A/N: Back with a new Sterek fic (sorry Merthur readers)! This one's a doozy and actually deals with some really heavy themes (re: murder, emotional abuse, statutory rape, police brutality), so I'm gonna be putting some trigger warnings at the end of each chapter. If you're worried, you can scroll down to the end to check if there's anything in that chapter that might trigger you or otherwise freak you out. And if you want a detailed explanation of anything, feel free to PM me for more details! I check my inbox every day so you won't have to wait long.


Downtown was already overcrowded by the time he got there, people flooding the streets and blocking all through-traffic, so Stiles forked out eight bucks to leave his Jeep in a parking garage four blocks over. The stores he passed on the way there were mostly shut down, doors locked and windows shuttered where possible, as if they were all bracing for a storm. Really, it wasn't an unwarranted fear; with the growing tension across the nation, maybe the metaphorical storm was inevitable.

Stiles' phone beeped with an incoming call as he bounded down the garage's stairs and out into the street, already having to dodge people with homemade signs big enough to knock him over. He would've brought a sign of his own, but Stiles' many talents did not include arts and crafts. He managed to get his phone to his ear without having it knocked out of his hand, which, considering his own clumsiness in conjunction with the crowd, he considered something of an accomplishment.

"Hey, Scotty, how's it going over there?"

"Deaton closed up shop for the protest," Scott said, his voice kind of hard to hear over the increasing babble of voices all around.

"Really?" Stiles asked. "I thought the clinic was far enough away to avoid the crowds."

"It is, for the most part, but I think he wants to be ready and on hand if things go south over there. You know he's got triage experience."

Stiles cringed. "It shouldn't come to that, Scott," he said, dodging another wayward sign. "This is a peaceful protest."

"So was the one in Charleston," Scott pointed out. "And the one in St Augustine."

Stiles clenched his teeth; Scott had a depressingly good point. More and more of the protests around the country were sparking off into something more, and each one fed the flames of the next. Five times now peaceful protests had escalated into riots, three of which had ended with gunfire—thankfully they had been of the rubber bullet variety, but honestly those weren't all that much less damaging. Those had all been in the south, though, not the generally more liberal-minded area of Nor Cal.

"That's not gonna happen here," he said firmly. "These are officers trained by my dad, not trigger-happy specists. My dad doesn't hire people like that. And besides, that's exactly why we need to protest in the first place! That people look at a gathering of were rights activists and think 'danger, violence, shoot on sight' is exactly the mentality we need to change."

"I know," Scott said with a sigh that sounded like it reached all the way down to his toes. "But Stiles, really, be careful. I'd be there to watch your back but—"

"No, Scott, it's fine. I get it," Stiles said. "You stay out of the way. If you get outed, you'll never get into your program. You follow your dreams and let me worry about changing the world one cause at a time."

Scott sighed again, even heavier, and all the righteous indignation Stiles had ever felt flooded through him again. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair that his best friend, one of the kindest and most compassionate people he had ever known, would be barred from getting the job he had wanted since he was five years old just because he was a werewolf. It wasn't fair that Scott still didn't feel safe to tell his girlfriend of over a year what he was. It wasn't fair that Isaac couldn't join the army like his big brother because he was bitten. It wasn't fair that Erica would always be looked down upon for getting the bite that had saved her life.

It wasn't fair that werewolves around the country were viewed with suspicion, were three times as likely to be brutalized at simple traffic stops, faced higher rates of homelessness and job termination, and were banned from holding public office or serving in the military. It was bullshit, every last bit of it, and Stiles would wave all the signs he had to until someone in power started actually reading them.

"It's gonna be fine, Scott," he said, warm and firm and leaving no room for doubt. "Someday everything will be fine. And in the meantime—"

"—okay will get us through," Scott finished for him. He sounded like he might be smiling, and that wrung a smile from Stiles too. "Just be careful out there, bro."

"I will be. Promise," Stiles said. "Now I'm coming up on City Hall. I'll call you later, let you know how everything went."

They said their goodbyes and Stiles stowed his phone. It was getting hard to move through the crowd but Stiles kept pushing, ducking signs and dodging stray elbows with the ease of someone who spent his entire childhood racing through places he wasn't supposed to be and evading capture at every turn. It was a much bigger turnout than he had expected, the Beacon Hills demographic being mostly older people and families with younger children, but it seemed like a lot of the college-age crowd had made the trip in from surrounding schools to say their piece about the latest episode of police brutality, and they'd brought every single one of their friends with them.

