Work Text:
Sakura sighed, closing his eyes while trying to keep his cool and not say anything that would come out as rude. He was really, really trying this time. It was supposed to be a school trip, after all: no stress, no annoyances, no fights, just a good time and lots of fun. Then… Why the hell was Nirei putting him through such a test?
“So, sweet or sour, Sakura-san?” Nirei continued, a satisfied smile on his face. He was sitting on the bed next to Sakura’s, his legs crossed and his little notebook in one hand while the pencil, held by the other hand, seemed to move restlessly.
Sakura lost count of how many of those questions he answered in a five minute span. He had just got out of the shower and Nirei was already throwing one inquiry after the other. All he wanted right now was for Suo to finish his bath so he could entertain Nirei’s curiosity in his place.
With a defeated sigh, Sakura rolled his eyes as if thinking. “I-I don’t know, sour, I think? No, maybe sweet it’s better, but- agh, whatever! Both,” he groaned, part of him hoping for it to be enough to end Nirei’s questions.
But it wasn’t.
After noting something down in half a second, Nirei already lifted his gaze from his notebook and a satisfied smile rested on his lips. Damn it! “Ok, Sakura-san, would you say you-”
“AHH!!” Sakura groaned - or, maybe, ‘growled’ is a better description - “why are you asking so many questions?” He huffed, a faint rosy hue spreading across his cheeks. The awkward silence that followed only made it worse.
Nirei blinked quietly, as if processing Sakura’s reactions. “Oh, to gather more information about you, Sakura-san,” he nodded promptly, his polite smile already back to his face. “That will help me understand you and- S-Sakura-san? Where are you going?” The boy spoke hurriedly as Sakura walked over the room, picking up his things before heading to his bed.
“I-I’m tired. I want to go to bed early. Good night!” He hissed, the last part even more aggressively than before. Maybe if he pretended to be asleep, Nirei would spare him from the endless interrogation.
“Oh, good night, Sakura-san,” Nirei replied, watching as Sakura turned his back to him and shifted his position a couple times, probably trying to find a comfortable position in his bed.
As Sakura’s pretending went on, the only noise filling their bedroom was the one coming from the shower. But it was replaced soon enough, as Suo finished his bath and walked back into the bedroom. “Ahh, I really needed that after today’s-”
“Shhh!” Nirei interrupted, holding out his finger in front of his slightly-smiling lips. “Sakura-san is sleeping,” he chuckled quietly, pointing over to the other.
Sakura, with his face out of their sight, clenched his teeth. Just ignore them and keep pretending until you’re actually sleeping, he thought to himself.
“Hmm,” Suo tilted his head, placing the towel over his shoulders as he looked over to Sakura, narrowing his eye while inspecting the picture more thoroughly. Sleeping, huh? “Sorry, I didn’t know,” he whispered - or rather spoke in a ‘whispery’ manner -, “I could swear I heard you two talking just now.”
“Sakura-san was helping me fill the notebook with more information about him,” Nirei said while raising the book in his hand, “but he said he was tired and wanted to sleep early.”
‘Yes, and you two should do the same!’, Sakura though, closing his hand into a fist over the sheets. He couldn’t help, however, his curiosity in hearing what Suo and Nirei were going to talk about.
He could hear the shifts in one of the beds, probably a pillow being tossed aside and one of the blankets pushed away. What were they doing?
“Oh, you wrote a lot, Nirei,” Suo praised, leaning over the blonde to get a better look at Sakura’s page in the notebook. “Did Sakura really answer all that?”
“Well, not everything. There are things about him that I notice and decide that they are noteworthy. Or things that happen and I feel that are important enough to register. Things like that,” Nirei flipped across one or two pages, showing examples of what he just said.
On the nearby bed, Sakura couldn’t help but squirm a little, feeling curiosity eating him from inside out. He never bothered himself enough to check more than a couple lines in Nirei’s notebook - and, most of the time, they weren’t even about him. Thinking that Suo and Nirei were discussing him in detail…
That reaction didn't go unnoticed under Suo’s attentive gaze. So far, Suo found it curious how Sakura would decide for the most complex and difficult courses of actions to solve the most simple problems. “So, Nirei,” he muttered, the gears already turning inside his head, “what are those blank spaces?”
Sakura widened his eyes - but, thankfully, they were out of his friends’ sight.
“For things I still need to figure out. Like what Sakura-san’s laughter is like or if he has any notable weakness and-”
“Would you like me to help you figure those out?” Suo interrupted, tilting his head to the side while he looked at Nirei.
The excitement in the blonde’s face contrasted the fear and worry that took over Sakura’s. Nirei nodded, almost in a hurry, and promptly held up his pencil next to the notebook. “A-are you sure, Suo-san?”
“Mhm!” Suo smiled, looking at Sakura and then back to Nirei. “Since he is asleep, hearing him laugh might be a little difficult… but we can try to look for any weak spots.”
“Got it,” Nirei nodded, watching while his colleague stood up and walked over Sakura’s bed. The quiet, gentle steps sent shivers down Sakura’s body - which he tried his best to conceal - while making him wonder what Suo was plotting this time.
“Sakura-san’s weakness…” Suo spoke gently, sitting himself next to Sakura’s “sleeping” body in his bed. Sakura gulped as he felt the mattress shifting, already bracing himself for the worst. “Oh.”
“S-Suo-san? Did you discover something?”
Suo chuckled, “maybe,” he looked over his shoulder to face Nirei and then back at Sakura - more specifically, at his ear slowly turning red. “Let’s see…”
!!!!
