AN: Thanks, Lavvy, for editing these drabbles.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor moon.

Valentine.

"Odango?"

Her back went pin straight. The voice was smooth, deep, and slinked up her spine. The nerves that ensued feathered her stomach until not one body part was left untouched. His face immediately fabricated in her mind sheer seconds before it became solid and real, feet in front of her own. Her mouth opened, then closed when no sound came out. She tried again, but only succeeded in looking like a guppy fish.

"Chiba-san!"

Ever so cool, ever so calm and collected, the sleek professional behind the counter now staggered with her papers, pens and sophisticated words. Yet, Mamoru, calm, cool, and collected by nature, kept his eyes keenly on the cemented blonde bunny. He murmured for a second time, taking a step forward, "Odango." Only this time it was a statement.

His eyes, oh God, his eyes are so blue. "Mamoru…" She said, finally. Her hands gripped the gifts in her arms so acutely that the very fibre of the material cut a sliver of thought into her mind. Immediately, her arms lifted, nearly spilling the roses to the floor. "I have a delive…Deliver- ah…" What was it called? "Delivery."

He took another step forward. His so-blue eyes flickered down before converging with hers again. "So, I see."

"You live here?" She blurted out.

"Of course, he lives here."

Squaring his jaw, he pierced the lady behind the granite counter with a cutting look that promptly choked her words. "What are you doing here, Usagi?"

Why was she there again? "I have a delivery."

A smile itched on his lips. "Yes, you mentioned that. For who?"

"Six-six…" Three? "Three. You live here." She demanded again, not seeming to get her mind around that. But, he lived here? In this palace?

He shifted his shoulders, and it was then that she realized he was carrying something. A present perhaps? A gift? Jealousy swarmed her stomach, but she immediately stomped down on it with a heart of despair.

"I live here." He answered. He stood two feet from her. The heat from his body smoldered with hers. "In fact, I live exactly here." He lifted her wrist, covered the sensitive skin of her hand that held the address. His voice rumbled like the brief thunder storm of yesterday.

Oh Lord… He was touching her. He had touched her before, but this seemed different. And amazing. "Here?" she squeaked.

His brow lifted a tiny bit in acknowledgement, as if to say, coincidence? Design?

"Well, then, these are…" Yours. She fumbled with the gifts in her attempt to hand them over, but the thought beat through her like a drum. He had a girlfriend. Of course, he had a girlfriend.

With a silent huff, the woman with the cold eyes and granite counter analyzed the situation to the best of her knowledge. Obviously one of his admirers, she thought, patronizing. One batting pitifully out her league, too, and pretending –unsuccessfully, she thought—to be a delivery girl. Six-six-three, indeed.

"Chiba-san, I'm terribly sorry," she said in her best refined voice. Classy, she smiled serenely. That was the type of female that hung on this man's arm, and for months now she'd been striving to place herself just there. "I'll just escort this child out the door this instant."

Mamoru's grip tightened dramatically on Usagi's wrist. "Miss, when I am in need of your assistance I'll inform you. Now," he continued, even as the woman lost her arm-deserving composure, "I believe you had a delivery to make."

"Right." She should have expected it. She had expected it, but she hadn't actually expected this. "Here you are." It was all she could do to keep her eyes from watering.

Instead of taking the presents from her, he tugged on her wrist until she was trailing behind him, stumbling over herself. "Wait—where are we going?"

"To my apartment." He flashed a grin. "To deliver."

She tripped after him as he strode to the elevator. She might have lingered on her depressing thoughts, but it was quite hard juggling two boxes and a bundle of roses in one arm. "Mamoru-baka," she said exasperatedly, "I don't think I need to go to your apartment so long as I actually deliver the packages to you."

"Manners, Odango," he chastised tauntingly. Pressing for the sixth floor, he said, "what if I was sitting at home instead of returning from the dry-cleaners?"

"You weren't."

"But, what if I was?"

"You weren't," she insisted.

"Odango," his words tempered vexation, but tangled with the affection that beamed from his smile.

"Mamoru," Usagi sighed. "Why won't you take your parcels?"

He raised his brow. "They're not mine."

"Not yours?" She frowned, even as a mixture of concern and relief spread into her gut. If they weren't his… "But, you said—"

"That I lived here," he finished, and with a gallant sweep of his arm, the elevator chimed and the doors opened. "The parcels, however, belong to you."

"Me?" Puzzled and a touch bewildered, Usagi followed him over the plush carpet to a blue painted door and wondered, perhaps, if the poor man hit his head that day. "No. Mamoru, your girlfriend…"

"Seems," he interrupted under his breath, jingling his keys into the lock, "to be taking her time accepting a gift."

"What?"

He did not answer, but simply swung her into the dwelling. Simultaneously, he unloaded his own cargo on the hook nailed to the door as he closed it, and did it with such precision that Usagi's earlier thought of it as a gift invaded her once more.

But, when she looked, all that greeted her was the exact same jacket she'd dropped off not twenty minutes ago. Except that it was clean, spotless, and nearly sparkling.

