn’t I tell you we’re not having sex?” You remind him. Eddie huffs and digs his head into your lap as he shuffles in his spot, “Did I ask for sex just now?” He challenges. You raise an unconvinced eyebrow, “So, you want me to spend the night just to spend the night?”

Eddie’s eyes gleam as he looks up at you, “It’s been my dream.”

You roll your eyes, playfully shoving him off you with a huff, “Get me a drink, and I’ll think about it?”

Eddie hops up as if second nature, padding over to the stereo and turning it down just enough to hear you as he talks over his shoulder, “Sure thing, honey; what would you like?”

Honey, honey, honey.

You want to drown in it.

You’re not listening as Eddie lists off the drinks he has, busy swirling in sticky, sweet, golden lakes and admiring the shift of Eddie’s hips and ass beneath his jeans. “Surprise me.” You respond.

“Copy that, madam.”

He doesn’t go far because there’s a built-in bar on the other side of the room, so you have the perfect view of him working his magic, mixing liquor and dropping ice cubes into a crystal glass. When he finishes making your drink, he turns and walks over to you with this glint in his eyes, and you feel your body heat under his gaze. “This one's on the house,” He says with a wink, handing you the drink. You thank him, taking the glass as he sits back onto the couch, sinking into the plush cushions and watching you gently sip before pulling a sour face.

He laughs, “Too strong?” He asks. You grimace with a shake of your head, smacking your lips, “No, no, it’s good. Thank you.”

Your legs are kicked up on the couch, and Eddie finds his fingers slinking around your bare ankle, gently squeezing, “Want something comfy?” He asks.

God, he’s relentless.

You laugh, “You really want me to stay,” You tease. Eddie sinks like he’s letting all inhibitions go as he answers, “Desperately.”

He can tell you’re cracking, and you have to hide your grin behind the glass as you shake your head in disbelief at yourself, “Fine. Go, before I change my mind.”

And Eddie’s sprinting up, holding his jeans up from falling as he jogs up the stairs with a happy cheer.

A half-hour passes, and you find yourself sitting on Eddie’s comfy living room floor, dressed in nothing but an oversized shirt of his because, in Eddie’s words, ‘there’s no need for pants in a home setting, sweetheart.’ You think he just wants easy access and an eyeful of your bare legs.

Eddie’s licking up the crease of a blunt and your body is warm with whiskey and the shrill of a jazzy melody from the radio. He’s so pretty, leaned over the glass coffee table, bare shoulders flexing, curly hair draping as a curtain as he works. He clicks his tongue when he’s done, and you raise an eyebrow, pressing your bare toes into his thigh when he scoots closer. “Up for a smoke?” He asks.

You don’t smoke much, not that you don’t enjoy a nice high, but you find yourself more appreciative of your highs when they’re spaced out and random. You nod, and Eddie grins, “Atta girl. Here, honorary first hit,” He passes the blunt to you, and you snicker, grasping it between two fingers and holding it up to your lips. Eddie helps you with a lighter, leaning forward to burn the end of the paper, and you take one good drag before pulling the bunt away, rolling the smoke into your lungs to settle as best as you can handle before you sputter out in a small coughing fit.

Your eyes water, and Eddie grins as you pass it to him, leaning forward to kiss your temple, “That was good, baby.”

You watch as he takes a hit of his own, huffing out a few coughs of his own, and jesus christ, why do rockstars always smoke devious shit? It’s strong, whatever Eddie has you smoking, and it only takes you three hits before you already feel a buzz coming, and Eddie looks so pretty with low eyes and rosy cheeks.

“Ready to play our game?” He rasps out.

“Mm.” You agree, reaching out to take another hit.

“Did you listen to the albums?”

I can't destroy what isn't there

Deliver me into my fate

If I'm alone I cannot hate

I don't deserve to have you

Oh my smile was taken long ago

If I can change I hope I never know

God, did you listen to the albums? Sure, you have it ingrained into your fucking mind, and it burns.

You smile, slowly blinking because, of course, that’s Eddie’s first question. You breathe out clouds of fairy dust as you speak, “Yes, I did. Did you read the magazine?” You ask.

Eddie nods, leaning back against the couch, extending his legs out as he eyes you, “I did. Which song did you like best?”

“Mm, the one with the drums.” You smile.

Eddie laughs, and you pass the blunt back to him before leaning back on the opposite couch, toes almost touching when you extend your legs across the carpet. “You’re a kiss-up, you know that?” He gestures to you, to which you only shrug.

Eddie crawls across the living room, and you fight the urge to reach out and thread your fingers through his hair as he plops himself right next to you, leaning against the couch as well. Your thighs are touching, and you can feel the warmth of him, and the smell of weed is wafting through the air, and you just want to nuzzle into Eddie’s chest and never leave.

“Miss me?” You teasingly ask. You can hear the slight smile in Eddie’s voice as he responds, “Negative. You?”

You snort, “Negative.”

You shuffle to lean against Eddie, and he can’t seem to help it when he reaches out to push your hair back gently. “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” You ask.

Eddie’s eyebrows pinch in confusion, no doubt lost by what you mean, considering he already has his lifetime job figured out, “What do you mean?”

You sigh, wriggling as you fight the urge to wrap your body around him, “I mean,” You shrug, “Well, you’re not gonna do this forever, right? Like, at some point, you’re going to have to throw in the towel, age, and whatnot,” You dismissively wave, “What will you do then?”

Eddie pauses and thinks for a moment, and if you couldn’t feel the warmth of his skin on yours, you would think he vanished into thin air. “I, uh…. Well, you’ll think it’s stupid.” He mumbles.

You frown, turning your head to look at him, “I won’t. Tell me. Please?”

He looks at you with these soft, fond eyes before nodding, “I wanna start a music school in Hawkins— maybe, like, a creative arts school, you know, something for the weirdos. Not just music geeks.” He admits. His tone is so soft, maybe the softest you’ve ever heard, and he’s fiddling with his rings like he’s nervous, and it’s the cutest sight you’ve ever seen.

“It’s not really celebrated there. Creativity, I mean.” He adds.

You stay quiet, allowing him to speak, “Everybody just lives to work dead-end jobs. Being creative is like… a sin or something, I don’t know. I just want to give the kids somewhere where they’ll feel… safe. Seen. Something I never got for myself.”

It’s… it’s fucking brilliant. It’s so brilliant it makes your chest ache, and you decide that you would do just about anything to make sure Eddie’s dreams of a music school come true.

“I told you it’s stupid. No one ever thinks it’s good.” He mumbles after a moment with your silence. You frown and shake your head, sitting up straight to look at him. “No. No, Eddie, it’s amazing…It’s fucking amazing, and you should do it. You have to do it.”

“You’re just playing nice.”

“No, seriously. Fuck whoever said it wasn’t a good idea, it’s brilliant.” You press on, and you want to lean in and pepper kisses all over his face because— seriously, who the fuck told him it was a shitty idea?

“I grew up in a small town too, and— shit, it was not fun wanting to be something other than a nurse or a teacher. Got a lot of shit trying to ‘reach for the stars’,” You huff out a laugh. Eddie’s eyes are so gentle as they gaze at you that you almost melt. “I would’ve appreciated something like that. Munson’s School of Arts.”

Eddie snorts at that, pink lacing with yours as a smile spreads across your lips, “Not bad actually, I might name it that.”

It’s a back and forth of that for a while, silly questions amongst genuine ones until you find yourselves sat next to each other, arms pressed together, bodies yearning to wrap around each other as you fiddle with the strings of Eddie’s carpet. And there’s something, you know. Eddie feels something that he’s not telling you, and it’s killing you because it’s what you need to hear before you take the plunge. “Are you angry with me?” You softly ask.

Eddie’s quiet for a moment, and the blunt was snuffed out a while ago, so he’s not taking a drag but instead just stalling. “I mean,” he pauses, “I already told you, Birdie. What’s the point in going back on it?”

You frown, glancing at him, “Because I want you to tell me how you feel, Eddie.” You respond.

Eddie’s silent again for a longer moment, and you want to whine when he shifts away to sit in front of you. He folds his legs up, resting his elbows over his knees as he sits face to face with you, “Do you want me to be angry with you?” He steadily asks.

Your blink, “I— no?”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, and you huff, “Honestly, a little bit, yes. It’s okay to be angry with me, Eddie; that’s what I’m trying to say.”

Eddie’s demeanor is unwavering as he blinks at you, but his tone is accusing, “Do you want me to be angry with you so you can feel justified?”

And, ouch.

That’s not the truth at all. Or maybe it’s some truth, but in your true feelings, that’s not what you mean. It’s only a fleeting thought because you’re human, after all, right?

“That’s not fair,” You frown with a small shake of your head. Eddie raises another eyebrow, and you tilt your head, “I’m only trying to be as transparent as possible, Eddie. That was the main issue.” You remind him.

Eddie turns to the coffee table, grabs your forgotten glass of Jack Daniels, and takes a swig for himself. “You wouldn’t tell me how you felt, and I was always left in the dark.” You say.

“And I’m telling you right now that I’m not angry.” He’s teetering on the edge of irritated now, and you tilt your head. “I listened to the album, Eddie. I listened to the song; you’re seriously gonna tell me you’re not angry?”

Eddie can only glance at you then, and your frown deepens. “That’s… different.”

“How, Eddie? It’s about me—” “Yeah, because you fucking walked out on me on closing night,” Eddie exclaims. “How was I supposed to feel?”

Your chest tightens as you look into the eyes of your dreams, lyrics swirling in your mind because you’ve fucking memorized every word. You listened to it until you felt sick, dizzy with a whirlwind of regrets and what-ifs.

You sold me out to save yourself

And I won't listen to your shame

You ran away, you're all the same

Angels lie to keep control

Your chest aches when the lyrics echo in your mind.

“I just want you to be honest with me. If I made you feel that way—” “No, that’s not—” Eddie shakes his head, pinches the bridge of his nose, and cringes like it's painful. “That’s not it at all— fuck.” He puts the glass down and scoots back over to you; knees pressed into the fluffy carpet beside your thighs as he leans in and cups your face, eyes darting over your pretty features. “I was angry, and I was a shithead, and I had people talking in my ear and— shit. Please don’t think you ever blame yourself for that, please.”

Your fingers are cold, but Eddie’s wrists are warm beneath your fingertips as you frown up at him, “Just tell me how far out you are, Eds.”

Eddie looks at you with soft eyes, a callused thumb running under the delicate skin beneath your eye. He leans forward, pressing his lips against your forehead, and you preen, nuzzling forward and sinking into his warmth and scent that you’ve missed for so long.

“Not far,” He responds, lips brushing over your skin. “You?”

You hum, body reeling as Eddie slinks his arms around you, “Not far.”

Forty minutes and another blunt later, and Eddie’s floating in the fucking sky.

Eddie can’t believe it really, having you in front of him, next to him, limbs pressed to limbs with your laugh ringing in his ears— Eddie thinks this is some sick, realistic dream.

It’s tender, the space you’ve both created. You’re both fragile and reactive in the best way, like a healing exposed nerve, and Eddie will be forever in your debt for how patient you are with him. He’s not good at talking about real shit, but he’s trying to fix that, and you make it easier because you push him in the way he needs to be— you encourage him to say what he feels even if he’s afraid he might end up shooting himself in the foot and chasing you away again because— ‘It’s the only way things will get better.’

But you’ve always been patient. You were patient six months ago, and you’re patient now. You know exactly what you want, and you’re firm in what you say and feel, and it makes Eddie feel safe.

He’s never had this kind of thing— he’s never had a relationship where someone talks and leaves room for him to speak as well— two-way communication or whatever the fuck Robin says. It’s different, and it’s good, and Eddie thinks he must have shit taste if it’s taken him this long to realize it.

