"I didn't notice at all," Cal offered honestly, tilting his head back against the counter and looking up. Not that he could see Fanbutt from down there or anything.

"I already did," Cal said. "I opened my fat mouth and lost my temper and did something really stupid. Are the details really important?"

"Very stupid?" Cal offered. "As in, this person I was a jerk to is the roommate of a girl who probably would have considered dating me if I hadn't gone and been a jerk to her roommate."

"Well," Cal said after a moment, "I guess it's all a matter of whether or not you think telling someone what you think without sparing their feelings is being a jerk or not."

Which was very much the unspoken reason for his choice in ninja today.

"Originally," Cal admitted, "I thought it would just impress Claire if I talked to her roommate and tried to help her with something that I could relate to. But once we got to it, I realized it was a hell of a lot more than that and I just wanted her to see that she was probably going to make a really, really big mistake. Especially since that mistake seems to go completely against everything that I've been struggling to settle for myself for two years now."

"Yeah," Cal agreed, reluctantly because he wasn't quite ready to be done wallowing yet, "I guess."

If she doesn't understand, then that would put Cal in a position where he wouldn't be sure anymore if he'd want to date her at all...

But he was going to just focus on what Fanbutt said for what it was, grinning a bit. "Planned on it. So hopefully it happens on a Tuesday again, because if I were here on Ino's day, she'd bitch at me, and if it was Worf's, he would try to take me out drinking again."

And that was a weird, weird, weird night that did not need repeating.

"So, I'm just going to...sit here for a bit. Comfy. Zen. That's what this place is for, right?"