Author's Note: This is my first CCS fic... so go easy on me, okay? I know this isn't really the expected pairings, but I JUST HAD TO DO IT. Wahaha.

Chapter One

"Oh come on," he hissed into his phone, the rapid Chinese words firing out of his mouth distinctly out of place in his surroundings. Already he was attracting some stares, which he blandly ignored. "Meiling, you're almost an hour late. What's holding you up? You said that you'd be here ages ago. You made me fly all the way out here to New York and for what? So that I could talk to an empty bar chair?"

Meiling was whispering as she spoke, as though she was being forced to keep her voice down. "I'm so sorry, Syaoran! It's just that I'm being held up over here… you see there's this… um… okay, I can't really talk right now. It's a work thing. My boss suddenly called for an emergency meeting. I'll be a little late. Just bear with it for a while, okay?"

"Fine," he said shortly, clicking his phone shut angrily. A woman entered the small café, dripping wet from the rain outside. He barely glanced at the doorway as she entered, and then took a seat beside him at the bar, droplets of water trickling off her Burberry trench coat.

"Hey," she said to the barista, her eyes hidden by the enormous shades that covered half of her face, hair tucked underneath a beret. "The usual please, Sandy." And after that a lot of unintelligible English. He frowned; the woman spoke with a wan smile on her glossy lips, but she spoke very little compared to Sandy, who chatted endlessly. He snorted to himself and took a sip of his fifth cup of black coffee.

"Hi," the girl beside him said, cocking her head to one side. "Haven't seen you around here before."

"Mmm," he said with a polite nod in her direction. He didn't know all that much English, and he fidgeted. May as well kill time while waiting for Meiling… but still, he couldn't converse with an absolute stranger like her. He didn't know enough words to do that anyway. "Uh, sorry—I don't really speak English."

"Yeah," she agreed in perfect Chinese. "Your accent is distinctly foreign. It's really easy to tell that you're not from around these parts. Hong Kong?"

His eyes widened. "Yes, actually. How did you—?"

She smiled. "I've spent a lot of my life there."

Immediately he warmed up to her. When you're in another country and everything is alien to you, you're quick to respond to anything that seems familiar. And Li Syaoran was no exception, even as grouchy and guarded as he tended to be. "Good to hear Chinese again," he said with relief. "Sorry. I'm waiting for my cousin here, you see, and she kind of got into trouble with one of her bosses."

The girl took a long sip of a steaming cup of jasmine tea that Sandy placed in front of her. "Ugh, work—mankind's greatest disease. I wondered why you came here. This isn't exactly a tourist hot spot, and even New Yorkers rarely know about this place." She sighed. "It's a little like heaven, just being able to come here and cut off the rest of the world, just basking in the solitude. And the tea's pretty good."

"Yeah, well, my cousin said to wait here for her. I don't really have much of a choice." He stretched a little, and looked down at his empty cup. "Besides, New York's supposed to be full of muggers and stuff like that, right? I don't really feel like wandering off and kicking someone's ass right now."

She gave him a look from behind the sunglasses. "You mean that you could take on those knife-wielding freaks?" she said with an amused laugh.

He smiled a little from behind his overgrown brown bangs. Honestly, you would think that at twenty, he'd be able to tame his hair a little… he grinned inwardly. All the gel in the world would be futile in the face of his thick hair, which stood up on end as he raked a hand through the strands. "Yes, actually, I think I could," he said boldly. "I'm LI Syaoran, by the way."

"Li Syaoran?" she repeated after him after a moment's hesitation. He wondered what was going on behind those sunglasses of hers, because he had the odd feeling that she was staring at him. Oh crap. Didn't she say that she was from Hong Kong? Then she'd probably heard of the Li clan. But her reaction was merely that of appraisal. "Hmm. Cool name. You can call me Xiao Long."

"Xiao… Long?" He stared at her, as though he'd just been hit over the head.

"Uh-huh," she said, and then momentarily switched to English to translate her name. "Little Dragon. Sounds weird for a girl's name, I suppose, but who cares? So, how come your name doesn't really sound Chinese? It actually sounds more Japanese to me. Funny… maybe it's just because I grew up there…"

"You grew up in Japan?" he asked, switching to Japanese. "Really. So you've traveled a lot, haven't you? I stayed there for a while too, in Tomoeda."

