Namjin Smut

keeping unusual company

Written by: liberateme

Summary:

"Fortunately for him Namjoon was a twenty four year old starving journalist who'd somehow snagged the opportunity to interview Korean royalty. There'd been accusations of foul play and bribery from all sides: a journalist whose column was reserved for the back page of Korea Weekly, being handed what would perhaps be their biggest spread of the year."

Namjoon goes to interview Jin, the son of the South Korean President, except it all goes to shit.

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The butler was giving Namjoon a long, hard look, like he was trying to puzzle out if Namjoon was, as his story went, here to interview the son of the South Korean President Kim Seokjin; or if that was all a jibe and Namjoon was going to take this opportunity to dirty the polished floorboards with his scuffed Vans. Namjoon stared back, twice as hard and emotionless, forgetting all professionalism in favour of winning out against journalist stereotypes and prejudice. If Yoongi asked, he could say he'd done it for the sake of journalist-kind everywhere.

"A moment, sir," the butler said, eloquently-spoken in smooth tones. To Namjoon, he sounded like a smarmy prick, too conscious of the particular personalities of the upper class. Fortunately for him Namjoon wasn't some temperamental prince who'd take offence to how his butler spoke (even the idea was absurd); he was a twenty four year old starving journalist who'd somehow snagged the opportunity to interview Korean royalty. There'd been accusations of foul play and bribery from all sides: a journalist whose column was reserved for the back page of Korea Weekly, being handed what would perhaps be their biggest spread of the year. Part of Namjoon ruefully reflected that their outrage was well-founded.

He watched as the butler slipped through a set of double doors, not a single mark on them. Namjoon thought of his own door, littered with marks from times when Hoseok had roughly handled Yoongi into the door and subsequently marked it; times when Hoseok had slammed the door behind him, still clattering in his departure; and times when Namjoon had fallen headfirst into it because he'd been trying to prise the door open with his toes ("I'd had my hands full!" he told Yoongi, flustered in the face of his scrutiny). In short, Yoongi was experiencing the giddy highs and deafening blows of a relationship, and Namjoon was ... balancing journalist work and opening doors with his toes.

Namjoon fidgeted while he waited, because the butler's disappearance had given him time to think about what a unfathomable responsibility this was and if he stumbled with his words, or said the wrong thing, or - God forbid - didn't ask the precise questions Korea Weekly were pressing him to ask Kim Seokjin - his livelihood was on the line.

He swallowed back the lump threatening to lodge itself in his throat, and glanced at the small flip book his right hand was tightly gripping, no doubt caving under the pressure of Namjoon's apprehensiveness. It had been a last minute decision on his part: agonising over whether to bring a notebook to the interview; or a flip book; or nothing at all, like some of the more veteran journalists he knew. Fantastic memory or not, Namjoon knew whatever answers Kim Seokjin gave him would tumble out of his head and scatter across the floor like loose Lego.

The flip book he was gripping was his lifeline. It was the only physical proof he'd have that this conversation ever took place - there was the photo shoot to consider, of course, but those would all be airbrushed, heavily edited photos of the interviewee, the government anxious to convey Kim Seokjin a certain way - that he and the President's son sat in a room together, void of anyone else. Armed guards would be posted outside the doors, should Namjoon, in a fit of anti-patriotic rage, whip out a pistol and point it at his head; but Kim Seokjin had been very concise in his order that this was a conversation between two people, not six. Namjoon had hardly believed it when his superior had given him the instruction that he was to be alone in a room with Kim Seokjin, but who was he to question? He was, the consensus went, practically royalty.