Ex's to Lovers

Chapter 64

In Which Wishfull Thinking Causes Almost as Big a Misunderstanding as Alfred's Big Mouth

Luckily for Alfred, no one nearby seemed to hear his outrageous comment, excepting his shocked older brother and Antonio, and the hiding Francis. Francis stifled a moan into his hands, and Antonio opened and closed his mouth for a second, silently, before finding the words to push Arthur and Alfred somewhere more private.

"Since you seem to have a lot to talk about, why don't you go home with your brother? I have something to say to Francis anyways."

Arthur barely acknowledged his words with a nod of his head before grabbing Alfred's arm and hailing him home. Alfred tried to talk, but Arthur shushed him loudly everytime, so eventually Alfred fell silent and sulked the rest of the way home. Once in the safety of their home, Arthur rounded on Alfred, bewildered, frustrated and somewhat annoyed. After all, the whole town had worked to get Alfred and Ivan together again, and now his brother was speaking nonsense? Arthur demanded the story in one word. 

"Explain." 

Alfred considered. He didn't want to tell Arthur the full story, his stuffy older brother would probably whine, or tell the whole town, or frog-march him to Natalya to apologize. Besides, then he'd have to explain that he was egging Ivan's house in the first place, and Arthur would definitely get mad about that. Finally, after extensive filtering of things he didn't want Arthur to know, or to bother explaining, Alfred settled on a vague explanation.

"it's like Ivan and I got together because of pressure from his family , so I want to break up so I can properly ask him." 

By which Alfred meant:

"Ivan and I were forced to start fake-dating to avoid Natalya's wrath, so I want to stop fake dating and ask him for real this time."

But what Arthur interpreted was closer to:

"I ended up proposing to Ivan before I was ready because of all the fuss his family caused, so I want to cancel that proposal and do it again, properly."

If Alfred knew what Arthur was thinking, he would have fainted. As it was, Arthur was fully in support and willing to help. Unfortunately, Arthur didn't really excel at the whole" romantic thing", and though Arthur was loathe to admit it, he didn't have a clue on how to proceed, and now understood why Francis had been so flustered. So, naturally, he did the only thing he could think of. He told Alfred he would think about a way and get back to him, and called for support. The sad thing was the support he called in consisted of: Alfred's twin brother, Ivan's older sister, and, worse yet, Alfred's best friend (who was well aware of the misunderstanding, but at this point had given up caring). Having gotten together the best group for causing chaos and misunderstandings (excluding Alfred himself) Arthur explained his interpretation of what Alfred had asked.

By the next morning, everyone, excluding Ivan and Alfred, knew about it, and were formulating a plot to assist Alfred with making the best and biggest proposal. Alfred, unsuspecting and temporarily satisfied, ignored his homework and went straight to playing videogames until supper, peacefully oblivious to all the chaos.