Sakura gritted his teeth, feeling each and every muscle of his body tense to strain any noise from escaping his throat. Meanwhile, Suo gently fluttered his fingers around Sakura’s reddish ear, caressing and stroking the shell and down the lobe. “Sakura-san’s ears always turn so red when he gets shy… could they be a weak spot? What do you think, Nirei?”
Why, why, why, why?!
Why was Suo tickl- torturing him like that?! Sakura’s lips trembled, threatening to curve themselves into a smile while Suo’s finger moved ever so slowly.
“I don’t know, Suo-san,” Nirei answered and lifted his eyes from his notebook, pondering on that question as if it was some deep and serious matter. “If blushing was the deciding topic, then his cheeks would be a weak spot too.”
“Oh, so smart, Nirei-kun ~” Suo said, but refused to stop the ticklish teasing just yet, continuing to gently wiggle his finger around Sakura’s ear. Despite being out of Nirei’s sight, Sakura’s smiling and shudders were as clear as day to Suo, who was, if anything, entertained by his stubbornness. “Let’s see,” Suo cooed, tracing his index down to the side of Sakura’s neck, wiggling it along with his other fingers.
“P-pfft… s-stohohop it…” Sakura whined, scrunching up his shoulder and trying to push Suo’s hand away.
Nirei nearly jumped out of his seat, panic kicking as a thousand thoughts crossed his mind. “S-Suo-san, he is going to wake up!”
“That would mean we found the weak spot, no?” Suo grinned at Nirei, managing to dig his fingers into Sakura’s neck despite his attempts to stop him. “Also, I didn’t know Sakura-san was ticklish… does that count as a weakness?”
“I-I think it does!” Nirei nodded, picking up the pencil and noting the new found information. He couldn’t say he fully agreed with Suo’s straightforward methods, but he also couldn’t question the results it brought. “So… ears and neck are ticklish.”
“I wonder if he is ticklish anywhere else…” Suo commented as his fingers trailed down, trying to sneak under Sakura’s arm, but being pushed away. He chuckled, at the reaction. “I think he is indeed about to wake up, Nirei-kun.”
Sakura huffed, hoping that - this time - he would convince the other two to forget about him. What a sweet mistake. All he could feel was a shift in the mattress before two hands began to knead and tickle his sides, forcing an embarrassingly loud squeal out of him.
“WAHAHAH!! ~ W-whaAHaht are you dohohoing?!!” Sakura laughed, pressing his elbows against his body as much as he could, but it had little-to-no-effect in blocking Suo’s fingers. “G-Gehehet ohohoff!”
“Hold still, Sakura-san,” Suo giggled along, pinching and prodding at whatever spot he could reach. “I’m trying to find your weak spot!”
“Buhuhullshit! AHAHahah, stahAHAhap!!”
While Nirei tried to find a way to sum all that into his notes - both Suo’s tickling skills and Sakura’s ticklish spots - Suo continued to test one spot after the other, swiftly moving around his victim’s body. At some point, he had Sakura’s legs straddled and the last spot he wanted to try at his disposal: his feet.
“H-hah, don’t you- hahh.. dare!” Sakura wheezed, trying to push his body up. He couldn’t see what Suo was doing and that definitely made things worse. “I’m warning you, don’t d-AHAhah!”
“Wow, I think I found it, Nirei-kun,” Suo teased, the corner of his lips curling up while he tickled Sakura’s feet, his right hand targeting the spot under Sakura’s toes while the left one scratched the ball of his foot. “He is laughing the hardest now, no?”
“Mhm,” Nirei commented, not taking the matter as playfully as Suo was. This was important data, after all, “compared to when you tickled his sides, he is also squirming a lot more now.”
“You heard that, Sakura-san?” Suo laughed, not even sure if his voice could make it to Sakura’s ears. “Your feet might be your weak spot!”
“SHUHUHUT UP! AHAHA- lehEHEhet go!!” He cackled while tears of mirth started to hang on his lashes. He banged his fist against the soft mattress and pressed his face into it, nearly laughing like a madman while Suo’s fingers skittered all around his soles.
No matter if he tried to kick or move his feet in the little room they had, Suo always seemed to find a way to continue tickling him. Gently, then suddenly rougher. Sakura could never grow accustomed to it and, in the end, the only thing that he could think about - besides how bad it tickled - was why Suo was so good at this?!
Well, it didn’t matter. At least, not when Sakura felt like he was about to laugh his life away. “NIREHEHEI! H-HEHEHehehelp mehehe!!” He pleaded, reaching out to the blonde with his trembling hand - using the last bits of his strength in this final attempt of escaping.
Nirei chuckled, but couldn’t deny it was a little scary to imagine himself in Sakura’s face. Suo was scary, after all. “S-Suo-san, I think you should let Sakura-san go now!”
“Is that so?” Suo smiled, quickly pulling his hands away and holding them up in the air. “Did you gather all the data you wanted, Nirei-kun?”
“Yes!” Nirei said, happily looking at all the spaces he managed to fill in his notes with the new information. “Thanks to you, I could note down Sakura-san’s weakness, a couple of weak spots and even write a good description of what his laughter is like!”
“You-” Sakura groaned, slowly getting on his knees on his bed, “you- ahh, will pay… for that!” He threatened, pointing at Nirei and looking at him with bloodlust in his eyes. Well, it made sense, he was the culprit behind this whole thing, after all.
Nirei gulped. “Maybe we should apol- S-Suo-san?!” He widened his eyes as Suo was already nowhere next to him. When did he even leave?! “S-Sakura-san, I-I can explain! Please, wait! There’s no need to get- wAHHAHH!!”