It’s not a date. She has to remind herself because she keeps forgetting.

This. Is. Not. A. Date.

If only her traitorous mind would get the hint and stop screeching DATE when Yoongi does little things like holding the door to the restaurant open for her.

It’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall, not the pseudo hipster kind with graffitied walls, celebrity signatures and artsy drawings. This is the kind of hole-in-the-wall that Jennie’s grandfather would patronize; the kind with cheap soju, bad lighting and dishes that taste like mom’s cooking.

Everyone inside looks as homely as the restaurant itself, and no one blinks when Yoongi and Jennie take an empty table, although the ahjumma serving them water clicks her tongue at Jennie’s bare midriff and too-short miniskirt.

This time, when Yoongi offers his hoodie, Jennie takes it with her face burning.

They just came from a photoshoot—escaped, more like—solely for the purpose of getting some food into Yoongi. Apparently, BigHit has a very different idea of dieting than YG does. While Jennie has been preparing for the collab stage by eating three square meals a day at the company cafeteria including any good luck snacks that Chaeyoung leaves her in her bag, Yoongi has been subsisting on energy drinks and little else.

“It’s not that bad. I actually don’t need to eat that much—can’t be bothered while I’m working anyways. My manager left me some boiled chicken in the studio a couple days ago,” Yoongi said, shrugging as Jennie stared at him with ill-concealed horror.

That led to her sneaking him bites of her own food during their meal breaks, and eventually dragging him out of the building when Jennie’s manager was in the bathroom and Yoongi’s manager was busy discussing concepts with the photographer. They would be back within the hour, Jennie reasoned to herself, and Yoongi needed food, what else could she do?

“At this point, I’ll have an entire closet full of your clothes, oppa,” Jennie jokes as she wraps herself in the big hoodie, pushing back the sleeves so they don’t hang over her hands. “I still haven’t returned your other jacket.”

“Oh, is that so?” Yoongi says, the spirit of nonchalance as he tastes some of the pickled radish. Jennie’s pleased to see that he takes a bit of all the banchan.

She can tell the diet has taken a toll on him. Yoongi’s white tee is baggier than it should be, and all the eyeliner can’t hide how bb cream puddles in his dark circles, emphasizing his exhaustion. She wonders how she looks crammed in next to him at this tiny table, oversized hoodie barely covering the glitter scattered over her thighs, her own caked makeup melting from the proximity of the grill as it heats up.

When the meat arrives, Yoongi takes the tongs automatically, like he’s used to being the one grilling. Jennie’s quietly thankful because she's sure she would burn something if she tried.

She’s not so bad at cooking that her members bar her from entering the kitchen—anymore—but a wealthy background and a consistent supply of cooks has made it so that common, everyday activities like frying an egg or preparing a pot of rice are lost on her.

Yoongi silently places a piece of beef atop her bowl of rice, selectively deaf to all her protests that they came here to feed him. Jennie starts to make him lettuce wraps just to force him to eat some of the meat he’s grilling, deliberately not thinking about how her parents do this for each other when they’re trying to embarrass her in public.

When Yoongi shows her his signature method for eating barbeque quickly—sound effects included—she laughs so hard she nearly falls off her stool, and Yoongi grins so wide his gums show. Neither of them notice how the other diners look over and chuckle at the young couple, glowing in their own tiny slice of the world.