Chrissy never really cared for what Eddie wanted or preferred, or how something she did would make him feel. Eddie, at the time, didn’t think much of it and was more than happy to ride along with her ‘low maintenance’ nature, but it only cut him off from growth more than anything.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore because Chrissy is in the past, and you— you’re so pretty standing on Eddie’s couch in just his shirt with a blunt hanging between your fingers. You’ve just returned from changing the record— Surrealistic Pillow; Eddie knew the second you dropped the needle and watched you spin around with a shit-eating grin.

“Hippie shit,” Eddie mutters as you hop down from his couch. Your eyes narrow, “Hey,” you nudge your foot against his thigh, “Don’t be an asshole. It was on your shelf anyway.”

Eddie slinks his hand around your calf, blinking up at you as you stand over him. You reach down, the burning blunt standing between your fingers, and Eddie happily parts his lips to let you slip the tip in. Burning sativa licks up the sides of Eddie’s brain, and he melts when your other hand sinks into his hair, gently pressing his bangs back as his eyes flutter. You hum, and Eddie’s lips tip into a smile as the smoke churns in his chest. Your knuckles curl into his roots, and Eddie could fucking cum right now, no questions asked.

He’s harder than a rock, and he’s not ashamed when he sinks his hand down the open fly on his jeans to palm himself, lowly groaning as he tips his head up, playfully blowing clouds of smoke up your shirt and grinning when you squeal. He chuckles, hand slinking further up your leg to grip the fat of your thigh as he tilts his head to nip his teeth at the inside of your knee.

He turns to let his chin rest on your thigh, blinking up at you with hazy eyes, “Let me in, baby.” He pleads.

You sink to your knees until you’re face to face, and Eddie’s hands glide under your shirt, warm and itching to explore as he feels the flutter of your lungs beneath his fingertips. “No funny business, Munson.” You remind him, swatting him away when his fingers prod at the cup of your bra. Eddie grins, brain fuzzy and warm, and he can’t stop himself from leaning forward and planting a quick kiss against your lips.

“I have something for you.” He says. Your eyebrows raise, and Eddie smiles, standing up with a grunt and shaking out his stiff limbs. “Don’t move,” He points to you before padding off.

The gift Eddie has for you has been with him since the fourth week he knew you. He’s been holding onto it for so long because he’s been a coward and didn’t know how to form the words ‘I’m sorry’ with his tongue— but now, Eddie’s riding on a high, and he needs you and wants you all the time and there’s no better time than now, right?

He’s holding the gift behind his back when he steps into the living room, and he smiles at the sight of you laid out on his floor, eyes closed as you sink into the music. You’re on cloud nine, Eddie can tell.

He drops to his knees over you, pressing his free hand into the floor beside your head, and his hair creates a curtain over you when you look up at him. “You look… tempting, to say the least.”

Your eyes playfully narrow at Eddie, and you squirm beneath him, “What’re you hiding behind your back?”

There are tears in your eyes as you blink down at the gift in your hands, and you know Eddie must think you’re insane for crying over a book— a journal at that. It’s a pale yellow colored leather, with two leather straps that are tied into a neat bow, and in the corner, your name is stamped in tiny cursive gold letters— your real name.

It’s a replica of your old journal, the one that had gotten ruined when you tore the pages out to prove a point. But you don’t understand— “How did you get this?” You ask in a soft voice.

Eddie grins, reaching out to thumb at your bottom lip, eyes soft as he watches your eyes dance over the journal. “Called in a favor from Michigan.” He jokingly says. Your chest aches, and you frown when you look up at him, fingers tight around the binding of your gift, “You talked to him?”

Eddie snickers, “Yeah. Got a lot of shit from him first, I’ll tell you that,” He pauses and scratches at the back of his neck, “He told me he hates my music.”

You laugh at that, body warm with adoration because, yeah, that sounds like your grandfather. You sniffle, wiping under your eyes, “How did you know?” You ask.

Eddie shrugs as he sits next to you, “The cover of your journal had his name on it, so I kind of pieced it together since you share a last name.”

You don’t know what to think, what to say. It’s the kindest thing Eddie (or anyone) has ever done for you. Your grandfather had been in the business of handmaking journals for as long as you can remember; he was part of the reason why you took such a liking to journalism. He had a brief history in journalism himself, and he would sit and go through his best works with you when you struggled to fall asleep— he helped you see the world through the lens of an artist, and you never looked back.

You’re elated as you run your hands over the pages, imagining what the phone call between Eddie and your grandfather was like. You wish you could’ve been there to hear it; you wish you could’ve brought Eddie to meet him in person because even though your grandfather acted tough and mighty, he had the softest heart you’ve ever known, and he would’ve adored Eddie.

You huff out a laugh, shaking your head as you put the journal on the coffee table. You huff, turning to clamber onto Eddie’s lap, glaring at him as your hands dig into his shoulders, “I hate you so much.”

Eddie grins at you, and you drop your head to his chest, snuggling further into him when he wraps his arms around you. You grumble against his chest, turning your head to speak, “You’re making it so hard.” You complain.

You feel the rumble of Eddie’s voice in his chest as he hums, “Hm?”

Eddie shifts beneath you, and you sigh, turning your head up to nuzzle against the base of his throat. Your teeth drag across his skin, red lines left in their wake before you let your tongue coast up his pulsing vein, mouth kissing and suckling at what you can reach— and Eddie whimpers.

“You know…It’s past midnight.”

“Fffuck–”

Eddie’s dead.

He’s gone. Six feet under. In the next life, body turned back to dust, never coming back, dead. This must be the seventh circle of heaven— is that a thing? Or is that only hell?

Either way, Eddie’s on an entirely different plane of heaven as you press your body against his, knees tightening around his waist as he pulls you close and smears his lips against yours. He can feel the heat of your core through his pants, and his hips have a mind of their own when they buck up into you.

Your fingers are blind and eager when they wriggle through the tight space between you and Eddie, but it sends shivers up Eddie’s spine when you drag your nails down the soft skin of his lower pelvis.

Eddie’s lips part against yours, and he’s licking into your mouth, tongue flicking at your top lip as you shakily moan. “What happened to no sex tonight?” He lowly teases. His hands sink beneath your shit, squeezing at your hips and guiding the roll of your hips.

“Shut up, Eddie.” You whine, fingertips digging into his shoulders when he rubs against your covered clit. Eddie smiles, watching as your face twists in pleasure, and his chest nearly bursts because you’re so fucking pretty.

“You want me?” He asks.

Your lips twitch into a smile, and your hands slide down his arms to rest over his wrists that flex as they work you back and forth over his crotch. “Yeah,” You breathe, tipping your head down to hover your lips over Eddie’s, “I do. I want you, Eddie.”

Eddie’s tongue runs over his lips, and he catches your bottom lip, and you lick out to catch his tongue before pressing your lips together. Eddie uses one hand to cup your face, “You’re not curious where my dick’s been while we were apart?” He teases.

And if you weren’t practically humping Eddie right now and thinking straight, you probably would’ve choked Eddie out or something— but you only mewl and grind down harder. “Not funny.”

Eddie hums, fingers dancing across the band of your panties before dipping past the barrier. He feels like a pirate who’s finally found the hidden treasure, eyes squeezing shut as he tries to ground himself because, Jesus Christ, you’re so fucking wet.

His cock feels strangled and achy in his jeans, and he imagines how good it’ll feel to sink his cock into you as he swirls a gentle finger around your entrance. “For the record,” He drawls, watching your lips part when he dips his finger into you, “It’s been nowhere. My dick, I mean.”

You breathlessly laugh, hips wriggling, your pussy eager for more. “Been beating it with my fist for the last six months, so. Just want you to know— it’s only you, baby.”

You mewl, leaning forward to press your forehead against Eddie’s as you grind against him, shivering when he finally sinks a finger into you, drawing out to circle your clit with sticky arousal before sinking back in with two fingers.

You’re sharing each breath, taking each other in and out; Eddie watches with low eyes as your face twists in pleasure.

“Take it off,” He grumbles, “Take your shirt off.”

You’re moving like it’s second nature. Shaky hands reaching down to loop around the loose shirt, dragging it up and over your body— and Eddie’s head tips back with a groan. “Jesus fuck,” He curses, one hand busy working you as the other reaches down to palm your breast, “When did you take your bra off, you fuckin’ minx?”

You whimper against Eddie’s lips when he kisses you, the force of his eagerness pushing you back. Eddie keeps pressing you back, shuffling and moving around so he can press you down onto your back and hover over you. “Wanna taste you. Let me taste you.” He begs.

You shake your head, lips messily smearing against his, “No. No, you said—” god, Eddie can’t stop fucking kissing you, “You said you’ll let me have you next time, Eds.” You whine.

Fuck, you’re so fucking cute. You’re a goddamn dream pouting up at Eddie, grinding against his fingers as he ticks them up against your walls. “Yeah? You want me?” Eddie breathlessly asks. Your lips are pouty and swollen as you nod, “Already told you I did.” You say.

It takes everything in Eddie to pull away from you, and he thinks he’s gonna marry you when you reach out for him. Thinks he wants to just whisk you away and live on the side of a secluded mountain or some shit. Thinks he wants you to be the mother of his kids when you smile up at him as he rises to his feet, gazing down at you over the apple of his cheeks as he removes his jeans. You’re so pretty, hair spread out beneath you, tits on full display, tummy fluttering with each drag and push of your breaths. You’re lightly dragging the tip of your finger down your stomach, a teasing glint in your eyes as Eddie throws his hair into the shittest bun known to man, and fuck, you’re dipping your hand between your thighs.

Yeah. This is heaven, and you’re god.

Eddie thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life on his knees worshipping you.

Eddie’s body is warm when he crawls back over you, his body now bare, save for the chains that dangle from his neck. One cross, one guitar pick, one pentagram. They’re cold when they drag up the valley of your chest, and your body perks up with chills.

You slink your arms around Eddie’s shoulders, titling your head up to kiss him as your fingers curl into his messily tied hair. “Give me what I want, Eds.” You softly say against his lips. “Fuck my mouth, please.”

Eddie curses, rutting his cock against the inside of your thigh, and he nods, “Yeah. Fuck. Okay, yeah. Just lay here and look pretty, baby.”

The lasting effects of the three blunts you’d shared with Eddie are swirling through your body, and you feel like you’re on cloud nine as Eddie straddles your hips. He’s the prettiest sight to ever reach your eyes, toned arms, and chest working in tandem as he reaches down to wrap a fist around his cock— and god; you forgot how pretty his cock was. The tip is ruddy and flushed, and your core twists when he angles himself up, and you see the piercing beneath his tip. You definitely hadn’t forgotten about that little detail these past months.

Eddie’s chest is rising and falling quickly and stray pieces of hair cling to his lips when he licks them. You watch with wide, eager eyes as Eddie strokes himself, ringed fingers running against the soft skin of his shaft, pretty hisses curling through his teeth when he thumbs the slit of his tip.

“Quit teasing,” You whine, squirming beneath him. Eddie grins, breathlessly panting as he looks at you, “So impatient.” He mumbles, shifting further up your body until the inside of his thighs press against the side of your tits. You can feel the cool drag of his rings against your sternum, and it sends licks of fire through your core. “My baby’s so impatient, hm?” He taps his cock against your chest, and your frown, fingers digging into his thighs.

“Lucky you’re cute.”

Eddie’s then shuffling and moving around so you’re both comfortably positioned as he kneels over your face, pretty cock glistening above your lips. You open your mouth and let your tongue hang out, ready for Eddie to feed his cock to you, and he chuckles, tapping his swollen tip against your tongue before dragging it to tease you.

