Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
Who: Spike and whoever
When: Midmorning
Where: The Pool
What: Spike goes for a swim and decides oxygen is for the weak
Stroke. Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.
Breathe.
Tuck, flip, turn, push.
Kick. Kick. Kick.
Breathe.
Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.
Spike continued to push himself another five, ten, fifteen laps. Every muscle in his body burned with the strain, but with a determined single mindedness, he kept telling himself just one more lap.
Swimming was not something he had done much of as a vampire, unless the situation called for it. Like when his grandsire made him race against the sunrise from a U-Boat twenty miles from shore, two hours before dawn, but those situations like those only came every few decades. It wasn’t until being trapped in the Hellton, or more specifically when Buffy was taken by the hotel for those long terrible months that he really began swimming regularly. Because when he was swimming there was only the water rushing past his ears and he thought of nothing else than putting one arm in front of the other and when he was going to take his next breath. And even though she was back, he still found single mindedness of the ritual of swimming something he enjoyed. That and Buffy was currently in the gym and since he was working on giving her that whole personal space thing, he had had to take to the pool for his daily work out.
Finally he could take no more and half way across the pool he flipped over and let himself float on his back, his arms out to his side as he concentrated on his breathing as his heart slowed back down to normal. He wasn’t sure how long he was floating there when he took one last deep breath and let himself sink to the bottom of the pool. Opening his eyes he stared at the ceiling from under eight feet of water. It was a strange out of body experience in that the only thing he had any awareness of was his currently human existence. There was nothing but feeling of the blood rushing in his ears, the sound of heart banging away in his chest, and his lungs burning as they begged for fresh oxygen. He released the stale air slowly, watching the bubbles float to the surface with an objective sort of interest. And still he remained at the bottom of the pool, stubbornly refusing to give into his physiological needs.
He hadn’t needed to breathe for over a century, he wasn’t going to let the need for oxygen define him now….