How many jackets did he have? She looked at him accusingly. "How many jackets do you have?" Then added, "Chiba!" Just to make herself sound intimidating.

A grin, heart-breaking, and gorgeous, grew in amusement. "Just one, Odango," he answered with such warmth. "I just picked it up from the cleaners."

"I… but I just dropped it off!" She gawked. "And how did you know? How is clean? How… how?"

"Gypsies." He said it so solemnly that, even if she were a disbeliever, she'd have trusted him completely. "I believe the only requirement is that you hand it back to whomever," he quoted, "when the jacket is returned to you."

Usagi's hand flew to the CUE tag inside her pocket, then the candy along side it. When she attempted to draw it out, he stilled her with a look. "I don't think I need the cue just yet."

"Oh…'kay." His eyes were saying something else entirely, and all the answers to the events within the past twenty-four hours lingered in them. She might have come up with an entirely different and more lucrative response, but all she could manage was an 'oh… kay'.

"You need to open the package first." There was no question as to which package needed to be opened as he plucked the bundle of roses and jewellery box from her arms.

He was hiding something, she thought, even as her fingers tore into the wrapper. It would probably be just like him, and the glimpses of affection she'd seen briefly that day and the day before were simply figments of her pitiful imagination. If that was the case, she pulled the paper away, then her heart would shatter, absolutely rupture to pieces. And he would have to die…

Her thoughts ended on that when she took her first look at the liberated parcel, and came into direct contact with the journal.

The journal.

The disappearing journal itself.

The Valentines Day gift journal.

Her lips parted on a breath.

"I'd lost the journal yesterday."

Pressure clogged in her throat.

"There's only one entry in there."

His hands ran over hers before lifting the cover.

"There was only one thing that consumed all of my thoughts."

It was printed in bold words that held a hint of fanciful font in each letter. The very bequest she'd been dying to receive. The very thing she'd been dying to find out. The very words she'd been dying to read.

The gods _ beamed every star in the blue,

Must have lit every _,

On the chance that they'd finally _,

And seal our _

So I pray that these notes might well give them the _,

When I write what might _

And perchance, they'd bring you to me.

The very words she was still dying to read, she mused sardonically, as her hands ran over the cutout spaces in each line. She looked up at him, beneath her eyelashes. "Do you always cut out sentences when writing?"

He leaned back on his heels, looking very masculine in his black sweater and khaki pants. The tan of his arms shadowed the muscles in them, and they fluxed as he watched her. "Of course not." The look he shot her injected dozens of tiny bullets through her system. "Why do you ask?"

She lifted the journal. "Words are missing, it would seem."

"No," he said, then, with such confidence, that her head snapped up. "They'd always been out of there and in the world the entire time. Yesterday, I'd thought you might need a pocket to put them in." With that, he reached into the pouch of the green tweed jacket.

"You didn't have one yesterday," he persisted when she said nothing, "and you seemed to need it." Stacked neatly together, he pulled out all four cards she accumulated the day before. "Fortunately, you had your own today."

Her hand flexed on the papers and candy in her coat's compartment, drawing them out in the same orderly fashion.

Large, almost dangerous, and with a devilish glint hinting from his eye, he placed the four cards in her hand and drew the book from her fingers, which he positioned on the mahogany end table.

"I hadn't ever finished it. Even when I'd begun writing it for you, just for myself, some words didn't seem to make it through my thoughts." His smile was wry and secretive, and she desperately wanted to know what he was thinking. "I hadn't even intended for you to see it. If I'd give it to you, and you rejected it—" his jaw worked, contracted. He turned to the book. "But, then, you came in yesterday when I was struggling to finish it, demanding to know what I was writing. You were so little –you'd always been so little. Small and delicate with a great amount of passion." His fingers lingered over the cutouts as he turned to face her, evaluating every strand of her hair, every lash of her eye. "Sometimes," his voice went increasingly low, "it takes every muscle in my body not to reach out and grab you, and never let go."

Her hands shook slightly, and she clung to the papers as if they were an anchor. She wanted to throw herself at him, into his arms, and perform the same action he admitted to want. Dreams and wishes only came true in fairytales, that rational voice in her mind said. But, here he is, she thought. Standing there, looking a touch uncomfortable, and saying those words she'd always desired to hear from him, and only him.

Uncomfortable or not, he looked as if he was going to do the very thing he restrained himself from doing. As an alternative, he pushed the book in her direction.

Her hand floated of its own will, chronologically placing each card in each outline until the words merged with the sentences, and one candy, blessed by gypsies as the story went, decorated the entry perfect. And so it read:

The gods Must Have beamed every star in the blue,

Must have lit every Sparkle of Sea,

On the chance that they'd finally Bring Me to You,

And seal our Destiny.

So I pray that these notes might well give them the Cue,

When I write what might Chance You a Lead:

Door six-six-three of Apartments: Azubu

And perchance, they'd bring you to me.