It’s good. It’s so good. The taste of him, the feel of him, the pretty noises he makes. You can feel the cold barbell dragging across your tongue with each slow thrust he gives you, and you can’t wait to feel it inside you again. You’ve been dreaming about it for weeks on end now.

He pulls out with a slick pop, tapping his tip against your lips as he hums, “Ready? Gonna give you what you want now.”

You’ve never nodded so fast in your life.

He’s thrusting in and out of your mouth at a mind-numbing and thigh-clenching rate for just under five minutes before he starts to break. You can feel it in the stutter of his hips, the twitch of his cock on your tongue, the shuddered moans and grunts. You reach up to drag your nails down the soft skin of his stomach, and Eddie whimpers for the second time, and you think it might be your favorite sound— you want more.

He’s pulling out with a curse, squeezing at his tip, and you’re such a fucking tease; you lean forward to kitten lick at his aching tip and hum when he hisses. He shuffles back just enough to lean forward and press a messy kiss to your lips, humming at the taste of himself on your tongue.

“Fuck me, Eddie. Please. Want it so bad it hurts.”

“Jesus fuck— turn around.”

You’re shaking, and Eddie’s touch feels like fire as he helps you flip over to lean on all fours. His hands coast up your back and into your hair, and you push your body back into him, ass pressing against his wet cock as you moan when his fingers curl into your hair.

His other hand smooths over your ass, heavily slapping it once before gripping the warm skin as he speaks beside your ear, “Wanna fuck your ass one day, hm? Gonna let me? Say you’ll let me.” “Oh my god,” You roll your eyes with a smile, tipping your head to the side when Eddie kisses your neck before nipping at your ear. You can feel the curve of his smile against your skin, and it makes your chest flutter as he pulls you up to press your back against his chest.

He’s reaching down between you to grasp his cock and paint it against your wet cunt, and you lose your breath. “Come on. Say you’ll let me fuck your pretty ass.” He practically begs.

You moan when he slips his head in, teasing you with what he knows you want. Your head rolls back to rest against his shoulder, and he hums, slinking his other hand up to cup your throat as he continues teasing himself in and out of your pussy.

You smile, lazy and high and blissed out, “No.”

Eddie groans at that, fingers tightening around your throat as he sinks in deeper. “Not even a finger?”

You push your fingers through his hair, his curly strands nothing but a tangled mess within his hair tie. Your legs tremble as you wriggle back into him, but your voice is steady as you speak, “Fuck me first, and maybe I’ll think about it.”

Eddie takes that as a challenge, apparently, because next thing you know, he’s slamming into you and pressing in to the fucking hilt— all big and pierced and toe curling to the point where your moans turn flat, and all you can do is lace your fingers through his that rest on your hip and hold on for dear fucking life.

He’s pressing you face-first into the carpet, making sure your cheek rests against the couch pillow that had been thrown aside earlier. His fingers are clenched around yours, digging into your hip as you whine and moan into his floor, sobbing out his name with each groundbreaking thrust he gives you.

It’s all-consuming; the way Eddie’s fucking you, the filthy words slipping from his mouth, the lingering effects of weed— god, you feel like an exploding star.

Supernova shit or something like that.

Eddie’s cursing and spilling dirty words of encouragement when you come, leaning over to press his chest against your back and coo into your ear.

“Such a good girl for me.”

“Keep squeezing me like that, baby. You’re so good.”

“Y’sound so pretty when you’re coming on my cock.”

You’re breathless and quivering, and a pitiful whine slips from you when Eddie pulls out, but you can feel him as he wraps his hand around his cock and finishes off, pretty moans pressed into the skin on the back of your neck. The feeling of his sticky release dripping onto your ass makes you want to go at it again already.

He’s peppering kisses across your neck and shoulders, and your body slumps onto the ground in exhaustion, but you smile when he presses his lips to yours.

“So, was that good enough? Have I been granted access to the holy grail?”

You glare at Eddie from where his chin is hooked over your shoulder. He raises a suggestive eyebrow, and you huff. “I’ll tell you what,” You start, shifting and purposely rubbing your ass back against his sensitive cock, smiling when he hisses.

“Make up for the last six months first, and I might be able to cut you a deal.”

“Now you’re just stringing me along.”

You hum, “Oh, like you did with me some months ago?”

Eddie pauses at that, eyes narrowing at you, and you think— fuck, maybe that was too soon. But then a smile cracks across his face, “Touché.”

He sighs and sits up, peeling himself from your sticky skin before gently patting your hip. “Ass up, baby. Got a lot of making up to do, and we’re on a tight schedule.”

And you think to yourself, with the scent of Eddie whirling around you and his touch all over you and his pretty voice in your ear, that yeah, you can work through this together. Even if the process will tear you to shreds all over again.

After all, that’s the price of falling for a rockstar, isn’t it?

————

the end.

————

a/n: HOLY SHIT GUYS

if you've made it to the end of this long-winded (and incredibly late, I'm so sorry) ending to this story i can not thank you enough. these two have been so fun to write and i don't plan to leave them completely in the dust so they're not gone forever, but thank you so much to everyone who read and shared and commented. this story has allowed me to meet the most beautiful, kind, funny, and loving people I've ever had the pleasure of talking to and that will be my biggest takeaway from this journey🥹

the biggest thank yous to my pretty mutuals who have been here the whole way, ilysm and want to shrink you guys and put you in my pocket <3

anyway, i'll shut up now, i hope i was able to do these two justice with their ending!! i love and appreciate all kinds of feedback, and as always, thank you for reading, ily <3

————

cutie lil taglist: @mastermindmiko @whataboutbibi @ryanmxrie @ihatepeanutss @tlclick73 @motherfckerrr @emxxblog @ye0nvibezzn @eddiesguitarskills @bibieddiesgf @chloe-6123 @micheledawn1975 @demxnicprxncess @emma77645 @sidthedollface2

@daddyhetfield @s-u-t @hereforshmut @mmunson86 @welcometohellsock @lma1986 @birdsinmywalls @animechick555 @sheneedsrocknroll92 @spideydreams00 @lorosette @prestinalove @sirensleepingsoundly @nabiiturner @catherinnn

@mossiswriting @kellsck @joannamuns9n @siriuslysmoking @mysteris-things @amazingori @honey-eyed-munson @saintlike78 @eddieslooneymoonie @alexa4040 @yujyujj

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crossdreamers · 5 months

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David Tennant Says His Recent Shows Of Support For Trans People 'Suits What Doctor Who Is About'

David Tennant, who is back in the role of Doctor Who, says that "The Doctor has always supported the other, the unusual, the disenfranchised."

HuffPost reports:

David Tennant may be gearing up to make his long-awaited return to Doctor Who this weekend – but he’s making just as big an impact off-screen thanks to his recent displays of support for the trans and gender non-conforming communities. The Emmy winner appeared on The One Show earlier this week and won a wave of praise for sporting a Tardis pin decked out in the colours of the trans flag, on what happened to be on Transgender Day Of Remembrance. Days before that, he also appeared on the panel show The Last Leg with the same accessory, which was designed by Dr Jamie Gallagher. Proceeds from the pin go towards the LGBTQ+ youth charity AKT – and Jamie has revealed that since David was seen wearing his design, more than £18,000 has been raised.

Tennant has also said that he believes that “most people are decent, honest, understanding people who just want to live together harmoniously. We just need to banish the noise and banish the hate.”

You can see the Tardis pin wore by Tennant in the screenshot above. Jamie Gallager shared this photo of the pins over at X. The online shop is closed at the moment due to overwhelming demand. However, it should be back soon.

#lgbt #lgbtqa #queer #transgender #trans #nonbinary #culture #doctor who #neil tennant #art #lgbtq

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dominantslasherking · 6 months

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Your work is just perfection chefs kiss you're the reason I got into the community to begin with. If you can could you perhaps wright a part 2 for David Mccal please that includes smut please😆?! Your work makes me super happy so thank you soon much.😘

David Mccall with dominant Male S/o

(Pt 2)

click here for pt 1

Backstory: Growing closer, you just realize how sinister and obsessed David is with you.

Warning: Smut + Worshiping (David likes to worship you etc)

David had made sure to be in your life as much as possible, it was clear he was possessive and hated when others tried to get romantically inclined with you.

Currently, you were at Davids's house, (A house he shared with his weird ass friends) You actually had spotted David through the window, decided to knock on the door, and wait for David.

David had instantly brightened up at your arrival. "[Name] I'm so, glad, you're here, I missed you!" David said pulling your much taller frame into a hug.

David was typically this clingy and strange towards you, with his weird friends he always acted stoic and indifferent. David was indeed strange.

"Yeah, I missed you too." You muttered it's actually only been around 2 hours with you too apart from each other, but sometimes it's actually strange not having David stick to your side like glue.

But something strange has been happening recently, all your own male friends have actually been disappearing, even your sisters Nicole's friend Gary, ended up, going missing, just because you were only on friendly terms with him.

You could only assume it was David, you knew he was actually weirdly obsessed with you, he even got a tattoo of your name on his chest, not too big though.

"Let's go to my room." David had said with a gentle smile, his eyes coldly tilting to his weird friends that he shared a house with, most of them were criminals and such.

You simply nodded as David held your hand and went up the stairs, the house was rather trashed with graffiti and stuff, but the door to David's room actually looked nice.

Just as the inside. "Surprised?" David asked, showing off his actually well-kept room, but what rather distributed you the most was the giant picture of you, with what seems to be a makeshift shrine or something..

It was confirmed by David was fucking crazy for you. And you definitely didn't want to know what was in the box just below the makeshift shrine.

David was already taking off his shirt, showing off his lean body. Slowly, giving a smile. "I just can't help it [Name]..." David slowly stated, his voice cold, "I just love you too much to not worship you." David whispered seductively going in closer, as he raised his head to look up at you, his lips smashing against yours. His movements were precise, David had gotten you hard in no time, David was also completely rock solid, his lips churning as he took your clothes off, to reveal your own body. "So fucking perfect." David had stated as he started kissing down your chest, over to your pecs, and finally to your stomach. "Amazing,--fuck.." David's whispers of praise continued.

David's kisses trailed all the way to your cock, which was being eagerly stroked. Soon after David couldn't resist, and ran over to his bedside table and grabbed the lube. "I just, need you inside me." He growled out, as you watched him quickly return back over, and lube up your cock. "Sit down." He said with a grin, you complied taking a seat on his bed, as David positioned himself onto your lap. His puckering hole, slowly diving down on your cock. "Mm." You muttered out a small groan, as David's enlightened heat enclosed onto your rod. David took in a deep breath, as he descended himself fully onto your cock, as you were balls deep inside David. His hands were a bit shaky so he rested them on your thigh, as he slowly began to ride. This gave you a perfect view of David's hole devouring your entire length in all its monstrous size.

"Ohh~--I can feel you plunge into me every time I move like-" Instead of speaking any further, David sped up his riding pase, his hole tightening each time around you. the entire room was filled with the skin-slapping of David's intense riding. David's hole was noisy and messy around your shaft. David had suddenly increased harder, basically impaling himself onto your cock, David's movements slowed a bit as he came all over his chest, his puckering hole spazzing around your cock tightly, sucking you in deep, as he slowly rode.

After a while, David had calmed down from his high, and resumed his bouncing, feeling your cock twitch only made David more excited, as he threw his head back. "Yes, yes--oh fuck--that's right! Fuck all your semen into meee---" David cried out, as suddenly you splurged right inside his hole, David's body shook from pure delight as he purposely tightened his hole to keep in all of your cum.

