#i've never mentioned them going over to katya's house but mattie definitely does andsometimes al does too

[thatsamericano]

Feliciano and Ludwig have their own friends in their grade level that I might only mention vaguely from Alfred’s POV. They might stop by the FrUKSpa household occasionally or Feli goes to do something with them, but they’re freshmen while Al’s a junior so he’s really not paying attention to most of them and may not remember all their names. The one he might have paid more attention to (besides any of Katya’s younger siblings) is Erika, because he scared the crap out of her near the beginning of the school year. She was this tiny, somewhat timid freshman who saw Savino around school and thought he was really cool (not in a crush way, but in the way she admires her big brother Vash). She heard that this popular and very friendly junior who’s the quarterback on the football team is stepbrothers (or possibly by the time the gossip filters down to her and other freshman, just brothers) with the Vargas brothers and learned that his name was Alfred. She got curious enough about Savino to overcome her natural shyness and asked Alfred what it’s like to be Savino’s brother.

What she didn’t know is that a ton of people were asking Alfred about him and Vinny being stepbrothers, including multiple people who just referred to them as brothers. She didn’t know Alfred from Adam, so she had no clue how he felt about Savino and that hearing Vinny referred to as his brother was a personal berserk button for him. He snapped at her so bad she started crying and ran away, and at the end of the day Vash came up to Alfred to tell him off for biting Erika’s head off when she was just asking an innocuous question and to warn him he wouldn’t let Alfred get away with doing that to his sister again.

After this, Feli and Ludwig start to become friends with Erika because she’s in one of their classes and she’s very nice and likable. I did show a scene with Feli and Ludwig eating lunch with Alfred and his friends who are juniors and one senior (Magnus), but I think most of the time they prefer to eat with friends in their own grade, including Erika. They do stuff at Erika’s house sometimes, at Ludwig’s, or at another friend’s, but Feli notices that Erika is always begging off whenever they make plans to do something at his place. She’s polite about it each time, but it’s becoming concerning. He asks her what’s going on.

Erika says, “Your stepbrother scares me,” and explains what happened with Alfred. All she was trying to do was ask him a question, and he flipped out on her in a terrifying way. She actually thought this giant American football player was about to commit physical violence on her that day. She hasn’t seen him being mean to a bunch of people like Dylan Anderson, who a lot of people have learned to avoid as much as they can, but he was a jerk to her that day. And frankly, Erika wants nothing to do with him, even if the people around school seem to think he’s a nice guy.

Feli is in the awkward position of not being able to defend Alfred and explain that he’s not a terrible guy but that he is in love with Savino and must have felt horrible when Erika referred to him as Alfred’s brother. He does tell Ludwig that Alfred and Savino are in love, but that’s because Ludwig is his boyfriend and  he’s so stressed over them acting stupid over Savino going on a date with Dylan. So, he doesn’t want to tell Erika, because he’s only starting to get to know this girl, and sharing private information like that doesn’t feel fair to his big brother. All he can say is that Alfredo is very nice most of the time and must have been having a really bad day when he snapped on Erika. Erika can’t be convinced that it’s okay to come over to Feli’s house, because he can’t explain why Alfred was such a jerk to her that day.

Honestly, in Alfred’s POV, he might not even know Feli is friends with Erika, much less that she feels uncomfortable being at his house because of Alfred. Much later in the story, when Savino and Alfred are being public about their relationship at school, Erika understands why Alfred went nutso on her that day (possibly after asking Feli if he thinks that’s what’s going on and also getting more info on how long Alfred had liked Savino before they became stepbrothers). She comes by the house, sees Alfred, and he apologizes for scaring her that one time. She tells him she understands Savino isn’t his brother now but didn’t understand when she asked him that day (possibly because the gossip filter just said they were “brothers” and Erika didn’t automatically assume they were step siblings just because they don’t look biologically related, because even though her and Vash look very much alike, they’re adoptive siblings). He tells her it’s fine, and Erika gives him a little smile before going off to do something with Feli and whatever freshmen friends are there.