at the top of the document i have 'troubles always gunna find you baby / but so am i' from western nights by ethel cain because literally. thats them

heres a bunch of random sentences that got cut because i never built the scenes to go around them:

Sirius, in charge of paying literally one bill, realised he forgot when the kitchen light went out. Lily told him not to open the fridge and they ate bread for dinner, sat on the kitchen floor with candles on. She would have taken a picture, only her phone had run out of battery three hours ago and she couldn’t open her laptop without seeing the thesis document and feeling sick. 

"James sent you a pie but I ate it" Sirius said, holding the pie box and not even looking guilty. 

The masters she was meant to do in two years she was now going to do in three, sat on the phone with uni administrators trying to explain how her brain felt laden with cement, unusable actually, and she needed the time to figure out how to be a person again. Sirius, mysteriously, would always appear with a biscuit packet at the end of these conversations, and, after a particularly horrible one, a bottle of tequila he’d had delivered, and she chewed him out for spying but not really. 

They pulled the tattoo gun out out over the next few months, mostly keeping to his back and arms, easily coverable. His visa case number. A crudely drawn square. ‘Jimmy’ in a heart with a cross through it. They got really drunk once and Lily almost wrote ‘sense and senseabitch’ but they couldn’t figure out how to spell it (senseabitch or senseabitchity).  

Something James had said to him once, after doing something insane to impress lily in school: I heard her voice, what was I supposed to do? 

Sirius has spent his life being distracting. It is, in fact, maybe the only thing he is good at. 

heres sirius getting a haircut. i have no idea why i didnt put this in i think i forgot:

“It needs more off the top.” 

“You just said that.” 

“It still needs it.” 

“How can you even see the top?” Sirius accused.

“It looks weird–“ 

“It’s gunna– Lily!–“

Lily had taken a large chunk of his hair and was carefully cutting against the comb, “he’s right, there’s too much at the top.” 

“Oh my god–“ 

“It was making you look like a poodle.” James added.

“You’re mixing your metaphors.” Sirius said, shortly, “Before you said I looked like I’d been lost at sea for ten years.” 

“Okay Lily, you looked like both.”

“I looked like a poodle at sea?”

“He’s mixing his similes, not metaphors.” Lily corrected, absently.

“Are you done?” Sirius asked. 

“No.” 

“Remus said you were looking slightly caveman the other day.” James added. 

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” 

“Honestly,” James grinned, “Massively so, yeah.”

Lily stepped back, squinting. “Okay, I think the left side is quite a lot shorter than the right.” 

“Brilliant, cheers Evans.” 

“Let me see” James said, craning his neck on facetime, “I need screenshots for the group chat.” 

“Christ.” 

here's a scene i wrote ages ago and cut because i couldnt think of a better joke for the last bit, even though parts of it are okay:

Sirius was having a cigarette for breakfast when Lily walked in and sat at his desk and said “I think we need to spice things up” 

“In what sense?” 

“In our relationship.” 

Sirius, overwhelmed with joke opportunities, genuinely couldn’t pick one and missed the window. “Okay,” Lily got up, clearly reading his expression, “I want to start this again.” 

“No, wait–“ 

“No, I’m not giving you a chance–“ she said, leaving. She then immediately walked back in. “I think we should–“ 

“Spice things up in what sense?” 

“We started this conversation again.” 

“I didn’t,” Sirius said, “Are you finally propositioning me? Because I’m afraid you couldn’t afford me.” 

“I was literally just going to suggest we go a day without talking so we would actually have stuff to catch up on the next day, but now I don’t think one day not speaking is enough.” 

“Oh,” Sirius feigned disappointment, “My ideas were way kinkier than that.”. 

“You just said I couldn’t afford you.” 

“I’ll give you a discount.” 

“Hard pass.”

“Snob.”

Lily stood up, “This entire conversation has been pointless, I’ll see you at dinner.” 

“I can’t believe you just came into my room to tell me you didn’t want to speak to me anymore.” 

“AndI turned down your prostitution offer.” 

“You are a shit mate. James would’ve taken me up on it.” 