#fear 1996 #fear 1996 x reader #slasher x male reader #slasher x reader #slashers x male reader #David Mccall x reader #David Mccall smut #David Mccall x male reader #fear david x reader #yandere david mccall #yandere david mccall x reader #yandere david mccall x male reader #david mccall x male reader #david mccall x male reader smut #David Mccall x you #David Mccall one-shot

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endcant · 3 days

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save a bastion for queer culture in a famously hateful city

i’ll try to write a shorter and sweeter post about this later, but for now i will just beg at length.

there is a town near me called Murfreesboro where at various points they have banned or attempted to ban public homosexuality, drag, and pride flags. for a time their county’s youth incarceration rate was 48% (contrasted with the rest of the state at 5%) due to corruption in their local courts system. every juvenile case that made it to the wrong judge resulted in the child being sent to jail, because the county commissioner thought it’d be “cool” if the jail was a “profit center” (yes these are his actual words). these are just a few examples but suffice it to say, this is a very difficult place to grow up, especially for LGBT kids.

despite all of this difficulty, the area has a remarkable alternative music scene with a few small venues where queer people and young people who don’t fit in elsewhere can genuinely have fun and feel safe for the night. despite the city’s reputation, queer people in the broader area flock to the town for raves and DIY shows. in this area, music culture is intertwined with queer culture and leftist efforts to a much greater degree than i’m used to as somebody from the middle of california.

i really admire the venues and event organizers that cultivate a safe spaces like this in a place where it is decidedly unsafe for queer people, and where the youth are constantly in danger of having their lives ruined for totally arbitrary reasons.

this is why it breaks my heart that murfreesboro is trying to shut down a venue called The Graveyard Gallery. the graveyard gallery is a place where a ton of events are constantly held for lgbt, furry, and alternative communities. it is one of very few alternative places in the broader nashville area where i have felt really, truly safe and welcome as a person of color.

most recently, The Graveyard Gallery has come under attack for attempting to hold a Trans Day of Visibility punk show, with the apt title “Trans Day of Vengeance”. Conservative media, both local and national, directed the attention of their audiences towards this event, calling it “tone deaf” to have it on easter, and to have it sort-of-kind-of-close-to-but-not-quite-on the anniversary of the shooting in nashville. All of this, of course, ignoring that the date for TDoV was set in 2009, and that this was a small DIY punk show that really bore no threat to anybody. the show had to be canceled because of credible death threats, so it didn’t even happen, but that hasn’t appeased anybody.

in the wake of this, murfreesboro’s fire marshal has suddenly decided that the building is not acceptable for occupancy and it has to close immediately and for the forseeable future. people can claim it’s unrelated, but i’ve known people to have their businesses suddenly declined by fire marshals due to sheer bigotry before, and shitty towns will just use their fire marshal to bankrupt small business owners that they don’t like. i do not speak for the owners of the gallery on this front, but i personally believe that these things are related.

all this is to say, the graveyard gallery needs to raise money for their legal fees over this matter. this venue is very important to a lot of people, and may be even more important now that the city’s music scene is in the crosshairs of massive conservative media companies.

if you can donate please do, and if you can share this, please do that as well.

thank you for taking the time to read my post. i know there’s a lot going on in the world, but music venues are where people here gather, and music venues are often also a place where people organize to make meaningful change and promote causes that i know most of you would approve of. music is at the heart of this community, and the venues are where the music lives.

#mine

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astyrial · 6 months

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old souls meet spencer reid x fem!reader (fluff) synopsis: fbi's annual halloween party word count: 840 warnings: mention of alcohol, a day late because i forgot i wrote this masterlist | requests are open

"i hate company part-"

"yes, we all know you hate company parties. but today they're also naming williamson as head of department so we're going to make the most of it, miss astronaut," your coworker, sarah, gives you a smile while grabbing ahold of your hand to pull you into the party.

you walk behind her slowly, your lips curled into a disappointing frown. the whole party is lit with green lighting and a punch that is likely spiked and spilling with dry ice. you free your hand from sarah's and quickly tell her over the noise that you'll be getting a drink.

that drink becomes water as you smell the alcohol coming from the punch, not wanting to get drunk with your coworkers. you open a plastic water bottle and take a quick drink while you wait for your supervisor to receive his raise so that you can leave. your hope is that it'll start in less than ten minutes and then end in five. however, most things don't go to your liking.

however, it's a little better as you notice a fellow agent lingering by the water bottles with you. his slender hands grab one of the bottles near you and he stands a couple of feet away. you would be stupid to say he isn't handsome, in an awkwardly adorable kind of way.

"sally ride, right?"

"excuse me, what did you say?"

"your costume, you're dressed as sally ride, right? first american woman to travel to space? i loved the physics work that she did for the university of california," he mentions, taking a step towards you.

you give him a wide smile, nodding your head, "yes, you're the first one to get it! i love her and almost became an astronaut because of her, so i had to," you look at his outfit and determine it to be one of the doctors from doctor who.

compared to most fans, you weren't the most knowledgeable, but you did know a couple of things. "and you must be david tennant's doctor for the show doctor who! the sideburns and the sonic screwdriver circa the tenth period give it away a little," you look down at the scarily accurate sonic screwdriver before meeting his eyes again.

"quite right! the name is spencer reid, i'm part of the behavioral analysis unit. gosh, great to see someone here who knows what costume this is. which you seemingly relate to," spencer holds out his hand, letting you shake it as his eyes search yours.

his brown, hazelish, eyes can't seem to take themselves off of as you bring your hand to your side once more. you nod, shrugging your shoulders a little before taking another drink from your water. "right? i only really came to watch williamson's announcement, and i had this from a past halloween, so.."

spencer nods, understanding your need to escape the place and find somewhere quiet to be. "yeah, i agree. my coworkers are probably watching us over here and will hound me for details later, especially derek. it was great meeting you..."

"y/n, i work in vicap, violent criminal apprehension.. which you already know and i probably don't need to spell it out for you," you sigh and wrinkle your nose, realizing that you were treating him like he wasn't a part of the fbi.

"it's fine, i spell bau out for a lot of people too, i get it. now, i will probably need to head back and tell them that you're a great person so that they'll get off my back," spencer shrugs, his hand raising and scratching the back of his neck as his smile falters a little.

normally, you're not a hand out your number kind of person. especially not to someone who works nearly side by side with you at work. however, his knowledge, his humor, they're just undeniably worth the risk. you nod, "okay.. if you'd like my number, i'm open to sharing it. we could continue this conversation sometime."

"um- your number?"

"that was way too forward, wasn't it?"

"not at all! i was just surprised that someone like you would give me their number. i mean you're funny and clearly know your history. sure, i'd love your number, which i will also need to tell my coworkers," spencer grabs the small paper from your hand and stuffs it into his pocket.

your cheeks begin to warm up as you listen to him give you simple compliments that warm the heart. “of course, just as i need to tell sarah,” you say as he walks off towards his friends, one of them, presumably derek, pats him on the back as he pulls out your number.

when you look back towards the stage, you see sarah walking over with a drink in her hands somehow. she ushers you over, saying that he'll be announcing soon and all of you can leave soon after that. you take one look back at spencer and his friends and take in a deep breath. your mind races with when you’ll talk to him next.

#criminal minds x reader #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #dr spencer reid #spencer reid #x fem!reader #spencer reid x fem!reader

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tangent101 · 4 months

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Have we gotten Rachel wrong this whole time?

There are plenty of theories about Rachel Amber in the LiS community. Some folks like to think of her as a manipulator who only was out for herself. We have others who think she was deep in love with Chloe and would never cheat on her and everything she did was to get her and Chloe out of Arcadia Bay. It seems like everyone looks at Rachel and sees something new. But… what if we were all wrong? What if Rachel was something else… someone who tried avoiding conflict by talking to people and agreeing with them… and thus everyone saw her as they wanted to see her?

There is actually some evidence toward this in the game. First, Chloe herself points this out, though in a way that is perhaps less than flattering: "She blended like a chameleon. Clearly more than I knew… or wanted to know…." People take this as to Rachel was able to see what makes a person tick and just become the person that someone else wanted… but we can see several people who had a rather negative view of Rachel. So what is it about those people that had a negative viewpoint of Rachel?

First, we have David Madsen, who detested Rachel and saw her as a bad influence and a criminal. He was investigating Rachel and had photographs he felt were of her being a drug mule. Next, we had a truck driver who talked about Rachel really wanting to get out of town. And of course there is Mark Jefferson who also had a… twisted view of Rachel, though it also seems Rachel was so enthralled by Jefferson that she may have been sleeping with him (and both Stella and Victoria seem to be interested in what's going on in Jefferson's pants as well, though I'm not sure why, he's not that charming).

The truth is that Rachel was something other than a manipulative gold-digger or the like. She were a teenage girl who disliked conflict and was adept at listening to people and when talking to them would agree with them? I mean, consider her two breakup letters, one to Frank and one to Chloe? Rachel so wanted to avoid conflict that she left a letter to Frank because he scared her. She did not want a fight. She wanted out. So she left… with a note basically giving her reasons and essentially ending things. (Frank thankfully accepted that.)

Chloe also got a letter. Honestly… given it was all crumpled up, I half-wonder if Chloe had read it while high one time and crumpled it up and forgot about it afterward. But we have a very important line here: I don't want you to hate me. I don't want you to hate me. That's a very interesting thing to say. There is no deliberate malice, this is someone who has found someone else who just rings all those bells but wants to keep the friend aspect. She still wants the laughter, the moments of sharing a glance and both having the same thought, the things she envisions friends do… but to walk away from the sensual intimacy.

Remember what Victoria Chase said to Max in the Dark Room, that she was just a teenage girl? That's Rachel. Rachel Amber was not a seductress or a narcissist or a monster. She was a teenage girl who was avoiding conflict in her life, but in doing so ended up in a shallow grave in a junkyard. Because quiet girls don't make history… they end up used, abused, and discarded. They end up on the rooftops willing to throw themselves to their deaths because no one would listen to them. They end up abandoned because they were not good enough, because they ultimately were not willing to stand up to those who would use them.

Max, before Chloe reentered her life, was one of those quiet girls who ends up used and discarded. The reason folks keep seeing Rachel in Max is because Rachel stayed quiet and let people make up their own minds about her. And they saw in her what they wanted.

Or at least, it's one way to interpret Rachel Amber.

#rachel amber #max caulfield #chloe price #chloe and rachel #amberprice #frank bowers #mark jefferson #david madsen #life is strange #life is strange speculation

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batsarebetterthanpeople · 4 months

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Hi! I’m sorry if this is dumb but I’m not understanding why the Ed hate is racist? From what I’ve seen it has nothing to do with his race, just his actions? What is racist about it? I’m asking this very genuinely because I want to understand and learn more from this so please don’t take this as being annoying or patronizing or something!

ok so not all Ed hate falls under the racism catagory some people just have genuinely bad taste. The thing that is racist is insisting that he's an abuser. I've explained several times why he's not abusive, as have many many others. But, here's the quick recap: Izzy was abusing him, Ed has a history of lashing out towards his abusers with physical violence and Izzy established that he had been doing this sort of thing to Ed for years so you know, he's going the way of Ed's father and nobody would argue that Ed was abusing his father. Ed wasn't abusive towards the crew. Like he did some shitty things while suicidal. He hurt his friends I'm not saying he didn't. However: 1. This show is full of very very over the top violence and no one is getting up Button's ass about Lucius's finger. 2. It would be an incredibly strange move for a rom com to make one of it's leads a domestic abuser, It's not such a weird move to give a character in a rom com a suicidal arc where they push all their friends away. The first choice would yeild a completely unwatchable show the second is what happened in ofmd. 3. David Jenkins himself has talked about this and he said "What Blackbeard did was by the standards of the pirate world a bit much" I don't know if I even agree with this considering everything we've heard about Hornigold but I certainly agree with the sentiment that Ed did some shitty things but nothing that was significantly more horrific than other characters in the show who nobody treats the way they treat Ed.