Already there were people on soapboxes, dotted throughout the crowd at intervals, some shouting themselves hoarse and others with megaphones in hand. He passed a girl in a leather jacket with flowers in her hair who was rambling off an impressive list of statistics about the rates of abuse towards born werewolf children in foster care, and then a weedy-looking man throwing pamphlets on the intersection of specism and racial profiling by cops. That actually sounded interesting, so Stiles snagged a pamphlet and tucked it in his pocket for later as he skirted around an older woman who seemed to be reciting some sort of spoken word poetry that he wasn't sure was entirely relevant to the subject at hand.

He wasn't surprised to find a police barricade between the throng of protesters and the front steps of City Hall. He was surprised to find more than his dad's deputies manning it. These officers—riot police, his brain oh so helpful provided—were wearing bulletproof vests and carrying actual weapons, looking out over the milling crowd of mostly students like they were waiting for armed insurgents to come screaming out from every alleyway with bombs in hand. They didn't have SWAT anywhere on their gear, but with the way that even regular police forces were being armed and armored nowadays that didn't mean much.

Stiles fought his way to the front until he could pick out the faces of the people standing guard. There were still a few of his dad's people there, closest to the barricade, in their regular khaki uniforms and blessedly gun-free. Ramirez was eyeing the new guys with hearty disapproval on her square face, Hayes was biting her thumbnail and looking like she'd rather be anywhere else, Langton had a hand hovering over his walkie like he was already thinking of calling someone for backup, and Garrison was as unrelentingly stone-faced and distractingly attractive as he always was.

But Stiles didn't let himself be distracted by Garrison's ridiculous bone structure and flawless stubble now. Instead he approached one of his dad's favorites, the one he was lowkey grooming to be his successor someday. Parrish was clenching his jaw hard enough to make tendons stand out in his neck and keeping a much closer eye on the riot squad than he was on the protesters, the stiff set of his shoulders practically screaming how very unnecessary he thought their presence was. He finally drew his sharp eyes away from them as Stiles knocked his knuckles against the sturdy wooden railing.

"Hey, Jordan, my main man," Stiles said, and the fact that Parrish didn't even roll his eyes at the casual form of address was more alarming than anything else. "What the hell's going on here? Dad didn't order this kind of backup, did he?"

"Definitely not," Parrish said shortly. "The Sheriff would've been happy with just a handful of deputies to keep an eye on things. This is orders from on high."

"Someone went over his head?" Stiles asked, affronted on his dad's behalf. "What the hell! Who?"

Parrish shook his head, not even trying to hide his disdain. A chant was starting to rise up out of the crowd, the protesters in the front yelling directly at the over-armored men. Stiles was too far away to hear what the officers were yelling back at them, but if the sneers on their faces and the reactions of the crowd were anything to go by then this particular squad had been absent on the day they taught de-escalation tactics.

"I don't know who gave the order," Parrish said, louder now to be heard over the din, "but it was someone with clout to get these clowns called in at such short notice." He shook his head again, lip curling. "Swear to god, I wore less body armor when I was defusing IEDs overseas."

Stiles snorted even though it wasn't really funny. It meant they were expecting violence when there wasn't supposed to be any, where there definitely wouldn't be any if it was just the BHPD's regular boys, the ones everyone knew and loved and trusted. Instead there were armed militants practically radiating hostility, and was it any wonder that people were starting to respond in kind? Stiles realized he was biting his knuckles again and hastily stuffed his hands in his pockets.

The chant was getting louder, something generic and easy to pick up.

"Two, four, six, eight, stop the spread of werewolf hate!"

There wasn't anything aggressive about it or even particularly confrontational, no different from any of the other chants from thousands of other protests for a million other causes, but the officers were shouting for people to stop, to get back, to calm down and step away from the barricade or face retaliation.

"Can you get them to chill?" Stiles asked; he had to lean in closer so that Parrish could hear him over the rabble, hands clenching at the barricade. Someone ran into him from behind, jostling him forward, and he called back, "Hey, watch it!"

"I'll talk to the captain," Parrish said. "But there's no guarantee he'll listen to a backwater rent-a-cop like me. His words, not mine," he added with a completely insincere smile at Stiles' offended expression. He gave a tight shrug and started pushing toward the big black van with its open doors and milling personnel.

Garrison shifted over to fill in the gap he left at the fence, giving Stiles a nod of acknowledgement like he usually did when they happened to cross paths. Stiles hand slipped off the barrier as he tried to look cool and nonchalant returning the nod, but Garrison had already stopped paying attention to him so at least his moment of awkwardness had no real witnesses.