“Yeah, well, he’s still got some start-up money.” Lily called, rounding the door.

also this:

They have a huge fight about whose turn it is to vacuum, full yelling, Sirius banging kitchen cabinets, Lily’s voice going hoarse. She goes in her room and tries to call James but the line is busy, which probably means Sirius is talking to him. This is so annoying that Lily goes and bangs on his door and tells him to hang up, Sirius yells back that he’s not even on the phone with him, which Lily immediately outs as a lie when she barges in the room. Sirius continues to lie loudly that it isn’t him and James puts on a high voice for ten minutes, fabricating an elaborate backstory until it’s just all of them –Lily standing, Sirius spread on his bed, James’ voice –talking shit for an hour until Remus comes looking, and then he joins in. That’s the day. 

heres this random exchange:

"I wouldn’t mind going to jail"

"What if Remus wasn’t around to bail you out" Lily countered

"That would never happen." Sirius said, eating a donut for some reason.

they were going to have a big fight. it was actually one of the first things i wrote for it, and its not bad, but i couldnt have remus appendix/lilys thesis crisis/sirius depression stuff AND this. too angsty. anyway here it is:

Lily let him ring three times, before picking up on the fourth. 

“You are fucking shite–“ 

“It’s your turn for coffee–“ 

“It’s nine am! You have never been awake at nine am! Fuck off!” She hung up. 

The phone rang twice. She picked up fourth ring, third call. 

“I said-“ 

“First of all, nine am is not an unreasonable time to call someone, secondly, when you were banging pots at all hours last week not sleeping and making some typically heinous bullshit I did all the dishes and said nothing because that’s my end of the deal, and for the record not all of us have the luxury of operating on English time one-hundred-fucking-percent of their blessed life, some of us are having to conduct company bullshit in a time-zone for a country they can’t even enter, and have been awake for four hours, and had to get out bed today. Grow up Evans.”

The dial tone was a knife. 

Lily made the coffee, and walked into Sirius on mute on zoom, glaring furiously at a notepad. He looked up when she walked in, looking a little guilty and mostly defensive. 

“I thought about spitting in this.” She held out the coffee. 

His shoulders relaxed a little. If she’d been another person, any other person, she wouldn’t have noticed, “Only thought about?” 

“Yeah. Sorry for last week.” 

“Sorry for about five minutes ago.” 

She shrugged, “Nine a.m. isn’t an unreasonable time.” 

“Your cooking isn’t that heinous.” 

“Liar.” Lily gave him the coffee, “How is the meeting?” 

“Vitally important, so I’ve had them on mute for ten minutes.” 

She smiled and hit the unmute button on his laptop. Voices burst in, Remus, half-arguing about system design, two unknown voices trying to shout him down

‘no murders’ she mouthed at him, backing out of the room. 

He grinned, winked at her. Turning back to the screen: “Oi, let Lupin finish what he was saying–“ 

i rewrote that sirius depression scene a hundred times, i can't even tell you. a million versions of it exist and still i dont know if its right

lily was going to say this: “No I don’t” Lily took the bottle out of his hands, “You are not wrong, you’re brilliant. There is no charity, nothing works without you”

or this would happen:

No, no” Lily said, easing the bottle out of his hand,

“I’m weight. You can’t keep trying to bail me out. You can’t fix it”

“Whose trying to fix it? That’s impossible. But you can tell me.” 

“Doesn’t do anything.” 

“Yes it does,” Lily, stubborn, always, to the blood, “You know it does. Its the only thing that really does work, it’s just hard to remember. You’re not charity, or weight, no one’s bailing you out. We love you. I love you. And if that’s bailing you out then fine, that’s for free forever.” 

alternately this would happen:  Sirius wasn’t there for any reason other than he was bored at the bar and James was in the business of throwing lifeboats to people he loved. And Sirius always needed the lifeboat, the saving, the pulling back. Lily dragged him to every meeting, made sandwiches, wakes him up.  Remus bullied him onto every call. Their club was the only one he ever wanted to be in, but that could not be enough forever. Without them he falls into Regulus’ crowd, dead in a tunnel somewhere, speed-racing. Remus hated that. James too. Sirius loved going fast

anyway there were so many. lily was also going to say this at one point but i never built a scene around it:

"Theres nothing more stupid than marrying your high school boyfriend but im going to do that"

all of the lily and sirius stuff at the end is inspired by this one line in my notes: it's weird. i don't remember the bad stuff. you were there.

also lowkey very proud of this title like when i thought of it i was like oh my god