The last time swimming had been involved, they'd been running for their lives and ended up back at his place. It's hard not to connect those dots to that night that changed everything, the one that had first rendered him soulless and set Angelus free. It's even harder not to connect the dots further to the day he was human and the time they got to spend together, or the constant reminder of his current human state without the risk of soullessness and what that meant once and could mean again. There were a lot of unresolved things between himself and Buffy, things they never discussed, topics that were easier to avoid than deal with out of fear that the conversation would get heated or spark something new out of something old.

"The sun's hot," he says, pulling himself out of his thoughts and squinting up at the faux star in the taxon sky. In hindsight, black on black and longsleeves, for that matter, were a bad idea. As was the lack of sunscreen. Someone's super pale ass is going to be red in the morning.