trashcancath (Ao3)
Taehyung's grounded but Jeongguk sneaks in to see him anyway.
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Honestly (and typically), it's Jeongguk's fault Taehyung gets grounded in the first place. Sure, he could have more willpower, but he's always been weak for Jeongguk's whiny hyung , especially when it's paired with those irresistible puppy dog eyes. Not that he would ever dream of telling his younger friend that. Nope, no way, not gonna happen. Taehyung would rather be grounded for the rest of his life than admit to the stupid giant crush he has on his best friend. It's one of those things he plans on taking to the grave, same with the time he broke his grandma's favorite vase and blamed it on the cat, or that time he took too big of a dump in Jimin's toilet and made the whole thing overflow.
Where was he?
Oh, right.
It's definitely Jeongguk's fault that he's grounded. Monday meant it was a school night, which meant that the home by 8:30pm rule was heavily enforced. They'd finished their homework early on, thankfully, and had switched over to Jeongguk's old Nintendo Gamecube to play Mario Kart Double Dash (the superior version of Mario Kart, in his opinion, no matter what Namjoon and his Nintendo Switch said). Either way, the minute hand on the clock had steadily moved from 7:30 to 8 to 8:20 when Taehyung announced he had to go. Jeongguk, predictably, hadn't hesitated to pull out the puppy dog eyes, whipping his head to look up at Taehyung as he stood, and Taehyung had just sighed. Neither of them even said anything, they just went back to racing through Peach Beach.
Needless to say, his parents weren't happy that he broke curfew, if only by an hour. So he was on house arrest for the next two weeks. Really, it shouldn't be a big deal. The only place he goes is to school and to Jeongguk's, and if he doesn't go to Jeongguk's then the younger comes over to his place. Which brings him to the next level of grounded-ness: Jeongguk wasn't allowed over.
Okay, that was the subtext of what his parents said. In reality, they'd told him "no friends over", which is valid considering Taehyung does have other friends who aren't Jeongguk. He just doesn't really hang out with them outside of school. Details aside, not being allowed to hang out with his best friend (and subject of his totally stupid giant crush) for two entire weeks (including two weekends!) is gonna suck and Taehyung's not happy about it.
The first couple days, it isn't so bad. On the one hand, Taehyung's homework productivity levels are insanely high and his teachers are all impressed with him. And he's also finding other ways to spend the time, since his parents also slipped in a "no talking to Jeongguk on the phone for hours while you guys do separate things so it feels like you're hanging out" because Taehyung's parents are fucking evil and don't want Taehyung to have any contact with Jeongguk. So Taehyung has to stick to texting, but Jeongguk has always been a shitty texter, so it's not really the same.
So in his free time, he reads a lot. He finishes an entire novel the first day of being grounded and spends the entire next day telling Jeongguk about it until the younger finally cracks and asks him to talk about something else (in the nicest way possible, because Jeongguk's learned over the years that Taehyung is kind of sensitive and will cry over dumb things). The second day of being grounded, Taehyung actually completes the entirety of Pokemon Special Edition Pikachu on his centuries-old GameBoy Advance (he prefers playing on Jeongguk's newer 3DS, but his parents won't buy him one). The third day, Thursday, he breaks out his old Legos and rebuilds the Millenium Falcon. Honestly, he's a little impressed by himself for doing that, but he also stepped on at least five Legos during the five hours it took (he didn't have the diagram anymore so he just had to figure it out), so he figures that stepping on Legos is akin to selling his soul in order to complete the figurine.
