6 YEARS AGO.

"So, what are the rules?"

He stares at her for a moment, dumbfounded. "Rules? Like a safe word?" He thought this whole arrangement was pretty self-explanatory, but...

She rolls her eyes as she takes a sip from her wine glass, as if her intentions should be obvious. "No, Stiles. We need to decide what happens if we sleep together and decide we aren't compatible."

He scoffs at that. He's been in love with her since the third grade. Compatibility is the last thing he's concerned about. "Uh, we... don't sleep together again?"

They both know it could never be that simple, and the look she gives him says as much. She places her wine glass back onto the table and sighs, hands moving to fold demurely in her lap. "If we aren't compatible, we don't let this impact our friendship. It's a test. I'm leaving in three weeks, you're leaving in four. Nothing changes if this doesn't work."

It's going to work. He nods, though, a little too enthusiastically and a little too eager to give her what she wants. "Nothing changes. Got it."

It works.

It works better than either of them could have imagined. There are awkward moments, like when he fumbles undoing the clasp on her bra and nearly chokes at the sight of her naked breasts, but then all of the pieces fall into place and it works.

She rides him slowly - so slowly he thinks he might lose his damn mind. Her dainty little fingers curve around his shoulders and their eyes never stray as two bodies come together as one. It's like molten lava curling in the pit of her stomach, warm and hot and needy. He makes her feel things with his desperate whines and soft cries of her name that no other boy has made her feel with the roughest of touch.

They have sex three times that night, and each time is better than the last. He falls asleep with her arms around his waist, naked and satiated and with a smile curling at the corners of his lips. It worked, he thinks. The sex was incredible and her eyes screamed everything he's ever wanted to see from her and it worked.

Hope blooms in his chest for the first time in so long.

But that hope is dashed the very next morning.

Soft, bleary eyes blink open in the pale sunlight. It takes him a moment to remember what happened, gaze settling on the barely-touched wine glass resting on his bedside table. He reaches for her within seconds, all too eager to pull her close and feel her bare skin pressed against his.

But his search comes up empty.

He looks for her. Tosses on a pair of boxer briefs and stumbles through his house, searching for any sign she's even been there. But all that's left from the night before is that damn wine bottle and three used condoms tossed into the trash.

She's gone, and he's hurt, and maybe this didn't work after all.

A/N: The next chapter will be up within a day or two, probably. Find me at notwithoutlydia on tumblr!