A/N: So these are the YB verse outtakes/deleted scene prompts I got.
Prompt: Anonymous asked Young Blood Alex and Piper + summer. This is the summer after their junior year of high school.
"Remember that game we used to play, when we'd sing underwater and try to guess the song?" Piper's voice floats lazily up to her, and Alex murmurs an assent. There's no follow-up, no real reason for Piper to mention it, but Alex can hear Piper start singing quietly to herself - Sweet Child Of Mine, it sounds like - as if she's reliving the games in her own head.
Alex understands the impulse. Summer nights like this feel cloaked in nostalgia, like memories become more easily reached. Probably sensory overload: the heavy, still hot dark. The smell of chlorine. Cicadas humming. Fireflies dotting the night, and the occasional unwelcome sting of a mosquito.
Lifting a tightly rolled joint to her lips, Alex sucks in a taste that doesn't remind her of childhood. A few drops of water hit her, courtesy of Piper, and she smirks while sending smoke jetting toward the sky. Piper doesn't like her smoking here, even just cigarettes, but it's nearly three a.m. and the Chapman house is still and silent behind them.
Alex is stretched out on the diving board in her cut offs and a bikini top, while Piper floats around somewhere underneath on a neon pink inflatable tube. Every once in awhile she drifts close to the diving board, and Alex reaches down to to snatch her wrist or ankle or whatever's accessible, holding her hostage for a teasing moment before sending her floating off again.
Now, Piper splashes again, more insistently. "Get in already."
Alex rolls onto her stomach, leaning over the boards edge and offering the joint with a grin. "Help me finish this faster."
Piper swats at her wrist, and Alex pulls her arm back before Piper knocks it into the water and wastes perfectly okay-ish weed.
When they were younger, they used to spend practically the whole summer at Piper's pool, so much so that they were constantly cycling through the stages of sunburn. But around the end of middle school, they started spending fewer hours swimming, the fun and novelty of it no longer able to sustain whole days or even afternoons.
But they've always loved night swims. There's something secret and hidden about the Chapman's backyard at this hour; it slopes down, away from the house, trees looming overhead, slicing the sky into tiny, star freckled patches. They'd started sneaking outside in seventh grade, whenever Alex slept over; it had taken her nearly a year to convince Piper.
Mostly what Alex remembers is trying desperately unthink thoughts about Piper, skinny and self-conscious in brand new string bikinis, and far too often talking about boys.
Now, Alex watches Piper slip out of the tube and duck underwater, gone for a moment before she shoots back up, slicking back wet blonde hair and looking up at Alex. The nostalgia must have a hold on her again, because she prompts, "Remember Fox and the Hounds?"
"You mean Swimming with Sharks," Alex counters with a smile. Another game they invented, one that would have been more effective if they'd had more players than Cal and, occasionally, Danny to join in. It was essentially Marco Polo in reverse: only one player kept their eyes open, while everyone else in the pool had to swim blindly to try to tag the singular hider. There was always a lot of communication between the seekers, attempts at strategy, but the person hiding didn't have to say anything.
Now that Alex thinks about it, a lot of their games involved forced blindness. There was another one on the trampoline that Danny had taught them, where one player lay in the center with their eyes closed until the others started the game - "Wake from the dead!" - and they could then, still on their knees, eyes shut, leap toward the edge of the trampoline's rubber mat, trying to trip another player. That had been a staple until Cal toppled off and broke his wrist - hence why the trampoline is now enclosed in dark black tarp.
Piper splashes Alex again, refocusing her attention. "Whatever we called it. You know why I thought of that game?"
"Why?"
"Cause you were such an asshole cheater." She arches an accusatory eyebrow, trying to stop herself from smiling as she waves a hand to indicate Alex's current position.
"Technically the edge of the diving board is in the radius of the pool," Alex practically recites the old justification with a smug smirk.
"You're the worst."
"You used to get so pissy..."
"It's cheating!"
"So fucking competitive."
"Get in already."
"Fine," Alex parrots her tone, sucking in a last hit before standing up on the slick board, holding the joint between her teeth as she maneuvers her shorts off, high kicking them without much care somewhere into the yard. She delicately puts the tiny centimeter that's left of the joint on the edge of the board before aiming at a spot in the water close to Piper and jumping.
When Alex kicks her way to the surface, Piper's already gone, dog paddling over to the diving board to retrieve the weed, throwing Alex a look over her shoulder. "You'll leave it sitting there, and my parents will find it."
"Uh-huh. I see how it is. Trying to sneak a hit while I'm underwater...deprive me of the privilege of knowing I've finally corrupted you."
Piper goes to the edge of the pool and leans over, tucking the tiny, sopping wet contraband under her towel, giving Alex the welcome opportunity to swim up behind her and pin her against the wall. The weed's taken effect, and everything feels slow and lazy, the water sloshing and bathtub warm, and Piper tastes like every single summer of their lives.
They swim for awhile, because Alex kind of loves swimming stoned at night, with the pool lights off an Piper grappling for her hands underwater, but they end up crossing the yard to the trampoline, still dripping wet, warm enough that they don't even bother toweling off.
Dirt and blades of grass cling to their wet feet and get tracked onto the trampoline. They shut the slip in the tarp, and Alex hopes it's been long enough now - four years - to be grateful for Cal's broken wrist, because the enclosure is definitely the only reason Piper feels safely hidden enough in her own backyard to end up between Alex's legs, their wet bathing suits slung in wrinkled heaps at the blue edges of the trampoline.
Alex is arching her hips into Piper's mouth, Piper hands reaching up and under her wet bikini top, pushing it so its caught uselessly under chin. It gives Piper no real balance, and they're both bouncing the slightest bit. Alex is so close, her head thrown back and aimed at the sky, and she can no longer keep track of the stars, when suddenly Piper's tongue slips, like she's losing her place, and Alex feels the slightest edge of teeth and then lips before the contact slips completely. She lets out a whine, trying to adjust her hips back against Piper's mouth, when she realizes that Piper is giggling.
She lifts her head to look at Alex, eyes and lips shining. Alex lets out a throaty, needy moan. Her whole body feels strained. "Pipes."
"Sorry, sorry, it's...the way you're lying..." The laughing takes over for a second before she can continue, lowering her voice for dramatic emphasis. "Wake from the dead."
Alex bucks her hips the slightest bit, commanding. "We can reminisce later, Pipes. Finish what you started."
