#raqcoonsuniverse

Cora has a roommate but said roommate is always gone, Stiles keeps falling asleep in roommate’s bed. One day, roommate (a quiet, angry girl named Charlie) comes home while Stiles is asleep and Cora is working on an essay, and shoves him onto the floor, screaming at him to get out of her room and to never come back. They start hanging out in the bottom floor of Beacon Towers, in the common room with the nice air conditioning and not many people.

“You know, we could hang out in my room. I don’t have a roommate, and it’s got a great view of the trees,” Stiles offers. Cora hesitates, not knowing how to say she’s kind of scared of the boy’s suites. “We don’t bite, you know, and I don’t expect you to get into bed with me the minute the door closes. In fact, you don’t have to get into bed with me at all. It’s just more private than this, and you don’t have to fight with the internet to work, since I have my own Ethernet cable.”

A few weeks later, Cora can’t get ahold of Stiles. He wasn’t by the elevator that morning to walk her to Introduction of Literature (worst class ever), and he wasn’t at lunch, and he didn’t show up to walk her back to their dorm from Education and Society (not bad, not good either). He hasn’t replied to her texts about Morley spitting on the front row today during his lecture about constructive criticism and how it helps, and he didn’t answer her phone call when she grew worried.

That night, she goes to his suite and knocks on his door. No one answers. She tries again, louder.

“You Stiles’ girl?” one of his suitemates, Kelley asks, popping his head out from the room beside Stiles’. She answers that yes, she is. “He went to the hospital last night, passed out in the shower or something. Beacon Hills Memorial, I believe.”

Since it’s a Thursday night, and Cora doesn’t have a class until noon the next day, she decides to go find Stiles.

“I’m looking for Stiles Stilinski,” Cora asks, leaning against the reception desk.

“We have a Kdkagjfd <-- Insert Stiles Name There) Stilinski,” the receptionist says. “Mouthy kid? Gorgeous eyes?”

“That’s the one,” Cora answers.

“Room 314, Oncology wing.”

Oncology is cancer, Cora thinks. What’s wrong with Stiles? And why wouldn’t he tell her?

Finds the Sheriff and Melissa talking outside Stiles’ room.

“Are you Stiles’ parents?” she asks quietly.

“I’m his father, you must be Cora. He’s right through there.”

Cora steps into the hospital room and stares at an exhausted looking Stiles. She expects him to be playing that stupid robot rainbow unicorn game but instead he’s on the computer with his textbooks and notebooks open around him, a cannula feeding oxygen to him. Despite how much time she’s spent with him, she’s never seen him actually do work actively, nor has she seen him focus

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, finally getting Stiles’ attention. 

“How’d you find me?”

“Kelley said you passed out in the shower.”

“Goddamn Kelley. I didn’t want you to know.”

Cora scoffs and shakes her head, hurt that her best friend lied to her

“No, that sounded bad. I didn’t want to tell you, because when I tell people that I have cancer, they give me that look.”

“What look?”

“The same one you’re giving me, that you feel so bad for me, that you think I’m some fragile being. Like you pity me. But I’m alive, Cora. I will keep living, and I will fight this.”

Cora nods.

“Can I come join you? I missed my best friend.”

Stiles is in and out of the hospital for the rest of the year and most of the summer, Cora sticking around instead of going home.

“Why don’t you go home?” Stiles asks, spreading his work out on his bed. He was taking summer courses, as many as he could fit around his treatments. Cora even was taking a few, just to stay on campus with him. “Your family must miss you.”

“They’ll get me for the rest of my life,” she says with a shrug.

“You’re scared, aren’t you? That if you leave for home, I’ll disappear?”

She nods.

“Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m a Stilinski, the most stubborn of the stubborn. We don’t go quietly. My mom fought it for six years, since I was two years old. I can fight it long enough for you to go home for a couple weeks.”

“Not weeks,” Cora shook her head. “I couldn’t be apart from you for that long, cancer or no.”

He smiles at her.

“Go home, Cora.”