"Really," she said with elegant delight, signaling to Sandy to refill her cup and letting the rising steam from the fresh tea bathe her face in a misty cloud. "Tomoeda. It's a very lovely place. I wonder if I've seen you there before, but that was all so long ago. I especially loved the cherry blossoms there."

A lump rose in his throat. "Yes," he said simply.

A hand reached out for his, long, slender fingers wrapping around his wrist gently. "Is something wrong?" she asked him softly in concern. "I hope I haven't said anything wrong. Do you miss Japan?"

"In a way."

"Ah. A girl."

He flinched. Right on the mark. "Oh come on. All I said was 'In a way'."

"All love is 'in a way'," she said with a small smile.

"Odd… you remind me of someone," he said, jerking his head.

Now she really laughed. "I always remind people of someone," she drawled. Then a long black car pulled up outside, and she flinched when she caught sight of it. "Oh no. They caught me again." With a wistful smile on her face, she stood up. "It was lovely talking to you. You're like a breath of fresh air in this place, and anyway it's good to hear Chinese and Japanese again. How long are you staying in New York?"

"Anything from a couple of months to a couple of days, I expect. Maybe less, maybe more, depending on what my cousin has to say to me."

She hesitated, the drawling, sophisticated exterior dropping for a second and giving way to something like schoolgirl shyness. "I hope I run into you again, Li Syaoran. Maybe I'll catch you here tomorrow or something."

"Yeah, maybe."

Hearts from Aries

"You're late," he snapped at Meiling when she finally slid into the seat that Xiao Long had just vacated, but his tone had lost some of the edge that it had had when he'd spoken to her over the phone earlier, and Meiling took it as a good sign.

"Sorry, Syaoran," she wailed. "It's just that my horrendous boss had us working overtime again. I swear, don't you ever become embroiled in this stupid business. I mean, I thought being part of the record company meant just schmoozing with the stars and stuff like that. But they don't call them divas for nothing." She stretched and yawned. "Irish coffee," she said to the barista with a signal of her hand. "But you don't seem as angry as you were awhile ago. Are we cool?"

He nodded and sighed. "Fine. We're cool. Just tell me that you have a place for me to stay while I'm here and that you're taking me there the second you finish your coffee and all will be forgiven. I'm definitely not up to sight-seeing tonight."

She bit her lower lip and ran her finger along the rim of her glass. "Okay. But actually the reason why I called you over here to New York was because… I found this really great business opportunity for you. And anyway you must have anticipated that, because you really aren't the type to come out here just for a little tourist trip. Right?" She smiled shrewdly at him. She knew him all too well.

"I had a feeling that something was up," he agreed. "And you're right, I never would've come out here otherwise. So. An opportunity for the Li clan's business, you say? I'm betting that it's nothing magical." He smiled wanly at her. He hadn't used his magic in over four years now, except to hide his aura from other magical people.

"I always thought that it was a waste of your talents, Xiao Lang," she whispered, so softly that he almost couldn't hear her. But hear her he did, and his face turned white and his eyes narrowed.

"Meiling. I told you not to call me that ever again," he said, his tone flat and furious. "Not even my mother and sisters are allowed to call me by that name anymore. And magic is a part of my life that I've left behind, all right? It's really none of your business. Maybe if you had magic, you'd realize that it isn't all that special."

She looked as though she'd just been slapped. "You know I would have wanted it, and if I had them, I would never have cast them off," she said. All her life, she'd felt kind of left out because she didn't have any magical powers. Especially during the time that she'd been in love with him. He was always trying to leave her behind because she couldn't fend for herself. "But I guess I don't really blame you for the way you're acting right now… Syaoran."

"Thank you. Much better."

"You still aren't over it…" Meiling looked sadly at him. "I thought that maybe you'd gotten on with your life by now. We thought it was okay, letting you throw yourself into the Li business like that. But you've just gotten worse."

"It isn't for you to judge what's better and what's worse for me," he said crisply, glaring at her. "That's all in the past. I am over it. And enough with the sap, it's just irritating. I thought that you had something for me?"

