Ex's to Lovers

Chapter 10

In Which Alfred Realizes His Best Friend Is Insane

Once he was done the story, Alfred had to wait for almost a full five minutes for Gilbert to stop laughing and wipe the tears out of his eyes, though his shoulders continued to shake with surpressed laughter for quite a bit. Alfred scowled at him until he stopped. Finally Gilbert brushed the tears out of the corners of his eyes with a final sigh of satisfaction.

"I knew you would have told me if you started dating someone. I am your best friend, after all."

Alfred stared at him like he often did -as though Gilbert had said something incomprehensible.

"That's the problem? Not that it was Ivan of all people? Don't you hate Ivan?"

Gilbert stared back at Alfred with the same look Alfred had just given him.

"It's not like I can't still hate Ivan if you guys date."

And for a moment, Alfred felt like he just really couldn't understand his best friend. He tried to imagine how he would react If Gilbert started dating Ivan, but couldn't get past the memory of Gilbert giving Ivan the finger across the lunchroom just last week, and Ivan's cheerful offer to break Gilbert's finger off in return. No matter how he looked at it he couldn't picture two guys who were so at odds with each other ever dating, which really made him think that everyone else in the school just had mental problems, and clearly his best friend was no exception.

Having concluded that Gilbert was not fully sane, Alfred stopped trying to figure him out and decided to move on to the next order of business: recruiting Gilbert to accompany him to the cafeteria so he didn't have to deal with everybody's attempted comfort and sympathetic looks. One of the bonuses of having such an exuberant friend meant that people tended to think twice before approaching, and often times decided they didn't have the energy to deal with the duo before backing off. Of course, Alfred was still unaware that he was just as exuberant and energetic most of the time as well, and played a big part in scaring off unwanted solicitors himself.

A bonus of the rumour of Alfred and Ivan's breakup was that not a single person at the school would speak to him about Ivan at all, which was a nice and refreshing change from how he was usually scolded to get along with Ivan or "give the guy a break". The downsides to this rumour were immeasurable to Alfred though. Alfred was generally quite a social person, and he missed the usual flow of people that would stop by his table and talk to him during lunch. 

Even Matthias, a friend of Alfred's who was famous for being oblivious to the mood seemed to be avoiding him, or at least he hadn't pestered Alfred to see his homework yet or stopped by to chat. An introvert like his brother probably would have felt like this was heaven, but for a social butterfly like Alfred, it was almost hell. Even if he tried to talk to someone they'd answer awkwardly and make an excuse to step away. It was killing Alfred.

By the end of the day, all Alfred wanted was to retreat back to his house and play enough video games to forget the whole event.

Unfortunately for Alfred, nothing was ever that easy.