Someone collided with him again, knocking him sideways and pushing forward despite his cry of indignation. Stiles tried to move out of the way but there was nowhere for him to go without hopping the fence and coming face to face with one of the riot police and he was likely to be arrested if he did that. Another chant was coming up, loud and discordant as it overlaid the previous one in a jumble of indistinguishable words before it won out.

"Two, three, four, five, let us make it home alive!"

Stiles fought to turn around in the press of people, the barrier now digging painfully into his stomach no matter how hard he tried to push back from it. The crowd when he managed to get a good view of it was full of raised fists, punching the sky. He nearly took one to the face and the guy responsible didn't even notice. He squirmed back around to see the riot police a hell of a lot closer than they were before, fanned out in formation with weapons in hand. One of them had a megaphone but Stiles couldn't make out the words over hundreds of people shouting.

A scream cut through the noise, shrill and piercing and over too quickly. The physical surge that went through the throng of people made sweat break out on the back of Stiles' neck as the first real seed of fear took hold. No amount of neck-craning let him see what the fuck was going on, or even exactly where the scream had come from, but once screaming started there was no going back.

Stiles couldn't keep track anymore of what was happening, jostling turned to shoving and so much noise all around that it stopped registering as something that should make sense to his ears. He heard the first shot loud and clear, though, and was too boxed in to even duck, even as his stomach felt like it fell out of his body entirely.

For a second all he could think was "Scott is gonna be so mad, I said it would be fine, I promised" and then there was an elbow digging into his back and he was stumbling, falling into a wall of churning bodies that somehow shoved him upright again before he hit the ground. He couldn't see the barricade anymore, surrounded on all sides by motion and color that wouldn't resolve into something that made sense to his overwhelmed brain, and there was more screaming, more shots, and he couldn't tell which side was pulling the trigger. He pushed blindly, more trying to get space to breathe than to get away from the danger, but he got shoved back again and again, strange hands as rough and frantic as his own.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It was a peaceful fucking protest, there was no immediate threat in a goddamn chant, and rubber bullets shouldn't leave splashes of blood on the pavement to stain the soles of Stiles' shoes as he fought against the panicked mob. One of those godforsaken signs finally made contact, catching him hard across the shoulder, and the corner came dangerously close to taking his nose out of commission. The force of the blow sent him spinning around and he found himself crashing into the barricade again, much further down the line toward the edge of the square.

Suddenly there was a gap, a straight shot to an open alleyway, and Stiles didn't hesitate to take off for it at a dead sprint. He was halfway there when a gun went off near enough to send him to his knees on instinct, arms over his head and already running down a mental checklist to make sure all his body parts were still functional. He wasn't hit, but a cry of pain nearby told him that somebody was.

Deputy Garrison was a few meters away, one hand pressed against the splotch of red already spreading across his side. Stiles was moving before his thoughts could catch up with him, pushing more terrified protesters out of his way until he could wedge his shoulder under Garrison's armpit just as his knees gave out.

"Come on, man," Stiles said, trying to prop the swaying deputy back up as he cast around in his memory for a first name. "Michael! Hey, Mikey, come on, we gotta get you oughta here, work with me!"

He kept up a steady stream of encouragement as Garrison got his feet back under him and managed to stumble in the right direction. There were still shots ringing out, from the direction of the steps if the persistent ringing in Stiles' ears wasn't confusing him. More screams, the roar of hundreds of pounding feet, even some howls from weres looking for lost pack members. It all ran together into a sort of white noise, largely drowned out by the tattoo of Stiles' heart and the labored breathing of the man leaning heavily against his side.

They made it into the dubious shelter of the alley without any more collisions and Stiles let the deputy slump against the wall, the rough brick of it catching and pulling at his uniform as he slid down to the ground with a groan.

"Oh god," Stiles breathed. He went to run his fingers through his hair and realized halfway through the motion that he had gotten blood on his hands. He felt sick. "Oh god, what do I do, what do I do? Um, okay. 911."

"Won't do any good," Garrison said through clenched teeth, trying to shift himself up into a better sitting position. "They'll be swamped, and an ambulance couldn't make it out here anyway, not with the shooting still ongoing."

"Fuck." Stiles dropped to his knees, random first aid facts flitting through his brain almost too fast to make sense of. Gut-shots were bad, he knew that, too many important organs and blood vessels and shit, but there was nothing he could do about that. Apply pressure to the wound, that he could do. Garrison grunted as Stiles pressed the palm of his hand directly to the bullet hole—fucking bullet hole, real bullet in real flesh with real blood hot and slippery between his fingers—and Stiles muttered, "Sorry."

