Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or the characters contained therein, they belong to Masashi Kishimoto who is kind enough to let fans write fiction. I make no profit from this nor do I intend to.

A/N: This is my entry for Forbidden Love The Kakashi & Sakura Italian Community's (International) Valentine's Day Contest. It can be found at - kakasaku (dot) forumfree (dot) it - in the contest section under international. If you're a KakaSaku fan (not sure why you'd be reading this if you weren't . ) I highly suggest heading over there to see the other entries done by some really talented ladies and vote for the one you like best. :-)

Many thanks to my new one-shot beta Mystical Spirits! Loads of thanks also go to Clearheart for doing a first look – would probably not have gotten it together without your encouragement! :-D And, for those wondering – I have not abandoned or lost interest in Simple Things. It's off at the beta and will be posted as soon as I get it back and make edits. I don't know when that will be but I'll get it up as soon as I can. Until then, happy reading!

~*~*~*~

Happy What?

Kakashi accepted the mission scrolls with a nod of thanks and a silent curse. The assignment itself wasn't particularly difficult or something he disliked doing, but the timing and length were unfortunate. He would have to leave at first light and until then, he would have to spend most of his time preparing for the mission. Undercover assignments always required the most preparation, and by the looks of the added scrolls in his pocket, he'd have a lot to memorize before morning.

The Copy Ninja quickly made his way from the Hokage Tower to his apartment, his mind working overtime as he tried working something out to salvage what the mission would probably destroy. Mentally he swore again. He'd had plans for the next day – important ones – but now he would have to drop them and would not have a chance to pick them back up for at least a couple of months. Sakura was going to kill him. Or, worse, drop him for someone who wasn't out of the village so often.

He was already on thin ice as it was. The elite jonin couldn't help that when he was in the village – which, lately, wasn't very often – he didn't want to have to share Sakura with anyone else. That said, they ended up doing a lot of things at home, rather than going out. As a consequence, Sakura had somehow gotten the misguided idea that he didn't want people to know about them, which was ridiculous. Kakashi knew a good thing when he had one and wanted everyone to know just how lucky he was. And, of course, that Sakura was also off the market. To make matters worse, the plans he'd had to rectify the situation were pretty much shot to hell with his new mission.

~*~*~*~

Sakura slowly cracked her eyelids open, unsure as to what could have possibly pulled her from her well-deserved rest. Due to a medic shortage, she'd just finished a double – her fifth in the past two weeks – and she was too tired to be woken up in the middle of the night. For a moment she lay in her bed, wondering why she was no longer asleep, before hearing a strange noise.

Sluggishly, she swung her legs over the side of her bed; secure in the knowledge that whatever it was that had disturbed her sleep was not dangerous. One of the little-known perks of working at the hospital was accumulating vast quantities of gratitude from a wide variety of shinobi, which could, on occasion, be cashed in for favors. When her apartment building was rebuilt, she was able to request a few extra safety features. Consequently, she now lived in one of the safest apartments in the village. It was handy for when she pushed herself too far at work, to say the least.

Too tired to be angry (yet), she found her slippers and rummaged around until she found a robe before following the strange noise. Somewhere in her sleep-deprived mind, she recognized the sound but couldn't quite place it.

Walking into her small kitchen, the sound finally resolved itself into something she consciously recognized. Her former sensei stood by her kitchen table with a noisemaker in one hand, a confetti popper in the other, and his mask pulled down around his neck to allow unrestricted access to the aforementioned noisemaker. Despite Sakura's exhaustion, her heart still gave a little jolt upon seeing Kakashi's bare face. He'd only just shown her at Christmas (after falling prey to a few too many drinks and a strategically-placed sprig of mistletoe) and the novelty hadn't worn off yet.

Once she was able to pull her eyes from her former sensei's beautiful face, Sakura also noted that the older man had brought a bottle of fairly expensive champagne and a pair of champagne flutes. Clearly he felt the need to celebrate something, though she couldn't for the life of her figure out what. Not many holidays or events required celebrating in the middle of the night, and certainly none of those took place in February.

"Kakashi, what are you doing?" she asked as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. "Why are you here at…" she squinted at the clock by her refrigerator, "twelve-oh-seven?"

Grinning, Kakashi handed Sakura a confetti popper and poured her a glass of champagne. She accepted them without thinking and stood there staring at the party equipment for a few moments, still unable to make sense of it all.

Kakashi blew his paper noisemaker enthusiastically. "Happy New Year!" he cried. When she didn't respond he blew the noisemaker again and pulled the string off one of the confetti poppers, showering the fatigued woman with streamers and confetti.

Exhaustion clouding her thoughts, Sakura knit her brows in confusion. "Happy New Year?" she asked doubtfully, thoughts of her eighteen hour shift and her nice warm bed fighting with her mystification.

The silver-haired jonin blew his noisemaker again and grinned. "Yes, happy New Year!"

"Kakashi, what?" She stifled a yawn and dug a couple pieces of confetti from her champagne. "New Years?"

Her friend nodded, managing to look hurt. "Yes, New Years!"

She raised her eyebrow and waited for elaboration.

He cocked his head slightly. "Don't you remember?" he asked with clear disappointment in his voice. "I promised to spend New Years with you."

