Title: He Loves me, He Loves me Not
Rating: G
Pairing: kidfinite!2woo (Dongwoo/Woohyun)
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: Girls have cooties, and Dongwoo learns the signs of falling in like.
AN;; Just a cute little thing I thought I'd write. I might make this into three parts, I don't know. One for when they go through puberty, then one while they're at the end of high school. Who knows?
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he loves me, he loves me not
--
At seven years old, Dongwoo was already confused. Word around the playground was that it was cooties season, so the boys and girls avoided each other like their lives depended on it.
“You’d think they know they have a deadly disease,” Woohyun said, eyeing the girls on the slide. He, Dongwoo, and Howon took to hiding on the swings, taking turns pushing each other.
“I don’t know. I heard one of them likes you, Woohyun,” Howon said, making a face as he gave a particularly hard push to Dongwoo’s back, catching him off guard and making him tumble off of the swings.
“My turn!” Howon laughed and hopped onto the swing, waiting for one of the other boys to come and push him.
“Thanks, Howon. My pants are dirty. My mom’s going to kill me,” he said, standing up and trying to brush off the dirt stains on his knees.
“Just get your sister to help you. Hurry up and come push me!” Howon yelled, bouncing up and down in the swing. Woohyun was too deep in thought for whatever seven year olds thought about, so Dongwoo made his way around the swing and started to push Howon.
“What do I do if a girl likes me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a girl like me before,” Howon said as Dongwoo pushed him on the swings.
“Dongwoo?”
Dongwoo shook his head. “But I could ask my sister. Maybe she knows what you should do.”
--
“Noona, what should you do if you find out someone likes you?” Dongwoo asked as his sister tutted at the state of his pants and started to brush some of the dirt away with baby wipes.
“Why? Does someone at school like you?” she asked, grin on her face. Dongwoo felt his face heat up and shook his head wildly.
“No! Someone else likes Woohyun, and he didn’t know what to do, so I said I’d ask you for him.” His sister nodded, standing up when his pants were clean.
“Well, does he like her back?”
“I don’t know. How do you know if you like someone?”
Dongwoo’s sister pursed her lips as she thought of a simple answer for her younger brother. He wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, and he got easily confused and overthought things if she made it too complicated to understand.
“Well, the first thing is that you keep looking at them, whether you want to or not. They look like they’re everywhere you are.” Dongwoo nodded, grabbing his sister’s hand as they got ready to cross the street.
“The second thing is, you want to be near them.” Dongwoo nodded again, hopping from line to line as they crossed the sidewalk and letting out a triumphant yell when he didn’t touch the lava.
“And the last thing is, you want them to like you too.”
“That’s it? That sounds easy,” Dongwoo said, looking up at his sister.
“Yeah, it sounds really easy, huh? But it’s not. Don’t bother with girls at your age. They have cooties, and cooties are dangerous.”
--
“Oh, so that’s it?” Woohyun asked, wide eyed after Dongwoo’s explanation. He repeated everything his sister told him, minus the whole part about not bothering with them at the end. He, Howon, and Woohyun were gathered at the slide today because the girls took the swings.
“That sounds scary. Why would you want someone to be there everywhere you go? Sounds like the boogeyman,” Howon said with a shudder as Dongwoo pushed him extra hard down the slide, grinning when he heard Howon land with a loud thump.
“Well. I still don’t like her. I’m scared of getting cooties. My mom told me your nose turns blue and falls off.”
“Really? My brother told me you get purple spots on your body, then your fingers start to shrivel up like this.” Howon curled up his fingers and made a face that made Woohyun and Dongwoo laugh.
“My sister just said to stay away from them or else.”
Woohyun and Howon got distracted from the subject by a game of who could slide down the slide the most number of times the fastest while Dongwoo was left to be a judge. After the third slide though, his mind began to wander.
--
A few days after talking to his sister about how to know when you liked someone, Dongwoo started to notice something.