"No point," Garrison gasped out, trying to push Stiles off with hands gone weak and shaky with shock.

"Stop that," Stiles snapped. "If paramedics can't get here now, then we keep you alive until they can."

"You can't. I won't last long no matter what you do."

"No!" Stiles said, tone brooking no argument. He pushed harder, ignoring the pained but aggravated noise Garrison made; there was no way in hell he was going to watch a man bleed out in a dirty downtown alleyway, that was not on his agenda for the day. Especially not a man he knew, a man he may or may not have been crushing on since he first saw him at the station a few months ago. He would keep him alive through sheer force of will if he had to, he would force the blood back into his body and fucking pump it himself.

Garrison seemed to have other ideas. Instead of letting Stiles fucking help him like a normal terrified dying person, he was grabbing Stiles by the front of his shirt with a blood-soaked hand and hauling him in close, close enough for Stiles to see the dark green spots in the blue of his eyes, to feel the heat of labored breathing against his cheek.

"You're the Sheriff's son," he said, and he shook Stiles when he didn't confirm it quickly enough. "You think like him? You agree with him?"

Stiles mouthed at him, the vagueness of the question not penetrating the haze of panic still fogging up his mind and making him slow. But the intensity of Garrison's stare kept him pinned down and forced a "yes" out of him even though he didn't know exactly what it was he was agreeing with.

That seemed to be enough. Garrison let him go and reached for the front pocket of his uniform shirt instead, blood-slick fingers fumbling on the little button. Stiles stared uncomprehending as he finally got it open and pulled out what looked like a hypodermic needle full of clear liquid. Before Stiles could fully register what he was seeing, Garrison had pulled the cap off with his teeth and jammed the needle into his own neck. Stiles jerked back in shock, falling flat on his ass and skinning his palms, not that he gave a flying fuck about that at the moment.

Stiles had just enough time to wonder what the fuck that was supposed to do for a fucking gunshot wound before he was scrambling even further backwards, away from where Garrison's face was suddenly changing, shifting into something else with fangs and fur and glowing crimson eyes.

Stiles wasn't afraid of shifted werewolves, for fuck's sake, that was practically the whole point of the protest in the first place. Scott shifted at Stiles' house all the time, just stayed that way for hours some days when Stiles' dad wasn't home and he was feeling particularly smothered by the outside world. He let Stiles comb his sideburns because they were super soft and fuzzy and it was a complete non-issue. He was all for shifted werewolves, no doubt about it, so this wasn't fear so much as shock and confusion. Because werewolves weren't allowed to join the police force at all.

The transformation only lasted a few seconds, there and gone in the space of a handful of startle-quick heartbeats, and it left Garrison exactly as he was before, still slumped over and grimacing in pain.

"What the fuck?" Stiles shouted, because what else was he supposed to say? He might have repeated the question more emphatically, just to drive home how very much the situation he had gotten into didn't make any sense at all, but a shower of brick dust from directly over his head reminded him that someone was still shooting in the square outside their haven.

Really, it had probably only been a few minutes in all since the riot had started in earnest, but Stiles' entire body ached like he'd spent days at a flat out sprint, exhausted in a way he wasn't used to. Nevertheless his overwrought muscles engaged immediately and flung him across the alley, closer to Garrison and away from the alley mouth and its indiscriminate violence. His ungraceful approach jostled the deputy and Garrison made another of those hurt sounds.

"Shit, sorry," Stiles said, of half of a mind to try with the pressure thing again before his mouth opened without his permission and repeated, "Wait, what the fuck? You can't be a were! I mean, obviously you are, but you can't be! And why aren't you healing? What was the thing in the neck, and why with the blood when you should have been healed by now?"

Garrison huffed and rolled his eyes, as if he had any right to be annoyed in the face of Stiles' completely justified bafflement. "It doesn't matter," he said. "You don't need to know."

Stiles made a strangled noise of indeterminate outrage the likes of which he had never had cause to make before. "No!" he said. "No, you don't get to bleed on me and then not explain anything, fuck that noise!"

Garrison growled, like actually growled, and it was such an obviously were thing to do that Stiles could hardly believe he'd ever thought the guy was human. "I didn't ask for your help," he bit out. He shoved Stiles away with one hand, the other still clutching at the open wound in his side, and started trying to claw his way upright.

