S͟T͟E͟R͟E͟K͟ I͟M͟A͟G͟I͟N͟E͟S͟

Slipping away

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Sickness, angst, death, your heart will hurt so much after this
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It starts with bruising. Stiles is an active teenage boy and he almost always has a few bruises, but then one day he's getting dressed and notices that his skin is almost more purple and blue and yellow-green than it is normal, flesh toned. He shrugs it off at first, thinking that he'll just have to be more careful when he's with the pack. They can get a little rough sometimes. But a few weeks later and he's not any better off, if anything he's got more bruises.
That makes him a little uneasy, because he remembers that it started this way with his mom, too. But he brushes it off, because this summer is going too perfectly for something like this to come in and ruin it all. Besides, he's got a date with Derek in, like, twenty minutes and he's not even dressed. He'd never hear the end of it if he made Derek wait while he got ready.
Then he starts getting nose bleeds all the time. At first, he brushes it off, and then his gums start bleeding once or twice. That's when he starts to worry, especially when he discovers that he's just not hungry most of the time. He's seventeen and male, that's just not normal, even if most of what he eats is healthy stuff because of his dad and that's not the most appetizing stuff in the world. But then he doesn't want to eat curly fries or a burger or anything at all. He spends a few days worrying over whether or not he should tell his dad or just ignore it for a little while longer, see if it gets better.
The pain in his joints forces him into action. He plans it for a Friday night, one of the rare ones when he's not out with Derek. He's actually cleared this whole weekend, claiming he wants to spend it with his dad because he's been spending so much time with the pack this summer and school's starting up again in a couple of weeks. No one in the pack thought it was suspicious, they just told him to 'have fun' and to tell his dad they said hi. That nearly made him break down and tell them about his fears, but he's stronger than that. They don't need to worry for what could be nothing; except Stiles has this horrible feeling it's really not nothing.
"Hey, Dad?" he says and his dad can hear the fear in his voice or something because he puts down his silverware and just focuses in on Stiles. He can feel the tears beginning to form in his eyes. "I, um, think I need to go to the doctor."
His dad kind of goes pale and for a moment Stiles is afraid he'll pass out but then he gathers himself. "What's wrong?" He asks that question as if the answer will kill him, and Stiles isn't sure how he knows that this is serious, but he does and Stiles isn't going to joke about it for once. Not something like this.
"I've been getting a lot of bruises, too many, and then I started getting nose bleeds. I'm never hungry anymore and my bones ache." Stiles doesn't rush to get this out like he does with everything else he says, he's in no hurry for these truths to be out. "I, um, made an appointment with mom's old doctor for tomorrow."
His dad has to take a moment to compose himself before he can answer. "I'll take you. What time is it?"
The thing is, they shouldn't be this afraid. Sure, it's enough that Stiles should probably see a doctor, but not enough for them to be so sure that he's that sick. That he needs to see a cancer specialist. But they watched his mother slowly die of cancer and maybe they're just too sensitive to the disease, because Stiles just knows. He knows exactly what he has. He just doesn't know how bad it is.

The next morning Stiles sits in the passenger side of the cruiser on their way to the hospital, where they end up waiting another thirty minutes for the doctor, even though they were already running a few minutes late. Stiles tries not to watch the other people in the room, but he can't quite help it. He's always had too much curiosity, and in this case it's not a good thing.
He watches as a young girl leaves, wheeled out by her haggard looking mother, both of them looking so relieved and happy. And then an older man comes in and sits down, and Stiles notices that he doesn't have any hair. A young couple are sitting together and quietly trying not to cry. Stiles looks down at his magazine then, unable to stomach anything else.
The doctor's visit is a blur, as are the tests he gets sent to take. In fact, when asked to look back, he can't remember much at all from that week, only a sick feeling of dread as he tries to put off the inevitable. Because he might not have known exactly what he had or how long he had, but he knew it was bad. So he lived in a constant state of dread and anticipation, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
When it does, it's actually worse than Stiles had imagined. The words echo through his head and he can't actually take in anything else the doctor says. All he can hear is "acute lymphoblastic leukemia" and "could die within months if untreated" and "chemotherapy" and then white noise even as he watches the doctor's lips move and his dad trying to say something to him.
The next thing Stiles knows he's in his room, standing in the doorway without his shoes on. He's not sure how he got there, but he's willing to bet that it was because of his dad. Stiles wants to cry, but nothing's quite sunk in yet, because he might have been expecting something like this, but he wasn't prepared. You can't prepare for news like this. It just doesn't work that way.
And he wants so badly to just ignore the problem until it goes away, but Stiles knows that in this case, that will just make the problem worse. He'll just die even more quickly. Not that he knows he's going to die, because he does remember hearing about chemotherapy and he knows that they wouldn't talk about treatment if there wasn't any hope.
He's big on hope. He really, really likes hope. Hope's the only thing he's got right now, because he knows his dad is downstairs drinking. He might not remember how he got to his room, but he remembers all too well how his dad deals with his world falling apart, and that's with a nice glass of whiskey. And Stiles is his dad's world and Stiles is dying, just like his mother, of almost the same disease, so Stiles knows that his dad's broken into the whiskey even though it's still the early afternoon. For once, Stiles doesn't begrudge him for that.
But he also knows that he has to pull it together, because he has his first day of school in the morning and a boyfriend who wants to see him after school along with the rest of the pack. Stiles knows then, as he thinks of his fragile pack, that he can't let them know. They wouldn't be able to handle the uncertainty of it all because they would be so helpless.
Stiles remembers all too well that feeling of helplessness and it's bad enough that his dad will have to go through it again, he won't let the pack go through it too. He knows it would destroy Derek, who has only really opened up since he and Stiles got together a few months ago. Derek, who has already lost so many loved ones, shouldn't have to watch his boyfriend slowly wasting away, unsure whether or not he would make it but powerless to change his fate in any case. No, Stiles can't do that to Derek.
He's glad that he's paid attention to Deaton so well, because he knows exactly how to cover the change in his scent that will come with the treatment and the disease. All he'll have to do is start adding a little bit of certain herbs to his body wash and use that every day and they'll never be able to smell it on him. It wouldn't hurt them and his secret would be safe.
He carefully does not think about Gerard Argent and how he hid the scent of his cancer from the wolves he hunted. How he probably did it in a very similar way. This is different. This is about protecting the pack from a painful truth, a truth that would gnaw away at their minds until it left them forever changed. It's not about hiding his weakness from them, it's about keeping them happy and safe from that knowledge for as long as they don't need to know.
Stiles plots and plans how to keep this secret, avoiding the fact that by thinking about how to keep this secret from the pack, in some way he's hiding away from it himself. It's his coping mechanism, just like he once joked about ignoring a problem until it goes away, he feels as though if he doesn't talk about this, then it's not fully real yet. If it's not out in the open, if everyone doesn't know, then he can pretend that he's not sick. Pretend that he's not fucking terrified.
Because he is. He's so, so terrified that he can't process anything besides plans of how to hide it away, away from Derek, from the pack, and mostly from himself.