“I already am,” she says, looking at him.

She goes home, horses around with Derek and the younger kids for a week, before packing back up and returning to college. Stiles is worse than before and she swears she won’t leave him again, although she doesn’t tell him that.

“I don’t want to die a virgin,” Stiles whispers one night in the hospital. He’s the worst he’s been, the treatments worse than the cancer itself. He’s pale and shaky, unfocused since he can’t take his Adderall with the treatments, and he keeps coughing up blood into a handkerchief. Cora made fun of him for having a handkerchief at first. (“What are you, ninety? The only person who carries around a handkerchief that I know is my great-grandfather.” Stiles smiled a tired smile and folded the handkerchief, stuffing it under his pillow.)

“I don’t want you to die a virgin, either,” Cora said in return.

“Cora,” Stiles starts to say before shaking his head. “Never mind. I can’t ask you that.”

“Yes, you can. You can ask me anything. I would do anything for you. You’re my best friend.”

“Cora,” Stiles asked awkwardly. “Will you do me the honor of taking my virginity?”

Giggling, Cora kisses Stiles and in between nurses checking in, Stiles and Cora lose their virginities to each other. It was cute, and awkward, and they laughed, and kissed, and fell in love.

Cora and Stiles dress up like they’re British royalty from the 1500s for Halloween (because Reign) and hand out candy to the local kids that trick or treat throughout Beacon Towers in Stiles’ suite.

Cora misses class because she’s sick, throwing up in her suite’s bathroom, unable to even get up off the ground long enough to call Stiles and tell him she can’t make it to their chess lesson that day after all her classes.

(Stiles takes most of his classes online these days, no longer able to leave the hospital most of the time. He’s allowed into classes if he feels well enough, but the school urges him to try and rest as much as possible.)

(Cora has grown close to a couple girls in suite 3, Erin and Robin, and hangs out with them between her classes and at lunch when Stiles isn’t around. She feels like she’s replacing him, but no one can replace Stiles in her eyes, not really.)

Cora turns out to be pregnant, Erin bringing back a pregnancy test from a supermarket run that weekend.

“What are you going to do?” Erin asks, helping Cora out of the bathroom stall. Her hands are shaking, and she can hardly breathe. Stiles described a panic attack for her once when she needed it for her Intro to Lit class the semester before. It was awful hearing about it, but experiencing it was about 100 times worse.

“I don’t know. But I have to tell Stiles.”

Catches a bus to Beacon Memorial and sits with Stiles as he does his homework, trying to work up the nerve to tell him.

“You’re being awful quiet today. Did something happen? How’d your European History test go?”

“Oh, fine. I passed, 98%. Nothing happened, well, it sort of did. But it’s not like a single event kind of thing. It’s a single event thing that kind of turned into a thing that’s here to stay.”

“What, did you find someone else?” Stiles jokes, but she can hear how nervous he is.

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s, uhm, well, it’s.”

She can’t tell him, every time she tries, it just won’t come out. I’m pregnant, Stiles, that’s all she needs to get out. That’s it. It just won’t go, though.

“Cora, you’re worrying me.”

She shakes her head. That’s not what she wants.

“What if I told you something? Would that make it easier? Secret for secret?”

She nods, although if Stiles is hiding a secret, she’s not sure she really wants to know.

“The doctor gave me another check-up today, to see how everything is doing in here,” he said, tapping his chest with his pen. “The, uhh, the prognosis isn’t good. The cancer cells aren’t going away, at all. In fact, they’re multiplying. I won’t go into remission, not like before. This is it. I’m going to die soon.”

Cora blurts it out, “I’m pregnant.”

They stare at each other, because one is dying, and the other is creating a new life inside her, and they just don’t know what to say.

“You’re pregnant?”

“Yeah, it’s, uhm, it’s a thing that’s happening. I’m pregnant, with your baby,” she answers.

“And I’m dying,” Stiles says in return. “What are we going to do, Cora?”

She doesn’t know, and shrugs. He pulls her into bed with him, and they kiss, and don’t say much for the rest of the night.

