Chapter Text
It takes a particularly crappy day for Tae-eul to finally snap.
It wasn’t an overwhelmingly bad day, definitely not one for the books, but a bad day nonetheless.
Her shitty day had started with her car breaking down in the middle of rush hour traffic. If it hadn’t been the fact that she was armed with a siren and her practiced and perfected death glare, her team would have been investigating her murder by a disgruntled commuter. When she finally arrived at work, there was piles upon piles of paper work and reports waiting on her desk. Jang-mi had baked them all cookies and muffins, but not even freshly baked goods could ease the pain of paperwork. After a whole day of wondering how office workers survived this five days a week (and the newbie plus Jang-mi taking mercy on her and taking some of her reports), Tae-eul finally caught a taxi home, eagerly awaiting a night of cold beer and fried chicken. But of course, this no good, very bad day hadn’t ended yet, there was no beer at home and her delivery never arrived. Resigned to a sober night, her dinner consisted of chips and dashed hopes.
She wished she could just text Gon right now and tell him about her bad day, but obviously she couldn’t. There was no way to see him or get in contact with him until the weekend. The tears pricked at her eyes immediately as a pang of sadness overcame her in such a way that it was starting to become characteristic of who she was. It wasn’t like this was her first time thinking about this, in fact, she thought about it a lot. She thought about the life that she wishes she had even when she was always telling herself not to. It was wrong for her to want for more when they had already gotten so lucky, but she was sad and overwhelmed and after a year of weekend rendezvous’, she was worn down by the fact that this would be their life for as long as they lived. She missed him. She missed him like in ways that made her feel insane, but she never let herself think about how hard it was to only see her boyfriend two days a week, at least she tried her best not to. She had forced herself to be alright with the fact that she was living five days a week in a life that Lee Gon had absolutely no part in. He always asked her about how her week went, how her father and N-ari and Eun-seop were doing, and every week, she told him the same story with minor variations. He always listened, always wanted to know about her life, but it always felt like the worlds between them were growing larger. There was his world, and there was her world, nothing belonged to them alone.
Tae-eul just wishes that she could text him when someone cuts her off in traffic, or when she bickers with or dad, or if a suspect was being particularly dastardly, and all the other stupid and mundane things that happen to her every day. She wants to be able to hear the unabridged version of his how day was, all the insincere and conniving politicians he met with that day, the mountain of papers and briefings that his secretary had dropped on his desk bright and early, some amazing new scientific finding that she doesn’t understand. She wants to hear about all of it. She wants to tell him all the things that she doesn’t get to tell him because their time together is so brief as it is. She wants to be able to pop into his office for the five minutes when he doesn’t have a meeting or obligation, or surprise him for a lunch date.
Tae-eul wants to come home and see him waiting for her, reading a book on the couch and have all her troubles melt away at the sight of his smile. She wants to go grocery shopping and visit Na-ri’s cafe and all the normal and mundane things with him.
She wants to do it all. She wants a life with him, but it’s something that can never be. They will never be married, or have kids, or get to buy their own home, building a life together.
They’ll never have any of it. Instead, she’ll get him on the weekends, travelling across all the worlds, never being able to have a life together that lasts longer than the two days that the weekend allows them in which he’s all hers. He’s not a king, a ruler, a man with the weight on an entire country on the weight of his shoulders, he’s just hers, but at the end of the weekend, he leaves her again, returning to the only place he’s ever known.
She’s full on sobbing now, her tears wracking her chest and shaking her body, mourning the life she could never have.
What a day.
And it was only Monday.
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By the time Friday finally rolls around – (which Tae-eul usually spends bright and cheery and very agreeable) she’s nothing but a clump of grumpy and angry cells. Not even the prospect of seeing Gon can shake away the nagging thought yelling at her in her brain.
And for the first time in a very long time, Tae-eul is reluctant to see Gon. He’ll immediately know something’s wrong, and she really didn’t want to have their conversation with him and dampen the weekend. He would only feel guilty about their less than ideal situation. She knew they were lucky to even be together after all that happened, she knew that, but she couldn’t help the anger and jealously of the life that she wasn’t allowed to have. She saw it everywhere, felt the jealously bubble within her when she saw how happy Eun-seop and Na-ri were together. She loved them, but they lived the life that she wished that she could live too, but could never be.
It wasn’t like she could really bail anyways, if she didn’t show up Gon would start a manhunt for her, and I wasn’t like she just shoot him a text or call him. So what she was saying was that, well, you’re screwed if you do, and you’re screwed if you don’t.
Ah, the trials of cross universe, long distance relationships.