"As I was saying, there's this client of mine who's becoming a big hit over here," Meiling said, turning her attention back onto business and onto her Irish coffee. "She's a singer—both in English and Chinese. Mostly love ballads on her piano, and she's really good. Getting popular with both nationalities. Apparently she's heard of your mother, or something like that, and she has the deepest of respect for Aunt Yelan. I thought maybe if you helped out here, we could get a deal from her, and maybe you could get a cut for the Li business as well. In fact, I bet that you could get the deal straight to the LI business if you wanted to. I just happen to know that records aren't really your thing."

"True," he said. He paused, considering her offer and raking a hand through his messy hair. Well, he'd already gone all the way out here. And he wasn't really up to the formulaic sigh-seeing tourist claptrap that he would have to do otherwise. And Meiling would beg if he said no. He imagined the shouting matches and waterworks and her insistent pleading over the next few days and shuddered. He would never get out of New York alive if he didn't give in. "Give me specifics. And a sample of her music."

Meiling's eyes lit up. "I knew you'd be in on it!" she said brightly. "And the suite I arranged for you already has some of her CD's waiting for you inside. I'll introduce you tomorrow. She's amazing. But she's incognito right now, doesn't want anyone to get wind of her over here. The paparazzi have been hounding her for quite a while now. I was sure that you'd already heard of her back in Hong Kong."

He shrugged. "I'm not really into the whole music scene," he pointed out. "I'm twenty years old and I have a life."

She laughed. "Music is part of life, Syaoran. Don't be so dismissive of anything outside your narrow little boxed-in life."

"My life isn't narrow, little or boxed-in," he said. "Just because I don't drink or do drugs like your clients doesn't mean that."

"Hmm. Right. Let me guess, while waiting for me you did nothing but drink cup after cup of coffee," she predicted. "That's because you're so boring, Syaoran. You never do anything but work—"

"Actually, I was talking to someone," he said.

Her eyes lit up again. "Ooh, really?" Then her grin faded, only to be replaced with a smirk. "Oh wait. Yeah right, Syaoran, dream on. You barely know anything except elementary English. Stop kidding around."

"I did," he said. "And it's really none of your business."

"So it was a girl! Ooh… didn't she mind that you couldn't talk to her? I'll bet not. She probably ran on insufferably like a chatterbox while you did your whole 'strong and silent manly Syaoran' act, tossing in the occasional smoldering gaze or two as she giggled like an airhead…"

"We. Talked. Get that through your head." He glowered at her. He didn't like it when she assumed so much (or that she called Xiao Long an airhead; she deserved better than that). He knew that Meiling was the one who most wanted him to get on with his life. His mother and his sisters had already accepted the way he was. It had been five years for them since what had happened. But for him, it was only yesterday. It was only five seconds ago. No way was he going to forget.

"Touchy, touchy," she murmured, grinning. "How did you talk, then?"

"We opened our mouths. We made sounds."

She hit him on the head, looking irritated and amused at the same time. "God. You're so annoying when you're being sarcastic. Did you know that? But then, you're annoying pretty much all the time." She finished her coffee. "Come on, let's go."

Hearts from Aries

Xiao Long sat in the unobtrusive black car, staring out the tinted windows at the glittering streets of New York as they made their way back to her suite. Glittering with rubbish and pigeon droppings, anyway. She sighed and startled to fiddle with the button that would lower the windows. It seemed kind of old. The so-called glamour of NY had never really held all that much appeal for her—and she'd only been there for a couple of days.

"Is something bothering you?" her agent asked from the front seat, stopping her from lowering them. Honestly, she was getting out of hand these days. And acting so peculiarly. Perhaps they should have stayed in Beijing. Ever since she got that call from Li Meiling, she'd started changing. "I have to say that it was hard tracking you down to the NY Hearts café. You shouldn't have run off like that. You know better. The paparazzi could have swooped in on you anytime and just snapped pictures—and I know that you've been avoiding catching the public eye for a long time now. Did I just see a guy with you?"

"Sort of. Just some random guy from China," she said, pulling off her hat and letting her hair down with a sigh.

"But you used to live there," the agent probed insistently. "Did you know him?"

She just smiled mysteriously back at him, and then out at the window where she caught sight of a certain brown-haired young man entering a taxi with his tall cousin, none other than the same Li Meiling whom she'd been speaking to about the possibilities of her new record deal. "I don't really know anymore."

Hearts from Aries

Author's Note: I know, this is a bit dull... but I promise to show you what happened if you keep reading. Review, review, review!