So with all of that in mind: Why is it racist to call him an abuser. Like sure, all of this adds up to the abuse truthers being wrong and stupid but what does it have to do with Ed's skin color? This ties into the history that the Maori people share with a lot of indigenous groups who were colonized by europeans. I would encourage you to do more research on your own but I'll point you in the generally right direction. Indigenous men are portrayed as hyper violent in order to justify their subjugation (see head hunters stereotypes or how often people assume indigenous cultures were doing human sacrifice). A lot of the Ed hate exaggerates how violent he is in comparison to other characters. Indigenous men are portrayed as dirty and barbaric and in need of being civilized by a benevolent white savior. A lot of fic and meta positions either Stede or Izzy as needing to save Ed from himself, or as needing to babysit him or teach him to read or bathe, ect. That's why people are so up in arms about the soap eating joke.

And finally the abuse thing. Positioning indigenous men as abusers has been used historically as a shoddy justification for family separation. This stereotype pairs incredibly well with the violent stereotype. So IF Ed was abusing poor defenseless little white Izzy it would actually be a racist decision for the writers to make. Like there's a way to portray characters of color doing abuse, because being nonwhite doesn't make you incapable of doing shitty things, but that would not be it. Thankfully that is catagorically not what's happening, we've been told that the Kraken is an abuse responce, Izzy provokes the Kraken, we've seen Izzy be paralelled with Ed's two other abusers (Hornigold and Ed's dad), we've been shown Izzy controlling the flow of information between Ed and his crew, we've been showing Izzy manipulating Ed, we've been shown him lying to turn the crew against Ed, we've been shown Izzy attempting to murder someone Ed cares about specifically because Ed cares about them, we've seen Izzy threaten Ed's life for acting wrong, we've heard Izzy confess to doing all of that shit FOR YEARS on his death bed (a time which it would completely undercut the emotional impact of the scene if he was lying). So like... people ignoring all of that shit in order to portray Ed as shooting off his leg for no fucking reason and say he's the abuser is very... "You forgot the racism don't worry we'll add it back in for you" and continuing to insist on that and be shitty to people who won't cop to your dumbass shit is actively making the fandom a more racist space.

#ofmd meta #fandom racism

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sassyfrassboss · 9 months

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Apparently Meghan goes ballistic when Archie and Lili get even the slightest mark or dirt on them that their nannies are constantly bathing them both and changing their clothes repeatedly throughout the day so that Meghan won’t go off at them AND the kids. My cousin actually used to work for them in an area without a NDA but now works for a much better family in the area with much better connections…

The kids are only allowed in a certain area of the house alone, they are not allowed to eat or drink in certain areas of the house, the dogs are not allowed in the house and any instances that either child or dog has been it is just for show and kids aren’t allowed to play with any of the dogs.

The kids follow a strict diet of everything being free - vegan, gluten-free, sugar-free, nut-free fat-free and organic foods are only to be given to them. Lollipops are sugar free and organic, Archie is said to hate them but eats them because they’re candy and fun looking. None of them get anything sticky or that can spill or melt like ice cream, that whole story about Archie in the car getting picked up was utter baloney.

At school as well Archie freaks out about getting dirty or doing anything messy. He likes getting out in the garden at home but the whole Archie and his chicken story is also baloney, it’s just Meghan wanting to compete with how outdoorsy the Wales kids are and how they have animals. Archie and Lili are only allowed to be around the chickens if it’s photo-op time. But back to Archie at school, he doesn’t like sharing and steals other kids lunch items from them because it’s something he wants and looks better than the gruel he gets from home.

Meghan is desperately wanting Archie to be known as Prince while at school but the board and heads disagreed but all of his items have HRH Prince Archie labelled on them and it’s also known that Meghan doesn’t allow him to have any friends that she hasn’t approved and won’t allow him to play with them. Archie doesn’t talk about home often though and doesn’t speak about Lili, and neither Harry or Meghan pick him up from school, it is a burly big man who chauffeurs the children and their nannies around.

Harry does spend a lot of time away from home and Meghan has a lot of parties, when this happens Archie and Lili are sent to the cottage to sleep and be. When Meghan is drunk she is combative and she is angry so staff usually lock the gates and don’t let her out the estate.

Doria is such a bitch and is literally so degrading towards everyone even Harry and the kids. She is no happy go lucky grandmother and like Meghan feels Archie and Lili should be seen and not heard and basically be perfect statues nonstop that do not misbehave or not do what they are told. The whole salt and pepper together is the tip of the iceberg as if Archie and now Lili don’t do anything exactly how Meghan wants, and Doria wants then they are punished. But it’s also staff too, a maid was fired because she didn’t clean exactly how Meghan wanted. Nannies are belittled and basically abused by Meghan and work basically 24/7 every day.

My cousin says that Meghan has got no friends in Montecito and she has become Public Enemy Number One because she won’t stop flirting with husbands, this is one of the reasons why David Foster doesn’t want anything to do with her. Meghan apparently had something going on with a Russian man who is linking them up with South Africa, interviewing Putin etc. Nacho’s wife hates her too btw, pwife as Delfina says now means puta wife.

HOT TEA ALERT

None of this really surprises me, except for the kids having to be tidy and clean because there for a while Meghan looked like a hot mess every appearance she made...

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newtonsheffield · 3 months

Note

I feel for Wimbledon Kate. Having to perform mundane tasks while having a dreamy Anthony in the same room. Imagine washing dishes with that kind of distraction!

Oh Kate finds Anthony so distracting. Especially after they move in together. She can’t stop staring at Anthony while she does the most boring, basic stuff like brushes her teeth while Anthony trims his beard.

He always stands in the bathroom in just his tight boxer briefs completely unashamed of the fact he’s practically naked while he trims his beard and slowly moisturises oil into it, softening the rough hair so it feels gentle against her thighs. Kate’s still staring at him, her mouth full of toothpaste and her toothbrush hanging limply from her hand when he moves on to his hair, smoothing his hands through it, the muscles of his arms flexing deliciously.

“Everything okay?” Anthony blinked at her, noticing her staring. “Are you done brushing?”

Kate shook herself, spitting out the toothpaste and running the water under the tap. “Yep. Everything’s fine.”

Anthony kissed her cheek as he made his way around her, his hands ghosting over her hips for a second. “Love you.”

“Yeah I… Love you too.” Kate swallowed, watching him walk away towards the wardrobe they shared now. “Even if you’re so hot you could turn a Nun.”

The thing Kate hadn’t realised when she’d asked Anthony to move in with her was that he’d… be everywhere. Well, she had realised that, she wasn’t an idiot. But he was so… present.

He was there when she brushed her teeth and he slipped into the shower behind her and soothed the muscles in her shoulders and gently massaged shampoo into her hair. He was there when she slipped out the door to the tennis court outside, waving to Mary and Edwina.

“Morning, ladies!”

He was there when she ate breakfast, ducking to take a bite of her yoghurt off her spoon, smiling at her when he pressed their lips together.

“There’s more in the fridge.”

Anthony smiled at her, sipping his smoothie “I just wanted a bite. Your Mum’s here.”

Kate nodded, waving Mary into the kitchen, “Do you have classes this afternoon?”

“I do. David, his dad is very scary and thinks I’m going to turn his son into a champion overnight. David hates tennis and wants to play basketball.”

Kate nodded, kissing him gently as he snatched up his keys, “I’ll see you when you get home. Love you.”

“Love you too.” He smiled at Mary, “Mary, lovely to see you.”

“You as well, Anthony.”

Kate watched him leave, watched him throw his kit bag into the Range Rover he’d bought himself when he won Wimbledon. A treat, he’d called it. A treat that sat in his driveway next to her car all the time now. A matching set almost.

“Everything okay, sweetheart?”

Kate nodded, turning back to her breakfast, “Yeah I just… I’m still getting used to Anthony… being around.”

Mary chuckled, “It’s been a while since Appa died, honey, but that’s what boyfriends did in my day. Provided emotional support, shared burdens.”

Kate rolled her eyes, “I’m not regretting us living together, I love him but… he’s too perfect? I got home yesterday and he’d pre-put my myoball in the fridge for me because he knows I like it after a weights session.”

“And this is a problem?” Mary chuckled, “That he loves you and wants to look after you?”

“No he just… he’s very distracting. And I’m trying to live my life.”

The back door slammed shut and Edwina slunk in, “Oh, poor Kate. Her little boyfriend’s a simp. Some of us can’t get a text back!”

Kate looked at their mother who shook her head mouthing “Josie Bagwell hasn’t called her back.”

Kate rolled her eyes, “He’s also too neat. Our pantry is in alphabetical order.”

Edwina blinked at her, “You are running out of sympathy babe. Big time.”

#pumped up au #wimbledon au #kathony #anthony x kate #kate sharma #kate sheffield #anthony bridgerton #molly’s asks and answers

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canirove · 2 months

Text

In The Name of Love | Chapter 23

Previous chapter | Next chapter

Masterlist

"Finally, Valeria! I haven't seen you since last year!"

"You are so dramatic, Pedro" I laugh, trying to close my apartment's door while he wraps his arms around me.

"But it is actually true. I hate Christmas."

"No, you don't."

"I do. Because I don't get to see you for like two weeks. And I'm needy, Val. So needy" he pouts. "Didn't you miss me?"

"Not really. I had you with me."

"Because you carry me in your heart? That's so cute, Val. See how you can do cheesy too?"

"What? You have said it all!" I laugh again. "But that's now what I meant. I mean, I do, but no."

"You aren't making any sense" Pedri says with a confused look.

"Look behind you."

"What?"

"Just turn around" I say.

"What… Holy shit. Is that… is that me?"

"Yep. A life size cardboard cutout of my favourite photo from your shirtless photoshoot."

"Did you get it for yourself as a Christmas present?" he chuckles.

"Oh, no. This was your besties and your brother's Christmas present. And the last one they will ever give because I'm fucking murdering them the moment I see them."

"What?"

"Your brother managed to convince Marina to give him the address of my grandparents' house and they sent it there."

"No!" Pedri says, his eyes wide.

"Yep. And that cardboard wasn't the only thing they sent me. There also was a box with a blanket, a mug, a phone case and a pillow with that photo on all of them."

"Really?" he chuckles.

"Yes, really. And it isn't funny, Pedri. Did you know about this?"

"What? No! I had no idea, I swear."

"Are you sure? Because it is a bit of a coincidence that I joked with you about getting a pillow with your face on it, and they gifted me one" I say, crossing my arms over my chest.

"I wasn't part of it. I promise you, Val. But maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

"Maybe when Fer asked me about your reaction to the magazine, I told him about the pillow. But it was a random comment, nothing else! I had no idea they would do… that" he says, nodding towards his cardboard self.

"Well, thanks to your comment, next week we are having lunch with my mum."

"Wait what? She knows? How?"

"I had to tell her.”

"Holy shit, Val. That's… that's…"

"I know" I sigh. "Why don't we sit down and I tell you everything?"

"That actually sounds like a great idea" he says, letting himself fall on the sofa.

"Ok…" I say, taking a deep breath. "Everything started with my uncle during our Christmas Eve dinner…"

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"So, Val. Are you moving to Manchester too?" my uncle asks.

"Why would I do that?"

"Ferran is now going to play for Manchester United, isn't he? Though isn't that a bit weird since he already played for City?"

"Ferran is leaving?" my mum says. "Why hadn't you told me, Val?"

"Why should I?" I shrug.

"Because he is your boyfriend! And he is moving away! Did you argue? Is everything ok?"

