#t:nate

The distance doesn't feel so large these days. It's been over three years since he came here, his fourth New Year's Eve on the boardwalk. Weekly calls just like this one close the gap, bridge the ocean between him and his parents when neither are able to make the journey themselves.

"Got a little nervous you weren't going to pick up in time." He admits, grin wide as his mother rolls her eyes. They both know him well enough to know he isn't kidding.

"We still have two minutes to go." She chastises as his father comes into frame, spare chair pulled up. He's been begging them to upgrade to a laptop at home for years, but they stubbornly continue to insist there's nothing wrong with the ten year old tower his father kicks every time he sits at the desk. Don't fix what isn't broken!

Nate taps at his watch. "One minute forty seven seconds, actually." Maybe he's a little more annoying around them, still their son even at thirty-one.

"What are you doing later? Are you going to the boardwalk again?" His father ignores his quip. Nate sighs, a sound so common, yet one that already lost its bite a long time ago.

"Yeah, both Danny and Theodora mentioned it, so I suppose I should show my face." He glances at his wrist, keen not to miss the turn of the hour, his first new year of the night. He'd made sure to resync his watch this morning just in case. "It's a nice night, but it's a bit noisy. Everyone's plastered by, like, half nine." Not that he doesn't enjoy a drink, but he can't see the point in staying up for midnight if you're going to be too far gone to remember it. "Did you guys do anything nice?"

His father is cut off. "No, we had to be home before midnight to call our grown son." She tuts, but Nate can see her hiding a smile behind her hand. (That, and he'd given them the opportunity not to make a tradition of this every year and she's always the one insisting otherwise.)

"Twenty seconds." He clears his throat. "And might I remind you, you could've taken this call on your phone, no requirement to rush home for your grown son. That, might I also remind you, lives across the world, and whom I'm sure you miss dearly and want to see when the stars align."

They both ignore him, watching the last five seconds tick away at the corner of their desktop, waiting for the fireworks to start pounding in the background. They're so loud Nate wonders if he could hear them all the way from here, call be damned.