Splashing is Prohibited [Ludwig>Matthew>Clementine]

Ludwig stared into the pool from the edge. Today was one of the first times it had been sunny since he had come to London, and Ludwig wanted to take full advantage of it. The nearby gym was fine, of course, but swimming was one of the best forms of exercise.

Luckily, pool upkeep was a part of the living bill that was paid to the complex, so it looked nice and clear. Regardless, it would still be a bit cold, and so it was best to submerge oneself completely in the water so that you didn't want to run out halfway into getting in. You had to dive in.

Ludwig began to climb the diving board. It was one of the small ones, because the apartment landlords would not want large splashes annoying any tenants. Well, he had never used a board that he could recall, so he didn't plan on making a large splash anyway. He bounced on it lightly, getting used to the feel of it, and then jumped higher. He made to go forward mid-jump, but the physics of reality didn't coincide with his proposed movement. What was supposed to be a dive turned into a messy side flop into the water. He felt a sharp impact in his side that stung slightly.

Damn, it really was cold.

Matthew was just headed outside to enjoy the warm, sunny day around the back of the apartment block, by the private pool. He hadn't realized there was someone else out there until he saw them as they jumped off the diving board, hitting the water in a really neat belly flop. Somebody else was taking a dive into the pool for a swim! "Awesome!" He yelled, and ran towards the pool, pulling off his clothes as he went, leaving them in a trail behind him. He had just put his glasses hurriedly on the side before he jumped off the deep end in only his boxers, tucked his knees up to his chest with his arms wrapped around his legs, and yelled "CANNON BAAAALL!" The impact caused an almighty splash into the water, sending waves lapping over the side.

He stayed floating around the bottom for a couple of seconds, holding what little breath he could grab between his yell and being submerged in water, before gently floating up, much calmer than when he was running in. He gasped for air as he broke the surface and shook the hair out of his face, giggling childishly. "That was fun! Where's that other guy?" He turned around to look, even though looking would only provide him with a blurry shape of a person without his glasses.

In Clementine's mind, swimming was an acceptable sport, a life skill in fact. Growing up in a place surrounded by water it would not do at all to not know how to swim. Still, Clementine was not exactly the most enthusiastic of swimmers, preferring it as a form of relaxation rather than a form of fitness or competition. However, she was still paying for the upkeep of the pool and it was certainly cleaner than the nearby public pool and she was determined to make use of it.

Clad in her one-piece and sarong with her hair tied into a bun, Clementine carefully made her way down the corridor into the atrium where the pool was kept. To her surprise, it was already occupied, it should have been expected really, since the day was rather warm and it was for the use of all the tenants. Pushing open the doors, she set her towel and shoes down, shedding the sarong by the lockers and made her way over to the ladder on the other side of the pool.

Clementine really wasn't paying attention to the other two inhabitants. After all, they could all share the same facility with out having to disturb each other. That is, until a large cry of "CANNON BALL" was heard followed quickly by a large splash which, naturally, managed to soak Clementine. Not enough that she was actually dripping but still enough to irritate her, after all, the water was absolutely freezing cold. Glaring at the perpetrator, a young male with long blond hair, she slid silently into the water, letting it cover her completely. She hoped she wouldn't have to deal with them again.

Ludwig popped out from under the water and quickly scrambled to the side. He got his grip, panting for a moment--what the hell had splashed in the water after him?--and spun around. Another tenant was floating in the pool, looking around aimlessly. That's where the splash came from, most likely.

And then there was a girl at the opposite side of the pool. Ludwig had really thought that no one would have come in the pool today. He sighed, realizing that he would have to do his laps across the short length of the pool, instead of the long one. He blew his nose a bit to get some of the water he had snorted (He glared at the small diving board) and pushed off from the wall, starting off with some basic strokes. He didn't think he would have to deal with the kid who had splashed in, anyway.

When he caught sight of the man, he waved excitedly at him, then looked around and spotted Clementine. He floated onto his back and paddled his way towards her happily. "Hi, Clemmie~" He called out when he was close. He swam around her in a circle before flailing around in the water to right himself, finally managing to stand up in the water. "Phew. That was fun. Isn't it a nice day~? And the pool is full of beautiful people!" As he spoke, he climbed out of the pool to gather up his abandoned clothes and hanging them on the small clothing line to dry after he soaked them with his jump. The other person in the pool was pretty good looking. Matthew wondered what his name was, but he couldn't ask because the man was busy swimming and wouldn't really appreciate Matthew interrupting his laps, nor would he hear Matthew anyway.