"Mum, for the millionth time… Ferran and I have always been friends. Nothing else."

"And for the millionth time… I don't believe you."

"Whatever" I reply, rolling my eyes.

"Valeria, don't whatever me."

"Then stop all the nonsense with Ferran! He is just a friend!"

"A friend doesn't do what he did when you were pushed!"

"Not this again…"

"Actually, when it is your best friend's girlfriend then one rolling down the stairs…" David murmurs.

"What?" everyone on the table says, turning to look at him.

"Val isn't dating Ferran. She is dating his best friend" he says.

"Does he also play for Barça? Who is he?" my uncle asks me.

"He doesn't, he is just a normal guy. He met Ferran through a mutual friend, and I met Ferran through him. Through my boyfriend, I mean" I explain.

"Then you aren't a wag?" one of my cousins asks.

"I am not, no. Sorry to disappoint."

"You aren't the cool cousin anymore, Val" David laughs.

"Yeah" I chuckle.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"After that, everyone went back to having dinner as if nothing had happened and they didn't ask about my boyfriend again, but my mum and I didn't share a word."

"She didn't believe you, did she?" Pedri asks.

"She knew I was hiding something. And that something walked through the door the day before Three Kings Day. David, Marina and I had come back home after going out for a walk, and then…"

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Bloody hell!" Marina screams. "Why is there a shirtless Pedri standing in the middle of the living room?"

"First of all, language. And second, that's what I would like to know… Valeria" my mum says, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Me? Why me?"

"It arrived for you. That, and a box with more stuff with that photo on it. What is all this?"

"That's a really good question… And why did you open a package with my name on it?"

"That isn't important right now."

"Yes, it is, mum! That was private!"

"Why did Ferran send you things with a shirtless boy on them as your Christmas present?" she asks.

"Ferran?"

"Yes. Him and some other boys, there was a note."

"Oh my God, mum! You read that too? What is wrong with you?"

"I am your mother, Valeria."

"And I'm not 12 anymore! You aren't allowed to open my packages or the letters I receive!"

"Lower down your voice, please…"

"No, I'm not lowering anything!" I yell.

"Woah, what is going on here?" my uncle says, walking into the room. "And why do you have a shirtless Pedri here? Is that your Christmas present, Marina?" he laughs.

"It actually is Val's" she replies, her eyes fixed on the floor.

"What? Why would someone send that to Val?"

"That's what I would like to know too" my mum says.

"It's just a joke between friends, ok?"

"And one of those friends is Ferran."

"Yes, mum. Glad to know you finally understood it" I say.

"Yeah, I don't see your boyfriend sending you a life size version of his naked best frie… Oh my God, Val" my uncle gasps. "Pedri!"

"Yes, that's really him, no Photoshop."

"No, no, no, no. Pedri is best friends with Ferran. And he's sent you this because… because…"

"Because what?" my mum asks.

"Because Pedri is Val's boyfriend, isn't he?"

"Shit" Marina whispers.

"Fuck" David says under his breath.

"That's crazy" I laugh.

"Valeria, are you dating a child?"

"He isn't a child, mum."

"Isn't he the boy Marina likes?"

"He is."

"Then he is a child."

"He isn't, mum! He is in his twenties!"

"Early twenties" she corrects me.

"Fine, yes."

"Val, you are dating a child!"

"He isn't a child! Stop saying that!"

"But he is a child next to you! How could you do that, Valeria? Are you that desperate for attention? Is this your way of dealing with Marc moving on with his life? Are you going through one of those crises people have at a certain age?"

"What?" I laugh.

"Valeria, there are so many men out there that aren't a decade younger than you… And men who aren't football players either. They all cheat on their partners."

"You didn't seem so against the idea when you thought I was dating Ferran."

"That's different."

"Why? He is just a couple of years older than Pedri, you know?"

"That's enough."

"Enough for what?"

"To not look like a cougar, Valeria!"

"There it is, she said it" I laugh.

"This isn't funny."

"I know, mum. I know."

"Valeria, where are you going?" she says as I walk away.

"To my room!"

"Dating a teenager is turning you into one?" she laughs.

"Yes, looks like it!" I yell back.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Yikes…" Pedri says.

"Yeah" I sigh. "I didn't leave my room for the rest of the day, and the next morning I packed everything and left."

"Me included" he chuckles.

"That was Marina and David."

"But if we are meeting with your mum… Have you talked?"

"That also was Marina and David. My uncle too. All of them convinced her to at least get to know you."

"Oh, I see… Do you think it will work?"

"Knowing my mother it won't, no. But after everything they did to help, we can't say no."

"I mean, so far I've been able to charm all the women in your family that I've met. I can do it again" Pedri smiles.

"Charming Marina was too easy, she's a teenager."

"And what about you, uh?" he says, raising an eyebrow. "Are you a teenager too?"

"Around you I am, yes. Haven't you heard me giggle and seen me blush like a schoolgirl?"

"I have. And I love when I manage to do it" he says, putting a lock of hair behind my ear and caressing my cheek. "It'll be ok, Val. You'll see. She just needs time, it isn't something easy."

"Your mum took it better."

"She did, but she also knew beforehand that I was dating someone, I had told her things about you. Your mum suddenly found out that her only daughter was dating someone younger than her and who happens to be a football star."

"That also applies to Ferran and she was ok with it. Well, maybe the star part not so much…"

"So mean, Val" Pedri laughs.

"It doesn't apply to you either."

"Val…" he says, rolling his eyes.

"Yet."

"That's not true, but whatever. Your mum will come around. It may take her some time because stubbornness runs in the family, but if you fell madly in love with me, so we'll she."

"There is no need to go that far. Liking you is enough."

"Ok" he laughs.

"And I'm not madly in love with you."

"You are such a bad liar, Val…" he says, leaning forward.

"I'm not lying."

"You are."

"I'm not."

"Liar" Pedri whispers, moving even closer.

"I'm not. Because madly isn't enough to express how much I love you."

"Aww, Val. Did the new year make you cheesy?"

"Maybe" I shrug. "Now, are you going to kiss me or not? You haven't done it since last year."

"I am, Val. I am" he laughs before his lips finally meet mine.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Ready?"

"Ready" Pedri says, taking a deep breath.

"Mum, we are here!" I say after opening the door and walking into my old house.

"You are late."

"Yeah, I know. There was a car accident and they had us waiting for a while. And hello, by the way."

"Hi" she says.

"So… Umm… Mum, this is Pedri. Pedri, this is my mum."

"Hello, ma'am" he smiles, offering her his hand.

"Hi" she repeats, not moving a muscle.

"What are you making for lunch?" I ask, trying to break the awkward silence.

"Paella."

"Oh, your favourite" Pedri says.

"Do you like it?"

"I do, ma'am."

"Please stop calling me ma'am, I'm not that old."

"I'm sorry, Mrs…"

"Miss, I'm not married. Didn't Valeria tell you about it?"

"Yes, she did, I'm sorry. I am a bit nervous" he chuckles.

"First time meeting your girlfriend's mother?"

"First time, yes."

"I see… Is she also your first girlfriend? I mean, she has to. You haven't had time to have any serious relationship, you are just a kid."

"Mum!"

"Am I lying?" my mother says.

"It's ok, Val" Pedri smiles. "She is my first serious girlfriend, yes."

"How serious?"

"I love her. I truly do. She isn't like any other girl I've met before."

"Of course she isn't" my mother laughs. "She is a woman, all the other girls you've met were just that, girls."

"Mum!"

"She isn't lying, Val. Again" Pedri chuckles.

"And when you say you love her… what do you mean?"

"I… I don't understand" he says with a confused look.

"Do you love her the same way you loved that girl you spent a whole weekend with in a hotel room?"

"Oh my God, mum!"

"Valeria, let him talk. How do you love her, Pedro?"

"It's Pedri" I say.

"Pedri sounds stupid and childish. And you say he isn't a kid, don't you?"

"I…"

"Then Pedro it is. So, how do you love my daughter?" my mother asks him.

"I love her like I've never loved anyone before. And I know what you are going to say, that I'm too young and I haven't had time to experience what real love feels like, that how could I know. But when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, your other half… Those things don't matter. You just know. And that's Val to me."

"Then do you see yourself getting married and having children?"

"If that's what she wants" he shrugs.

"What she wants? What about what you want? Don't you have anything to say about it?"

"I just want her to be happy" he says.

"Well, if you want to have children you better start taking it seriously, she's getting old."

"Mum!" I say once again.

"That's how biology works, Val. Anyway, I'm gonna go check on our food. Do you want something to drink while you wait?"

"I could do with a beer" I sigh.

"Pedro?"

"Just water, thank you" he smiles.

"Water, of course. What else would a kid drink, uh?" she says as she walks away, not allowing me to be outraged by one of her comments for the millionth time in the past five minutes.

"I'm so sorry about all that…"

"It's ok, Val" Pedri smiles. "It's been fun to see from where you've got that savage side of yours."

"What?"

"Calling me a kid? Saying that Pedri sounds stupid? You've done that too, you take after your mother."

"I guess I do, yes" I sigh again. "But I'm not that mean."

"You are worse" he smiles. "And I love it. I love you."

"Ehem" my mother says when he is about to kiss me. "Your beer and your water."

"Thank you, mum."

"Thank you" Pedri says, giving her his best smile and making me blush. Her reaction? None. Completely impassible.

"So, why don't I show you around, uh?" I offer.

"It is a small flat, there isn't much to see. I'm sure the living room in his house is just as big as the whole place" my mother snorts.

"Come, let me show you some old photos I have in my room" I say, taking his hand and walking away. "There is one of David as a kid that he hates and that you must see."

"Oh, yes, from when you were kids. You weren't born yet, were you, Pedro?"

"Mum!"

"I'm not lying, am I, Pedro?"

"I…" he mumbles.

"Mum, stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Insulting him!"

"I'm not doing such thing, Valeria" she shrugs.

"You… whatever. Why don't you go check the paella again? You know I don't like it if it is overcooked."

"Ok, fine. But I wasn't insulting you, was I, Pedro?"

"Mum!"

"I'm leaving, I'm leaving. No need to yell" she says before disappearing through the door.

"I hate her."

"Val, hey. Val" Pedri says, cupping my face while I try really hard not to cry. "It's ok. I'm ok."

"But I'm not!"

"I know, I know. But… It's just lunch, ok? We can do this."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can, Valeria. You can" he says, making me look him in the eyes.

"You've called me Valeria."

"Because I wanted you to know how serious I am. We can do this. You can do this."

"I can" I say, taking a deep breath.

"You can" he says, caressing my cheek.

"The food is almost… ready" my mother says, stopping us as our lips touched. Again. "I'm gonna set the table. Can you help me, Val? You'll check those photos later."

"Yes, of course."

"You can do this" Pedri whispers in my ear.

"I can do this" I say to myself.

#pedri #pedri fanfic #pedri gonzalez fanfic #pedri gonzalez #pedri imagine #pedri gonzalez imagine #football fanfic #football imagine

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swimmingismywholelife · 1 year

Text

For the First Time

Summary: At the top of the London Eye, Christian realizes for the first time that he's fallen in love.

Warnings: Fluff

Word Count: 1.2K

A/N: Kind of a prequel to What Kind of Future but can be read as a stand alone. Inspired by "You Can" David Archuleta. Yeah uh this is fluff but highkey this pained me to write. I miss you.

"'Cause if anyone can make me fall in love you can."

"Please please please please please can we go on the Ferris wheel?" you begged your boyfriend.

"Y/N, that line is so long! We can always go at a different time," Christian complained.

"Chris, when is the next time both of us are gonna have a day off like this?" you replied giving him the puppy dog eyes and pouting slightly. "I know you don't wanna wait, but just this once. Please? For me?"