Cora tells her family, who want her to come home, but she tells them that she wants to stay in school, be with Stiles for as long as he has left, and get her own apartment in Beacon Hills.

“If that’s what you want,” Talia says through the phone one night while Cora is cuddled with Stiles in his dorm bed. “Then we have to respect that, Cora.”

Cora and Stiles get their own apartment right outside campus and while Cora continues to get bigger, Stiles has less and less energy every day. There are some days where Stiles is alright, he’s better than ever, but they’re few and far between. Cora goes to classes, and Stiles does his work online, and they get their apartment ready for the baby (a boy, they’re not sure what to name him).

In December when the semester ends, Stiles gathers his family (Cora, the Sheriff, Melissa, and Scott, Scott’s college boyfriend Isaac comes along too) in their living room and announces that he graduated college. He was a college graduate.

Cora shrieks happily and throws herself at him, hugging him the best she could with the baby between them.

“It’s one thing I have always wanted to do,” Stiles explained after everyone had hugged and cheered and congratulated him. “Ever since I was diagnosed in high school, I was determined to graduate college. So I’ve been working since junior year of high school to earn college credits, and this semester, I took my finally capstone requirements. I officially am a college graduate, but that’s not all I wanted to accomplish.”

He turns to Cora and smiles.

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Cora. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I want you to know that I would give everything to spend the rest of your life with you. But I can’t. So I’m going to have to settle for spending the rest of my life with you. So, Cora, will you do me the honor of marrying me?” he asks, pulling a gumball ring out of his pocket.

“Yes,” she says instantly, pulling him towards her for a kiss. The family breaks out into excited, confused chatter, talking over each other to congratulate them.

“Right now,” she says.

“What?” he asks just as quietly.

“Let’s go to city hall and get married right now, Stilinski. We don’t have forever, you know.”

He grins and steps back, calling attention.

“We’re going to have a shotgun wedding,” he says.

Erin and Robin bring Cora a dress one of them had at home, and Stiles wears the nicest pair of jeans and a button up he owns and they get married at city hall.

Cora changes her name on Facebook to Cora Stilinski, and sets her relationship status to married

Stiles starts getting worse, unable to leave the hospital most days

Cora and Stiles settle on baby naming terms, Cora picks first name and Stiles picks middle name, last name Stilinski

When Cora goes into labor at the end of June, Stiles is fighting for his life in surgery. She gives birth alone, none of her family picking up their phones (they’re probably in the mountains hiking, the Hales did that a lot)

Stiles just barely makes it out of surgery alive, and wakes up with Cora and baby Stilinski in the same room with him (Melissa’s doing)

“What’d you decide?” he asks as Cora moves closer, aching slightly as she brings their child to his father. “For the name.”

“Landon,” she answered, lowering Landon into Stiles’ arms. She leans down to press a kiss into Stiles’ forehead as he watches their son sleep, enamored with their little bundle of joy.

“That’s beautiful. So, Landon, huh? Landon Stilinski, I like that. What do you think, baby boy? Are you a Landon? I think so.”

“You get to pick the middle name, remember?” Cora said, climbing into bed with him and resting her cheek on his shoulder. They’re both so tired, they just want to fall asleep, but afraid the other will be gone. Or maybe that’s just Cora.

“Oh, god. I don’t even know. Landon Michael?”

“Like my father?”

“Well, I’m named after my mother’s father. It makes sense for my son to be named after his mother’s father as well. Landon Michael Stilinski?”

Cora and Stiles grin.

Melissa comes back around to check on them, they’re both cuddled into one another, the baby resting safely in between them. She takes out her phone and snaps a picture of the three, and sends it to the Sheriff, Cora and Stiles before taking Landon from them and placing him safely in his basinet.

Cora and Landon are checked out a few days later and go home to settle in. It’s then that Stiles passes away, the cancer finally taking the rest of his strength.

After the funeral, Cora changes her Facebook profile picture to the photo Melissa sent her and sets the status