“Psst, hey. Dongwoo. Do you have a pencil I can borrow?” Woohyun asked from across from him. Dongwoo pulled out his tray in his desk and handed his friend a neatly sharpened pencil, which Woohyun took from him gratefully.
“Thanks! I’ll give it back to you later.”
And for some inexplicable reason, Dongwoo kept looking up at him all through class. He would glance over at him randomly while they were doing their work. His eyes would suddenly move up to see Woohyun bent over his work, frowning when he didn’t understand something and smiling when he did.
The first thing is that you keep looking at them, whether you want to or not. They look like they’re everywhere you are.
His sister’s words echoed in Dongwoo’s mind, and he frowned before busying himself with the math worksheet.
“Dongwoo, you got that first one wrong,” Howon whispered from beside him.
--
During lunch, he, Howon, and Woohyun always sat together and shared their food. Sneakily, of course, because the lunch monitors didn’t like for the kids to share, just in case they were sick.
Woohyun always sat in the middle while Dongwoo and Howon sat on either side of him. Once, there weren’t any seats left, and Dongwoo had to sit on the other side of Howon. He remembered that he didn’t have a good day that day.
The second thing is, you want to be near them.
Dongwoo frowned again as Woohyun poked him in the cheek and held up his apple.
“Are you gonna eat this, Dongwoo?”
“No, you can have it,” Dongwoo said, turning his eyes away. He just liked sitting the same way they had for the last two years. It wasn’t that he had to be right next to Woohyun for lunch. But then he remembered that he had a bad day that one time he had to sit across from Woohyun, too.
--
And the last thing is, you want them to like you too.
“Woohyun, you like me, right?” Dongwoo asked one day as Woohyun pushed him on the swings. Howon was absent that day because he had a cold, but Dongwoo and Woohyun suspected that he caught cooties from one of the girls.
“Yeah. You’re one of my best friends! You like me too, right?”
“Yeah. You’re one of my best friends, too.”
Dongwoo felt like he was going to be in trouble soon.
--
“Noona?” Dongwoo asked as he knocked on his sister’s door quietly. She looked up from her desk and saw her little brother poking his head into her room as she was studying. She glanced over at the clock and saw that it was way past his bedtime.
“Dongwoo, what are you doing up? Mom’s going to get mad if she sees you.”
“I couldn’t sleep. I have a problem.” His sister blinked at him a few times before putting her pencil down and holding out her arms. He ran and jumped into her lap, making himself comfortable.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“I think I like someone,” Dongwoo said quietly. His sister laughed as she saw a small blush rise on his face.
“Oh? You like someone?”
“I don’t know. They fit the description of what you told me a while ago.”
“Do they like you back?”
“They said they did. What do I do?”
“Ah. That’s the hard part about liking someone. I can’t really tell you what comes next. Just be friends.”
--
Dongwoo’s mother read him a bedtime story about a girl that picked petals off of a flower, chanting “he loves me, he loves me not,” until she got to the last petal. It turned out that he loves her, so she ran off to go confess her feelings to him.
Dongwoo was on his way to the playground when he spotted the same flower growing in the ground. He stopped and squatted down before picking it and blinking a few times at the petals before gently grabbing one and pulling it out.
“He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not.” Dongwoo kept going until there was only one petal left, leaving a wide smile on his face as he pulled it off.
“He loves me.”
“Dongwoo! What are you doing over there?” he heard Woohyun call. Dongwoo looked up and dropped the empty stem before hurrying over to him with a grin on his face.
“What? Did you find a frog or something?” Howon asked.
“No, I was just making sure about something.”
“Well, are you done? We need another person for aliens, dinosaurs, and giants.”
“Do I have to be aliens again? I’m always aliens,” Dongwoo complained. Woohyun shook his head and grinned at his friend.
“Nope. I’m aliens this time. What are friends for?”
Dongwoo grinned at him before Howon started the game. He would follow his sister’s advice, and they would be friends.
For now.