Christian sighed. You were right. This was the first time in weeks that the two of you had the same day off, and he took full advantage of it. You'd had small dates in the apartment the two of you shared, but he was excited to finally take you out to do something. And despite how much he hated going into London proper, he knew how much you loved it.

That's how you got to this point. You two were out exploring and doing tourist things when you'd seen the London Eye in the distance. You adored Ferris wheels, but you'd never been to the famous one despite how long you'd been in England. It was something you'd always wanted to experience, and you especially wanted to share that moment with your very stubborn boyfriend.

"Fine, but you totally owe me," he said reluctantly.

You squealed in excitement immediately hugging him around the neck. He wrapped his arms around your waist in response chuckling at how cute you were. Christian really didn't want to wait in line, but the moment he saw the smile on your face he knew he couldn't resist.

"Thank you thank you thank you! I promise it'll be super fun!" you exclaimed, pecking his cheek before practically dragging him towards the never ending line.

Fortunately for Christian, the line went by a lot faster than he expected. He was recognized by a few people who asked for pictures, but for the most part people had left you alone, something Christian greatly appreciated. As much as he loved his fans and appreciated their support, today wasn't about them. This was about spending time with the person he loved most even if she'd roped him into standing on a ridiculously long line for a Ferris wheel.

"I'm so excited!" you exclaimed when the two of you finally got into a capsule. "It's such a beautiful day too! I bet the view of London is so pretty from up here!"

"But nothing will ever be as pretty as you baby," Christian winked.

"I'm not sure if I wanna cringe or blush but I'll let it slide because you agreed to this," you replied.

Christian's heart warmed at the sight of you. He'd never seen such a smile on your face before despite how many months you'd been together. Your happy mood was contagious, making the day seem that much brighter. Your excitement increased as the capsule rose higher into the sky, squealing lightly to yourself and kicking your feet below you. You were like a little kid in a candy store, and Christian swore he'd never seen something more adorable.

This was an experience you'd dreamed about since coming to England. Something about being able to overlook the city and realize just how big the world around you is had always been incredibly humbling and inspiring to you. To others it was super mundane. After all, you were in England. There were so many other things you could be doing.

"Thank you for coming with me Christian," you said softly after a while, the wind gently blowing your hair around your face. "I know you really didn't wanna do this, but I really appreciate you saying yes more than you know."

He leaned over and moved the hair out of your face.

"Of course. I'd do anything for you Y/N," he said seriously with a gentle smile on his face. You beamed at him, anticipating the eventual stop at the top that you knew was approaching soon.

Christian had never been in love before. He'd had a few flings here and there, but he was always more focused on his football career than he was about being in a serious relationship. He considered himself to be pretty inexperienced in the whole love department.

"Dee," he asked his sister one day when they were facetiming.

"What's up brother of mine?" she answered.

He hesitated a bit before asking, "How do you know when you're in love with someone?"

Christian had to quickly cover his ears to protect his hearing from his sister's screaming.

"You're in love with Y/N???" she asked excitedly.

"That's the thing Dee. I have no idea. How am I supposed to know? What am I supposed to do?" he sighed.

Devyn smiled at her brother, glad to see he found someone who made him so happy.

"I wish I could tell you Chris, but there's no way to logic it out. You can read all the books and watch all the movies but there's not really a method or anything like that. If you're in love with her, then you'll know when the time is right."

The moment the capsule stopped moving, so did his heart. You let out a gasp, taking in the beautiful scenery below you. You immediately grabbed for your phone wanting to capture the London skyline. Meanwhile, Christian grabbed for his own phone. But rather than taking pictures of London, he found an even more beautiful sight to photograph: you. You noticed and hid slightly behind your hair.

"Christian I look ugly!" you whined.

"You could never look ugly even if you tried babe," he waved off your concerns trying to focus his camera on you. "But I wanna be able to have proof that you checked this off your bucket list."

"Oh wait! I have an idea!" you exclaimed. "You take a picture of me taking a picture of you!"

He laughed. "Babe, why would we do that when the phones would block our faces anyway?"

"We could have matching pictures!" you responded shyly. "I don't know, it just seems like it would be a cute picture or something. Like taking coupley pictures at the top of a Ferris wheel."

Christian felt his heart skip a beat. You were just so unbelievably cute and he would do anything if it meant keeping that smile on your face.

He rolled his eyes jokingly. "Okay, we can take your pictures."

You grinned, prepping your phone.

"Okay ready? Say cheese even though we won't see each other's faces!"

He couldn't help but smile anyway. He always did whenever you were around.

"Let's see what these pictures look like!" you said excitedly. "These are cute Christian! I'm gonna post these on everything!"

Golden hour had just struck, the wind gently blowing your hair. Your eyes sparkled as you scrolled through the pictures you'd just taken and Christian couldn't help but stare how incredibly beautiful you looked. You were truly glowing and Christian wondered if you were an angel God had sent him.

Time seemed to have stopped. He could faintly hear the sounds of the city below him. He could just make out the feeling of the sun on his skin. But the only thing that really had his attention was you. And in that very moment, Christian knew. Just as his sister had told him, it just happened. And he just knew.

Taglist: @neverinadream @pulisicsgirl @masonsrem @masonspulisic @bracedes @lizzypotter14 @notsoattractivearenti @thoseboysinblue @mortirolo @lovelynikol16 @chelseagirl98

#christian pulisic #christian pulisic fluff #christian pulisic x reader #christian pulisic imagine #swimmingismywholelife

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prazinos · 1 year

Text

This is such a cliché but I'm a slut for clichés

Spencer Reid x Reader

WARNINGS ! ~ Fluff | Little violence |

Everybody was born with a tattoo. You've probably heard about it. A tattoo that your soulmate shares.

You? When you were younger you loved the idea of soulmates. Always wondering what yours would look like, act like, talk like.

And as you entered your teen years and some of your friends started finding their soulmates, you started looking for somebody with the same tattoo as yours as well.

your tattoo? A cup of coffee.

You didn't even like coffee that much and almost everybody that saw your tattoo laughed at it.

It wasn't like it was a bad tattoo, it was kind of cool. But you were basically forced to hate it from the amount of people that pointed and laughed when they saw the tattoo adorning your collar bone.

You started wearing bandages to cover it up, you didn't like that. So you resorted to wearing jumpers and any clothing that would definitely cover it instead.

Nearly your entire life your mother had told you not to be embarrassed about it. But that was easy for her to say, she had a primrose on the back of her hand.

People always described touching your soulmate for the first time, to almost be painful, which was strange. Your friend, Doreen told you that it felt like getting zapped but all over your tattoo.

Yeah, maybe you didn't want to find your soulmate.

But we can stop talking about soulmates for now. It was your first day at the BAU, something you had been working towards for ages.

You had gotten lucky to have had David Rossi lecturing your criminology classes as he had taken a liking to you and when you were fresh out of college, you had an email from him telling you that he had spoken to his superiors at the BAU and wanted you on the team !

You couldn't believe it, this couldn't be real. 24 years old and you were going to be working somewhere so prestige

Oh but it was, as you walked into the elevator you were met with Rossi already waiting for you.

'Well if it isn't Y/N L/N'

'Hi Mr Rossi, thank you so much for this opportunity'

'No need for the Mr now kid, Rossi is just fine, we're colleagues now'

You smiled to yourself, fidgeting with the collar of your turtle neck.

As the elevator was rising, your nervousness was rising as well. What if the team didn't like you? Rossi had told you about them already, giving a brief description

A kid, around your age but with many more academic achievements than you

A badass dark haired woman who didn't take shit from anybody

A handsome guy who flirted with a computer nerd?

A computer nerd who's career started by getting on the FBI's most dangerous hackers list

A blonde woman who caught everybody's eye

And a tall serious man as the unit chief.

Yeah, you were nervous.

The elevator dinged and you took your hand off your turtle neck, the doors opened and you were greeted with a blonde woman who looked too happy for 8:30am

'Oh my god you're the newbie! I'm Penelope, oh my goodness you're so pretty!'

'Oh-um thank you! I love your dress'

'Calm down Garcia, don't want to scare her away on her first day' said a tall dark haired man. He shook your hand introducing himself as Hotch.

As you walked into the office you saw a dark haired woman, another blonde, and another man.

'baby girl!' he called out, Penelope speed walked over and the man wrapped an arm around her waist. You noticed the matching brain tattoos on their forearm.

You introduced yourself learning the names of them all, Emily, JJ, and Derek. They all seemed nice enough but they would not stop talking about the other guy that works here that you'll 'absolutely love'

'We have a case' Hotch said from the briefing room.

We all walked into the room and the photos Garcia pulled up were less than pleasant.

You twirled the pen you had around your fingers, thinking about the case,

All blonde women, early to mid thirties, all had the same body type and all had their genitals mutilated.

'I think we're looking for a man, heartbroken, possibly divorced based on age, the wife may have left him?' you spoke not looking up from the case file.

You heard murmurs of agreement at your statement.

When you did look up from your case file you watched as a tall lanky shaggy haired man walked (ran) in.

He was unbelievably attractive. he had dark circles under his eyes that you could not take your eyes off. His face looked like it was sculpted by greek gods.

He looked around the table for a free seat, looking at you, his eyes widening. You looked away, not wanting to make it look like you were staring at him (although you were).

He sat across from you waving a little. You smiled slightly waving back before turning at the sound of Hotch's voice

'Wheels up in 30'

As you walked onto the jet you double checked you had everything you needed for the flight.

headphones

phone

blanket

book (specifically From Lukov with Love)

Sitting down in one of the comfortable chairs, you put in your headphones and pressed play on your favourite playlist. Opening your book.

After about an hour you set the book down to get a cup of coffee. ironic.

'I didn't get to introduce myself, I'm-uh I'm Spencer. Reid.' You turned your head to look at the handsome man you waved at earlier.

'Y/N L/N' you smiled putting out your hand,

'Sorry I have a thing about germs' he said looking down at your hand. You felt a bit awkward putting your hand back on the freshly poured coffee.

'I uh-saw you reading a book. What's it about?' he asked you, walking you back to your seat.

'oh its-uh it's about these two rival ice skaters and they have to compete in a skating tournament together'

'That's...vacuous'

he said scrunching his nose

'Vacuous? really? You couldn't have just said stupid?' you said taking a sip of your coffee looking at him, now in the seat across from you.

'It's formal'

'does it need to be formal?'

'I believe so'

'okay...so you're like a genius right?'

'yes'

'okay...how genius?'

He narrows his eyes at you. Not good.

'quite...genius' he says scrunching his nose again. you chuckled a bit at his hesitance.

mustn't get out much

The plane landed finally, getting onto the tarmac after an annoying two hours, and you still had a long day.

When you got to the chicago police department, you greeted whoever you had to greet because at this point you didn't care. You just wanted to spend more time with spencer.

You stared at the board showing all the evidence compiled. You banged your head against it sighing.

out of the corner of your eye you notice Spencer putting down a cup of coffee, one already in his hand. You turn around and he gestures towards the coffee on the table. you take it eyeing him skeptically.

this case was doing your head in. it had been a week.

you couldn't figure out who was committing these god awful murders and being around Spencer was not helping you focus.

'I figured it out' JJ said, you all turned your head towards her before she called Garcia.

The mans name was Jared Peters and he was 37, and his ex wife left him for another man.

You arrived at his home, guns drawn, Emily and yourself walking down the corridor of his home,

'shit'

'what is it L/N?'

'SHIT!'

You ran out of the house and around the back to where JJ was, and as she was turning the corner you could see Jared about to reach for JJ, she matched the victimology. (but younger)

You ran up behind him, alerting him and making him turn around, raising his knife towards you, you didn't react in time as he stabbed you in the side of your arm.