Finished with his rambling and putting his clothes up, he turned back to the pool and got back in, considerably calmer this time.

Surfacing at somewhere near the middle of the pool at the sound of some mangled version of her name being called, Clementine cringed inwardly at the awkward nickname as she watched Matthew swim toward her and moved her body to face him as he swam around her, preferring not to take her eyes off him, knowing what could happen if she looked elsewhere. Waiting patiently for him to gain his footing in the water, she nodded silently, chewing the inside of her lip, the temperature still not warm enough to her liking.

"The weather certainly is very favourable today" Clementine sunk beneath the surface once she saw him make his way out of the pool, not quite catching his observation. Closing her eyes to shield against the chlorinated water, she swam blindly towards what she thought was the far side of the pool, not quite noticing a dark swimming figure making laps across the width of the pool. Being stopped suddenly by a rather solid mass, Clementine raised her head above the water, trying to rid her lungs of the water she had accidentally swallowed from the surprise of impact. " I apologise" She attempted to say, suppressing the urge to splutter ungracefully "I'm afraid I wasn't paying much attention to my surroundings." Well there went her plan to stay out of everyone's way.

Ludwig was on his fifth lap across the pool--it was a small distance, but he didn't feel the need to race--when he felt a small bump at his side. He stopped, treading the water as a head popped up. She mumbled an apology, but she looked half filled with water. He reached out and held her shoulders to keep her afloat. There was no difficulty in it--the water made everything lighter. "That's fine, are you alright?"

He looked for a second to try to find the third occupant that had been in the pool and found him on the patio. It occurred to him that the two might be romantically involved with each other. Hastily, he dropped his arms, lest he be mistaken for trying something else. He could probably take the kid, but he didn't want to have to try.

Ludwig turned his attention back on her. He politely waited for an answer, so that he could excuse himself and go back to swimming.

Matthew was pleased to see that the other man in the pool had re-emerged, even though it was because he had collided with Clementine. She was safe, so it didn’t matter. He awkwardly tried to run over through the water, ending up doing a strange slow-motion running, bouncing on the balls of his feet every now and then. When he’d reached them, the man helped Clementine up, and they were both ok. He heard the man speak and let out an involuntary squeak. The voice was deep, and the accent- the accent! It was German! That was so cool! He clasped his hands together in delight, biting his lip.

“Um-” He really wanted to hear that accent again, and was going to say something to make the man speak, but stopped in his tracks. The man was taller than him and had firm muscles, rock hard abs, incredible biceps, if Matthew did say so himself. And therefore, was much more intimidating than Matthew had previously assumed. So, as he felt shyness and inferiority take over, Matthew slowly sank lower into the water, until it was up to his chin, and peered up at the man, mumbling, “Hi.” It came out rather more high-pitched than he would have liked, and made his face go pink.

Having a pair of strong arms support her above the water was very reassuring, blinking the remaining water droplets out of her eyes, Clementine's cheeks soon flushed, suddenly realising that she had interrupted, and was now being held up by a rather well-built and frankly quite handsome male. Taking a deep breath to rid her windpipe of the feeling of being waterlogged, she opened her mouth to thank him, apologise and let him go back to his laps and her to her well, swimming.

However, hearing a squeak somewhere to her side she turned to smile at Matthew who was rather comically, much to her amusement, bobbing up and down in a rather unsuccessful attempt to run through the water towards them. Clementine couldn't help but laugh slightly at his antics, he was just too adorable. Turning back to the larger male who had unfortunately now let go of her, she lowered her head just slightly in embarrassment "Thanks for keeping me from drowning." She looked up at him now, smiling sheepishly and playing with the strands of hair that had escaped the bun at the back of her head and managed to curl themselves into small ringlets "I'd hate to imagine what would have happened if I had swallowed any more water." Not wanting to disturb him any more than she had, the blonde kicked her legs gently to drift backwards " I must apologise for being so unobservant, I fear I must have disturbed you too much already." Pushing herself beneath the surface to swim to the far end of the pool, she muttered back a quick farewell " Hope to see you round."

Glancing the mostly submerged Matthew who was luckily not looking in her direction, a wicked idea popped up in her head and she swam along the bottom of the pool until she was directly behind the boy. Justifying this mischievous act as one of revenge for soaking her with that dive earlier, she popped up silently behind him "Boo."