"Uwagh, Kakashi! New Years was two months ago!" Sleepily, she set down the glass of champagne and the confetti popper to rub her eyes again, in an attempt to better focus on the elite jonin and his bizarre antics. "It's February!"

He smiled happily and blew his noisemaker again. "Exactly! Just on time!"

"Huh? Wha?" Sakura started, shaking her head. "How does that work? New Year's is December 31st, not sometime in the middle of February!"

"Ah, but there—" he took a sip of his champagne in hopes that she would follow suit and make things much easier for him, "there, you are wrong." He playfully reached out and tweaked her nose.

"Wrong?" Sakura asked flatly as she waved his hand away. She absently reclaimed her glass and took a sip, vaguely thinking she would need it before the encounter with her former sensei was over. She was pleasantly surprised to find that it was very good and took another, larger sip.

Hiding a smile, he took another swallow of his champagne before nodding. "Yes. What you're thinking about is the calendar New Year."

"Um, okay…" She raised an eyebrow as she downed the rest of the champagne in her glass, figuring that she might as well not let the expensive stuff go to waste. "And there is a different one?"

"Mm-hmm, I celebrate lunar New Years." He smiled happily at her and Sakura's heart gave another little jump.

"Lunar New Years?" she asked dubiously, pouring herself another glass of the very tasty drink from the bottle on the table.

"Yes, the lunar calendar is more in tune with nature, and since it's based on the cycles of the moon, it tends to move about quite a bit." He smiled again and raised his glass in a toast. "This year it falls on the fourteenth."

She absently raised her glass to his before taking another large sip. "I see…" she responded, still not quite convinced, and feeling that she was missing something.

"Exactly! And since I'm heading out in the morning for an undercover assignment, I wanted to make sure we got the chance to celebrate together before I go." Happily, he shot another confetti popper into the air and blew his noisemaker. After a quick calculating glance, he discarded his noisemaker completely and pulled her to him for what he'd intended to be a quick, chaste kiss – he half-expected her to react violently. But, surprisingly, she allowed it, and he decided to try and push it a little further.

Suddenly, Sakura pulled away from him, her eyes narrowing a little accusingly. "Hey, wait a minute…" she murmured as something finally surfaced in her exhausted mind. "If it's the fourteenth, doesn't that also make it Valentine's Day?"

"Ah-heh, um… Happy New Years?!" he tried as he quickly reclaimed his noisemaker and tried giving it one last good blow before making a run for it. Silently, he chuckled to himself, pleased that he'd managed to completely throw her off of what he'd planned. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best he could do on such short notice.

~*~*~*~

Sakura sighed in annoyance as she finally returned to her apartment. It had been a long and, frankly, unpleasant day. Everywhere she'd looked, she'd found reminders of the romantic holiday: red and pink decorations, hearts and flowers, couples doing couple things. Every little reminder was an extra pinch of salt in the wound.

Kakashi had known about the holiday and had deliberately planned to celebrate with her without actually celebrating the proper holiday. She didn't like to admit it, but it stung more than it should. Kakashi had been stealthily dancing around the all-important public 'couples' activities since the two of them had wound up together under the mistletoe last Christmas, leaving her to wonder if he was ashamed of their fledgling relationship.

She angrily shoved all thoughts of Kakashi from her mind, determined to put the infuriating man out of her mind. He would, after all, be gone for the next several months, and fuming over his inconsiderate actions would do her no good. At least, not until he returned; then Kakashi would have some serious explaining to do, if he wanted to maintain their relationship status.

With her thoughts somewhat soothed, Sakura decided she wasn't in the mood to cook and ordered out from her favorite restaurant. While she was waiting, she turned on her rarely-used TV in hopes of finding a mindless action movie or something similarly lacking in either plot or romance. After a few moments of frustrated channel-flipping, she snarled and turned the TV off – it had been a stupid idea to look for a non-romantic program on Valentine's Day.

While she was debating taking a nice long bath, the delivery person arrived. Absently, she pulled out enough money from her purse to pay for her food and opened the door.

Sakura's jaw dropped. Standing on her doorstep was indeed the delivery person from her favorite take-out place, but he wasn't only holding her dinner. Oh, no. The young man did have a bag of what she presumed was her food in one hand, but it also held a large box of her favorite (and super expensive) chocolates. In his other, he had a beautiful bouquet of her favorite flowers, and a small, red, sealed gift bag.

Stunned, Sakura took the proffered gifts from the grinning delivery man, who was already turning to leave.

Snapping out of it, the pink-haired woman called out. "Hey, wait! I didn't pay!"

The amused man turned and chuckled. "Don't worry about it. Mr. Hatake already took care of it and covered your orders for the next few months."

"Ah, oh…" Sakura stammered, at a loss for words as she felt the color rise in her cheeks.

The delivery man laughed and waved before heading back to the restaurant.

Not quite sure what to make of the delivery, Sakura brought everything inside her apartment and to her kitchen. After checking the food and putting the flowers into water, the curious kunoichi turned her attention to the sealed gift bag. Cautiously, she released the seal and found a small card.

Sakura,

Sorry I was called out. I know you were looking forward to what I had planned – I was too. I will make it up to you.

Kakashi

Under the card, Sakura found Kakashi's real gift. She stared at it for a moment, and it wasn't long before she found herself smiling and forgiving the occasionally infuriating man.