The Distance Of Grown Ups

Summary:

Ata thinks about how long it has been since he and his friends last were all together.

Characters: Ibusuki Ata
Ship: General friendship between the main boys
General info: Post-canon, light angst. I did a little fic prompt ask game on Tumblr (basically for people to send me a ship or character + an emoji and I'd write a short fic). This on was based on oldmidori's ask: "OH FUCK YEAH well i gotta be predictable: Ata + ❤️🩹"
Wordcount: 400
Date: April 8th, 2024

Rating: General audiences
Warnings: None

It had been a good while since Ata had last gotten any kind of scratch or cut that was deep enough to draw blood. It happening while he was cooking had been even longer ago. He was usually careful with his knives, almost excessively so. But he had been a bit too lost in his own thoughts this time.

As he stepped away from the kitchen to look for a band-aid for his cut, he couldn't help but feel a bit angry at himself. Had he truly become so sentimental that he couldn't even function properly?

It wasn't even that big of a deal. He just hadn't seen his friends in a while and started thinking about it...

All of them had graduated high school, having begun their own paths. Nanao, Taiju and Maasa had gone overseas for college, Taishi was in a japanese college but that had required him to move a few cities away. Ryoma got a job that made him quite busy. Ichiro was taking a gap year as he thought about what he wanted to do, but him and Ata had never been that close...

The ones Ata had been seeing in person quite frequently were Kyotaro, Furanui and Karurusu. He and Kyotaro were studying at the same college, so they saw each other pretty much every day. While Karurusu and Furanui had taken the habit of coming by to visit Binan every few weeks. (At first, it was clearly Karurusu coming by impulsively and dragging Furanui along with him. But Ata had started to think that Furanui enjoyed coming over more than he said he did.)

While seeing those three did make him happy, he couldn't help but miss everyone else. Sure, they would still chat through text messages pretty often, but that wasn't quite the same...

He sighed as he wrapped the band-aid around his finger. He had expected that getting everyone together often would become hard after graduation. But he hadn't expecter it to get that hard.

Or for it to make him so sentimental...

His phone vibrated, and when he turned on the screen, he saw it was a message from Taiju. He said that he, Nanao and Maasa would probably come to Japan on their next vacation next month.

Ata couldn't help but smile. Even more so once he saw everyone replying as well.

At least, they wouldn't stay apart forever.