You cursed out loudly as JJ fought with Jared. You kicked under his feet, knife still in your arm, making you wince but successfully got him on the ground. You turned around to see Rossi, Spencer, and Emily.

you pulled the knife out of your arm, dropping it on the ground. Walking to the ambulance that was outside the house.

Sitting in the ambulance you smiled to yourself, what an eventful first case.

'Y/N, thank you seriously, I could've died if you didn't come to where I was' JJ said walking over to where you were seated.

'It's okay seriously, I'm just glad you weren't hurt' you said

After another two hour flight back to DC, your brain was fried. You had a bandage around your arm that was a bit too tight for comfort as you didn't get a wink of sleep on the plane.

As you were all walking on the tarmac you heard your name being called,

you turned around to see the handsome doctor you were acquainted with.

Turns out while in Chicago he had bought the book you were reading and read it on the flight back. You both argued about the book, about what should and shouldn't have been done and or said.

Walking back into the office, Penelope greeted all of you and gave you a tight hug

'Alright everyone, we have quite a bit of paperwork tomorrow so get some sleep' Hotch said yawning slightly.

The entire team groaned at even the thought of homework.

Then, something weird happened.

Spencer Reid, known germaphobe stuck his hand out to you.

You looked up at him, as did the team, he has never warmed up to somebody so fast.

you grinned and reached down to shake it

almost as soon as your hand touched his, you both retracted your hands reaching for your collarbones, both feeling the sharp zap.

You heard Penelope gasp and squeal

You looked back up at the doctor, pulling down the high cut shirt you were wearing to reveal the tattoo, Spencer unbuttoned his shirt slightly, revealing a matching tattoo.

both your eyes wide but smiling practically ear to ear, you giggled as Penelope yelled

'Celebratory drinks!' she yelled.

You and the team walked to the elevator, forget what you said about not wanting to meet your soulmate.

OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO BAD

I would like to apologise for this atrocity, I would like to open up requests again because I could seriously only think of this shitshow for Spencer Reid and he does not deserve it

#spencer reid #spencer reid x fem!readr #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid criminal minds

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sunflower-lilac42 · 5 months

Text

✧ 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 | sturniolo triplets ♔

summary: the true story of why Matt, Chris, and Nicks fans hate their older sister.

warnings: sad, being lonely, crying, depression, the usual from this series.

notes: part of the 'behind the lens' series. the scenarios are all fake! i am actually obsessed with this one. i think this is the faster I've written one of these. i am also pretty sure that because i listened to this song so much while writing it it is one of my most played songs this year. also add yourself to the tag list! ➺ taglist form

series masterlist | celebrities masterlist | main masterlist

‘Telling myself I won’t go there Oh, but I know that I won’t care Tryna wash away all the blood I’ve spilt This lust is a burden that we both share Two sinners can’t atone from a lone prayer Souls tied, intertwined by pride and guilt’

If you were to meet y/n now, you wouldn’t have expected her to be a contributing factor in her brothers' social life. Yet, contrary to popular belief, she had been active in their early social media. From videos to posts to even small podcasts here and there, y/n was a part of it.

This soon changed when she went back to college, she stopped being in videos, they stopped posting about her and with her, they stopped talking about her on their channel completely.

Now y/n hasn’t done anything wrong for them to change abruptly this way. It was the fans that were the problem. They used to be so lovely towards her, saying positive things about their relationship, commenting on how pretty she was (and how the four were definitely related and they got good genes), and even some saying how happy she made them and that they could tell that they were great siblings.

Those were the ones who mostly stayed by her side when the boys started to become more popular. The more and more little teenage girls became infatuated with them, the more and more hate the girl received.

They were blatantly jealous of the girl and how she always got to hang around the triplets. But what else did they expect from her, they’re siblings.

These girls tore her to shreds a year or so into their YouTube careers. Because they had started their channel during the pandemic and the lockdown, y/n had stayed home for the first half of the first semester because she was scared of having to be alone for that amount of time, with no roommate and no in-person classes.

When she was finally comfortable with going back to college, she settled into her room after the first couple of weeks. She had only been there a month or two before she had to go back home again due to an outbreak on campus.

The triplets had only put out two or three videos in the time that she was gone and those videos really gave fans a perspective into their lives.

Matt, Nick, and Chris had been acting differently about their sister. They didn’t want to want to answer questions about her, they didn’t even really want to mention her because they were scared and worried about her.

They knew about the subtle messages she had been getting, some were harmless, mean comments while some were more worrisome. They were threatening her and saying that she didn’t belong with that family and some going as far as saying that she didn’t belong in this world at all.

They were protecting her, not thinking that they were making it worse. They didn’t want people to know where she went to college, they didn’t want their fans to ‘hunt her down’ and hurt her.

However, the fans took this shift in behavior negatively. They thought that because they didn’t talk about her they didn’t care about her. They thought that she was mean to them and that they didn’t really want her around.

When she went back to college for the spring semester, she told herself she wasn’t going to go through another cycle of depression again. She told herself she wasn’t going to fall into a depressive state again like when she was a teenager.

These comments affected her more than she cared to admit, she didn’t want a bunch of girls that were younger than her to control her emotions. But the fans were important to her brothers, and she wouldn’t want that to change how they felt about them. So she stayed quiet and never spoke a word about it.

✧༺✎༻∞

‘There’s darkness in the distance I’m beggin’ for forgiveness But I know I might resist’

She saw the comments from a mile away. They weren’t hidden, they were noticeable, very noticeable to her. To everyone else, they saw it as just the regular old hate comments and they got over it. But her, it always stayed with her.

She went onto social media after a few months of this happening to try and get their fans to forgive her. She aslo attempted to tell them to stop attacking her brothers just because they didn’t like her. But they didn’t. Some did, but most did not. The boys weren’t happy with the apology, stating that y/n didn’t do anything wrong for them to hate her. But she wasn’t having it.

She argued that there must have been something she had done for them to think these horrid things about her. Though, deep down she knew that wasn’t the case. That these people were just trying to make themselves feel better.

She didn’t want to believe anything her brothers said. She resisted it and she tried so hard to resist the comments and to fall back into the cycle.

Her resistance just wasn’t enough.

✧༺✎༻∞

‘Oh, I love it and I hate it at the same time You and I drink the poison from the same vine Oh, I love it and I hate it all the same time Hiding all of our sins from the daylight’

She loved her brothers, and sometimes their fans. She couldn’t really find a middle ground between them. The fans either loved or hated her. She was grateful for the earlier posts where there was nothing but positive comments from the fans but the negatives started to roll in, her love for the fans changed.

And that’s not to say that the positive comments all of a sudden just stopped, they were still there, it’s just that she forgot that they existed. The negatives overwhelmed the positives, just like in her life. It was the story of her life, and she wanted to change it.

She knew where their fans were coming from, jealousy. She knew that is was a common feeling within people, especially if they had something to do with fame. She knew that feeling all too well.

While they were jealous of her, she was jealous of others. They were jealous of the fact that she knew the Sturniolo Triplets, that she got to be around them all the time, and that she was related to them. She had everything that they wanted. She had money, she had a good family, and she had fame (not really but to them…).

They were so desperate to have her life that they tore her down for having it. It wasn’t like she chose for this to happen, she didn’t choose for her brothers to be YouTubers. She didn’t choose any of it. If anything, she’d choose not to have. Not because she relented her brothers for the fame that they had but she didn’t want this overarching feeling that she was being judged no matter what she did.

That’s what she was jealous of. That her brothers were so effortlessly liked. That no matter what they did someone would always support them. She wished to have that, she dreams of having that someday. She was jealous of other famous siblings who appeared as guests. That they were liked without any backlash.

How did they go on their siblings’ YouTube and not get any hate? What was different about her? Was it the fact that her brothers were attractive and their general audience was teenage girls? She wanted a normal life, she was jealous of those who had it.

Jealous was a vine of poison that just came out in different ways. And those who let jealousy consume them tried to hide it from everything and everyone.

✧༺✎༻∞

‘Tellin’ myself it’s the last time Can you spare any mercy that you might find, If I’m down on my knees again?’

She told herself that this was the last time she would put up with these comments. That this was the last time she would be affected by it. So, she set out to change it.

Except, she wasn’t the one who initiated the conversation. The boys had had enough as well. They were tired of seeing comments targeted towards their older sister. They were tired of seeing her be defeated in every one of their videos that she was in. They didn’t want her to be sad anymore.

The four put their heads together in order to solve this problem. After multiple accounts of this happening, they were tired and done. Through the next few videos, the boys said something. It wasn’t just a one-and-done thing, it was every video for the next five that they said it.

“If you are sending hate comments or anything negative to our sister please stop. She didn’t do anything to hurt you or us so there is no reason in the world to say shit.”

Sometimes all three of them piped in, but Nick was the one who said it most. She had been there for him countless times and he was pissed that this was happening. Matt and Chris chimed in, each expressing their feelings towards the subject.

“This isn’t just hurting her, it’s hurting us. We are not trying to make this about us whatsoever but she is hurting and this isn’t helping. So shut the fuck up and stop saying shit about her.”

And it helped. For a while at least. She was spared comments for numerous videos but they all slowly started to creep back in, most of them went unnoticed as they didn’t gain much attraction from anyone else in the comment section. They were buried deep and the three hadn’t noticed and neither did y/n.

Like many other things though, they gained attraction by other haters which caused them to retaliate. If they were allowed to say stuff then they were too. So over time the hate comments once again grew and grew. And once again, the boys shut them down.

“We were really hoping that this wouldn’t happen again. We are begging at this point, stop sending this stuff to our sister.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong so I don't know where in the world you all got that from.”

“We were being polite the first time and we still are trying, but if this continues we won’t be anymore.”

“If you can’t respect our wishes, then maybe you should stop watching our videos. We love our fans we do, but not the ones who attack our family members, especially for nothing except jealousy.”

✧༺✎༻∞

‘Deep down, way down, Lord, I try Try to follow your light, but it’s nighttime Please don’t leave me in the end’

She told her brothers she was trying. Not just for them but for herself. She wanted to get better and she meant that from the bottom of her heart. She was tired of being this version of herself, she wanted to get back to where she was before.

They were so proud of her, it was unbelievable. You could see the change in their videos, especially the day that she told them. They were very preppy and got along with each other exceptionally well. There were no fights in the video and they just had a good time talking about stuff with each other.

She started by changing her routine. She ate healthier foods, and got out of the house more often, even if it was just for a walk. She started to change her apartment by buying new things for it to make it look more like her. She started to work out, she really started to be herself again.

She tried so hard to do this, but the comments started to affect her again. It was an aggravating, endless cycle that she hated to do it. Every time she started to do better, they affected her and she was so over feeling this way.

The boys saw the change again too. And their sister hoped they wouldn’t leave her through this journey, It was important to her and it was important to have someone around for this. It wasn’t an easy thing to go through.

They didn’t leave her. Not once. They supported her and got her out of the house even when she didn’t want to. It was something they wouldn’t have done when they were younger. IF she wanted ot be left alone and stay inside all day, they let her. They weren’t going to go against their sister’s wishes.

But now that y/n was older and they were too, they were done with her trying to give in to the cycle. They wanted her to get better, they needed her to get better. They did everything they possibly could to make her feel like herself again.

✧༺✎༻∞

‘From the daylight, running from the daylight From the daylight, running from the daylight’

And slowly, she started to hide herself from the comments, because her mental health, and physical, were more important than anything that those people said. They didn’t matter.

𝑻𝑨𝑮𝑳𝑰𝑺𝑻 ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

@heyimselinb

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