Awkward was a good way of putting it. A really good way. “Oh, it was already there… at least for me. But I think he was relatively oblivious to… well… everything…” other than getting more intoxicated, and attempting to get Dante to drink something alcoholic, naturally. Dante supposed that, at the very least, he was the target of Chad’s harassment, as opposed to someone that neither of them knew. Ignoring the fact that Dante knew the owner of the establishment, it just wasn’t good practice to act like an ass, or be associated with someone who was being an ass, in a public place. “I’ll keep the bartender tip in mind.” Maybe not the eye flashing thing, though. Even if Dante was fully capable of doing just that. Perhaps a smile would suffice. He was good at that, too.
“Is it that obvious?” Dante asked, looking down at his drink and swirling it a bit. That was something people did at bars, right? “I mean… to be fair… I didn’t think that it was going to be something where we ended up at the bar.” He paused awkwardly, looking at the bartender. “No offense.” Dante quickly attempted to put things back into perspective. “I did suggest coming here, because I was here a while back and the food was amazing. It still is. I just didn’t expect that coming over to the bar for drinks after would be part of the evening. My own fault, really.” And it was. Dante frequently found himself falling into the habit of basically just forgetting that there were plenty of people in the world who enjoyed the bar life, because it was something that held no appeal to him. Truly, he played himself.
There were ways that Dante expected a conversation to go, and under these particular circumstances, he was not expecting paintball or laser tag to be mentioned at any point. “Those are certainly things that I would have never considered.” While Dante had never done paintball before, because he had been told that those paintball thingies hurt, he had enjoyed a few games of laser tag in his life. The younger cousins all wanted to gang up on their big cousin, and he, frankly, had to show them who was boss. That didn’t quite go to plan. They were legion, and he was all by himself. Still fun, though. “But… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just keep them as people I see at work and leave it at that.” It wasn’t like Dante was planning on shunning Chad. They were still coworkers, after all. “I’ll probably keep the paintball in mind, just in case he starts to beg a little too much to hang out after work again.” If for no other reason than pelting the man for his antics. Dante was like the North. He remembered. And while those paintball thingies probably did hurt, they weren’t fatal.
“So,” he turned his focus to the bartender. “Is swooping in and saving people from awkward moments something that you have to learn while you’re a bartender? Or is it something that you need to already have in you to be one?” Dante fell in the second category, at least in his own mind. Not that he would ever want to bartend.