catch-22.

 nine 

"I cannot believe I let you talking me into doing this. I am so dead when my parents find out."

"Dude chill," Taehyung says as he scrolls through his phone, "We're going to be perfectly fine. And you're parents won't find out either so you can calm down about that."

"How am I supposed to chill when you basically kidnapped me and took me on this shopping trip against my will?!" Namjoon exclaims.

Taehyung rolls his eyes for the umpteenth time, Namjoon's been throwing a panic induce speech since the minute he picked Taehyung up in the outskirts of the school building just like he had instructed him last night.

He let's it pass by since this is Namjoon's first time skipping school – or doing anything rebellious actually.

And also, Taehyung might be finding it all too cute how Namjoon is overreacting and claiming that they're both going to be arrested for skipping school. 

"I saw this one show were these two friends skipped school to go to a carnival – or something like – and get recognized by police as teenagers who chose to skip school and you know what happened to them?" He asks, stopping at a red light to give Taehyung a steady glare.

Taehyung sighs before responding, "Lemme guess, they got arrested."

Namjoon's hands flair out for a millisecond before the light turns green and he brings them back to the wheel. "Exactly! How am I supposed to face my parents after getting arrested for skipping school?"

They've made it to the mall by now, Namjoon going on about how he regrets this so much and he swears he's going to drop Taehyung off at the entrance and then abandon him to go back to school because the guilt is eating him.

Taehyung takes about ten, twenty, thirty! minutes trying to convince Namjoon that skipping school is part of a teenagers rebellious life and it's essential for Namjoon to experience that.

Namjoon, for his part, retaliates to how that idea is supposed to connect with him getting together with Taehyung, and when the younger doesn't give him back an answer he humphs in triumph. Either way, he ends up parking and the two get out to enter the mall.

Normally, Taehyung wouldn't have suggested the idea of going shopping with Namjoon during a weekday – a school day for that, but it was first thing that popped out in his mind when the awkward silence felt like it was suffocating him.

He had never felt this way before, and hearing the – ahem – noises Namjoon had made had gotten Taehyung squirming in his seat before bolting from his chair and washing his face with cold water to calm down the red of his cheeks and stop the racing of his heart.

So when Taehyung had gone back and had felt the thick air hanging so thickly that he could feel it deep in his bones, he'd blurted out the first idea that had come to his mind.

Which ended up being the idea of shopping together, away from Seokjin, Hoseok's prying eyes, and Yoongi's teasing.

He'd use the excuse of Seokjin's competitions to persuade Namjoon to do something as risky and stupid as skipping school, and had been thrown off when Namjoon ended up agreeing to the dumb plan of flicking school off and shopping at the mall.

He was probably going to end up with Hoseok slapping his head for the next two years of high school and Yoongi's totally amused glances for making Namjoon do something out of his comfort zone.

But as he turns to stare at Namjoon as they wait to order a coffee at the Starbucks, he finds in himself that he really can't regret the thought of not being right here, next to Namjoon at 9:18 A.M on a school day.