Ludwig hadn't noticed the boy's approach before, but when he squeaked some sort of strange greeting Ludwig noticed his presence. He looked around for a second before realizing the guy was below him, literally, letting the water reach up to his chin. The other girl was talking though and he turned his attention back to her quickly. She thanked him for saving her, even though he wouldn't really consider it saving, and smiled. She was relatively cute, he thought, as she played with her hand and continued on with her apology. It wasn't as if she was in any real danger, but the sentiment was rather nice to him. He watched as she began to float away from him, wanting to introduce himself (and being mad at the fact that he hadn't), and he paused before continuing his laps, much too curious to see what she was doing next.

He tracked her movement underwater until he realized she was looping back toward the guy who was still next to Ludwig. Turning a bit red, Ludwig looked back down at the other guy, embarassed that he had forgotten about the floating head on the water. Ludwig noticed he looked a lot like the American, actually, like a thinner version. "Ah, sorry," he said quickly, "I'm Ludwig. And you are...?" Raising an eyebrow, he wondered what the kid was doing near-submerged.

Funnily enough, the man didn't even seem that intimidating. Matthew even offered a tentative smile, around the same time Clementine wondered off to who knew where. "I-It's nice to meet you, Ludwig..." He raised his voice slightly during the polite bits, to make sure Ludwig heard them. "I'm, um..." He turned slightly pink, "I'm Matthew Willi--"

"Boo."

"--AAAH!" Clementine clearly thought it would be funny to sneak up on Matthew. However, Matthew, being the jumpy type he was, did just that; jumped. Jumped right up and out of his hiding place in the water, and instinctively forward, away from the unexpected noise. That meant that he jumped right onto Ludwig, the guy he'd only just met. Not even into his arms, in a shojo-manga romance kind of way, but an ungraceful leap which lead his jaw to collide with Ludwig's collar bone, and Matthew to let out a grunt of pain (It was like hitting a brick wall for crying out loud!) and a bit of flailing on his part, and a quickly spluttered "S-sorry!"

What had started out as an awesome swimming session, had now become an embarrassment-magnet, if there was such a thing, and Matthew could feel his face burn with shame (and slight pain), and he turned his head to shoot Clementine an accusing pout. The incident was almost enough to reduce him to tears, as he didn't have a quick escape route in the water, not being an amazing swimmer. So instead, he held his breath and plunged downwards into the water, holding his breath, planning on crawling away (and hiding any stray watery eyes from the other two).

Clementine giggled slightly as Matthew just about jumped out of his skin from fright, followed quickly by a grimace as she watched him descend quite solidly into the larger male's chest. She hoped neither of them were really injured but then again that would be unlikely, or at least she hoped so, Clementine really did not want to explain to emergency services the circumstances which led to a fractured collarbone and a dislocated jaw,

Feeling sorry for the both of them, she smiled apologetically to the other male, all he had wanted to do was swim a few laps around the pool and that was most likely not going to happen in the very near future. Diving down into the water she tapped on Matthew's submerged shoulder, clasping her hands together in a plea for forgiveness and smiled remorsefully. The poor guy was just trying to introduce himself to a fellow swimmer. She'd have to treat him to ice-cream later when they had dried off. Perhaps she'd invite the other too, if she ever learnt his name, that is if she could bring herself to speak to him again.

It really was curious as to how a simple swim around the pool could have lead to such a ruckus

Ludwig rubbed at his collarbone and smiled back at the girl as he watched her and Matthew descend into the water. It actually hadn't hurt when Matthew's jaw hit Ludwig--it felt more like a dull thud--but Ludwig had been surprised and had reacted a second too late in order to try and catch the kid.

Ludwig waited, unable to continue swimming. To begin with, the two were currently in the way of his course (and they were able to hold their breath for longer than Ludwig could, certainly). Even if they had been out of the way, Ludwig couldn't bring himself to leave their presence. The two of them in tandem were cute; both seemed somewhat shy but together they were pretty funny, and with all his current stress Ludwig needed to smile more the way he was smiling during his time at the pool.

And, of course, he had to learn the names of these two. Ludwig was pretty sure Matthew was cut off mid-name, and he didn't catch any of the girl's name.

After all of his thought Ludwig looked back down to where the two were submerged. He began to wade over just in case he had to pull the two up from the water.