His fingers trembled into her view. She frowned, confused. Mamoru never trembled, so confident and solid was he.

"I had hoped that this journal, this poem, would give you to me somehow. Not give," he corrected. "Carry. Carry to me."

He took her hand as if it were his lifeline. If music could only play for two people, then the wind hummed it for them.

"We're meant to be, Usako."

Wide, clear, absolutely eloquent, she lifted her gaze to his.

"I know. Mamo-chan."

Heat flashed in his eyes, even as his brow, that damnable, mocking brow, quirked up.

A smile, sweet as sugar, spread over her face, and her toes subconsciously twisted themselves on the ground. Upturned and nonsensical to ordered and perfect, the world seemed right again. "I always wondered if you'd ever figure it out." Her fingers curled around his.

He hesitated a moment before giving into temptation and slipping around her waist. "Unlike a certain someone, I knew from the very beginning."

"You never said anything." Liberated, her hand traced up his chest.

"Yes, well," he bent down enough so that nose rubbed against her temple. "You threw me off with your lurid displays of annoyance and displeasure."

"You're imagining things." Had his hair always been this soft? This rich?

"I didn't think so. You were always so furious with me," he smiled at the memory. "It wasn't until you sat in front of me yesterday, stubborn and forever curious, that I first glimpsed at something I'd never seen in your expression."

"Love?" She bit at her tongue.

He nodded. "Love."

His hand lifted to her chin, cupped it. "I waited three months for you to look at me like that. I needed to prove it to you. So I left my jacket in hopes that you would take it, in hopes that fate would take the reins."

"Mamo-chan…"

He put a finger to her lips. "Not yet, Usa. You have this amazing ability to distract me, Usako. And, perhaps, later, I'll let you." There was that devil's glint again. His lips nearly touched hers as he leaned closer. "But, its Valentines Day, isn't it?"

Usagi could only flush and nod, wondering when she'd be able to see what he tasted like.

He reached for the jewellery box on the table. "I bought this for you a while ago. I didn't know when I was going to give it to you. But, you always were impatient, scurrying to get from this place to that." He flipped the lid open. "You seem to have beaten me to the punch."

It was a ring. A gold ring, the band intricately decorated with a vine that wrapped around a single sapphire. "Like your eyes," he said as he took it from its bed.

"Mamo-chan," she said, and lingered on the name before meeting his stare. "This is no ordinary jewel."

"Nothing is ordinary when it comes to you," he said under his breath.

"But Mamo-chan," she insisted. "This is—it's—," she huffed. She was stubborn? "You didn't have to get me anything, least of all this. I can't take this!"

"Nothing else would do," he said simply, then glanced up at her guilty expression. "Usa," he relished the word. "This is much more than a gift. It's a promise." He slid it half way on the third finger of her right hand. "I'm asking much more of you than you are of me."

Years sung in his voice. Mere decades and measly centuries danced with his hair. They had that saying, 'Live forever in a moment'. She never understood what it meant –how could a person live forever in a limited amount of time?—and after that she might still ponder of the meaning. But, for them, in that moment, and on that day, forever was unlimited.

So, she said, "I don't think so." Because, she really didn't think he was asking anything different than she was.

He pulled her swiftly against him as if those very words were all it took to snap his control. His lips brushed at hers with promise, before pausing. "Have I told you yet that I love you?"

"Not yet." She stretched up on her toes to meet his mouth.

He sank into her, drowning. His hand tightened on her waist. "Have you told me?"

A sound of frustration pulled at her throat. "I've been telling you my entire life." She'd been waiting to taste him her entire life. She tugged his head down.

"Tell me now," he demanded softly, his lips leaving tiny kisses on her jaw, her cheeks, her neck.

"I love you." She closed her eyes. Her hands raked through his hair. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

"I love you." His breath was quickening with his pulse. He took her right hand, fingered the ring. His eyes drowned in hers. "Be mine, Usako. Today. Tomorrow." He kissed the skin tingling just above the sapphire. "For the rest of our lives, and then some."

So suddenly, the world, the fates, the complexity of destiny seemed to assemble in perfect order. Joy nearly burst from the seams as she clung to his arms. She would have time tomorrow to wonder over the miracle that happened to her that day. She would have time for the rest of her life to ponder over how she'd gotten just what she wanted by simply…Breathing.

But, today, she traced the line of his jaw. "Will you give me my flowers?"

Scrutinizing, as if memorizing every last detail to her face with the same gaze she'd seen him use in prior occasions, his smile broadened to absolute beauty. "I think," he began, circling her around until he had her back up against the wall, "that I'll take that cue first."

Excitement jumped in her belly. With his face looming close to hers, with their breaths intermingling and their hearts beating in unison, Usagi gave him the only answer to the only question that would ever matter:

Be mine?

"Okay."

End.

*Kacho is a Japanese expression used when an employee addresses ones boss. The terms '-san' and '-sama' also work in this context, but I'm complex and a keener, and you'll have to indulge me. ^^