"And what was I supposed to do, just leave you collapsed in the middle of a riot to bleed out and get trampled to death?" Stiles demanded. "You could show a little bit of gratitude, you know. You're fucking welcome, dude."

Garrison didn't deign to respond, mostly because he was gasping in pain and sinking back down the wall. Stiles cursed and reached out to prop him up.

"You're still bleeding," Stiles pointed out. "You shouldn't still be bleeding. Honestly, as the were you obviously are, you shouldn't be bleeding at all. Seriously, what is with that?"

Garrison's next attempt at pushing him away was weak enough that Stiles could shrug it off, which was alarming considering he should've had superhuman strength. He swore and let his head fall back for a moment, eyes closed as he caught his breath. "Did anyone see me go down?" he asked eventually, and that was definitely not an answer to any of Stiles' numerous questions.

"What? How the fuck should I know?" Stiles asked. "It's a mess out there, in case you didn't notice. Why does it even matter?" Then he shook his head. "Of course it matters," he muttered, more to himself than to Garrison. "You were pretending to be human. And if you had been human, then this would have been a fatal shot. So if anyone saw you take it and you turn up in a few days good as new, then they would know you're a were, your cover would be blown, and you'd be arrested."

"I need to get out of here," Garrison said, making another attempt to escape the alleyway for the square—mostly empty by now but almost certainly still blocked off—outside it. He managed to get his feet under him this time but he staggered before he'd made it three steps, a cry of pain forcing its way past his lips.

Stiles caught him with a hand to the shoulder, keeping him from toppling over and hitting the ground again. "Whoa, hey, you're not gonna get anywhere like this," he said. "Not if you're not healing."

"I am healing," Garrison snapped. "Just...not as fast as I usually would."

"And why is that?"

The sound of utter aggravation Garrison let out was oddly satisfying, mostly because that was the sort of noise people usually made before they gave in and let Stiles have exactly what he wanted. True to form, he finally said, "There's a serum. I take it to suppress my wolf."

"Dude, you can do that?" Stiles interrupted, too startled to hold back.

Garrison nodded. "Dampens the senses, lowers strength and speed, and slows healing so I can pass for human. The injection counteracts it but I don't know how long it will take to fully reverse the effects."

"And until then, you're vulnerable," Stiles concluded.

He dragged a hand through his hair and nearly smacked himself when he remembered that his hands were still tacky with half-dried blood, which was now sure to be smeared all over his head. But at this point his shoes were irrevocably stained with it and there were splotches of it all over his shirt and jeans, so he figured there was no point in lamenting a little more of a mess. He was going to need a dozen scalding hot showers to feel clean again anyway, and he had a feeling even that might not be enough.

"Dude, why the fuck would you even do this?" he asked, confusion winning out of everything else for a minute. "Why go to all this trouble just to put yourself in such a precarious position? What's your endgame here?"

"That's classified."

Garrison said it with a completely straight face, no hint of a smile or rolled eyes. Then again, Stiles had seen the guy crack jokes before and he'd always had a very deadpan delivery of sarcasm, so he honestly wasn't sure if Garrison was serious or just being a jerk about it. But this seemed like a lot of effort to go to just for the sake of it. Boyd had wanted to be a cop before he'd been bitten but he would never have gone to such extremes to make it happen, just like Isaac had given up his military ideation. Hell, the only reason Scott was still trying to pursue his dream of medical school was because doctors didn't have anywhere near the rigorous physical examinations that cops did, so, if he was careful and kept his head down, no one would ever have to know.

Unless Garrison was just unreasonably passionate about his career in law enforcement, then there had to be something else going on here. And if it was classified, if he legitimately was under cover in some way, then that implied some sort of organization. Maybe it was a group of rebels seeking to overthrow the government and free the werewolves from oppression, hundreds of operatives infiltrating the ranks throughout the country as they spoke. Or maybe Stiles had watched too many movies lately, who knew, but if there was even the slightest chance that something like that was actually going on, then Stiles wanted in on it.

Before he could make any sort of declaration along those lines, something melodramatic enough to fit the circumstances preferably, a faint wail of sirens crept up on them. Garrison looked genuinely alarmed, the sort of alarm that Stiles had sort of been expecting to show up because of the gaping bullet wound but had been conspicuously absent so far, and he lurched further down the alley, away from the sound of the first responders. Stiles ran after him, worried hands flitting between the wall and Garrison's shoulders and back in quick, awkward succession. It was on the third flailing loop that Stiles realized—

"There's no exit wound," he breathed, worry ratcheting up another notch. "God, that can't be helping the whole not-healing thing; you can't heal if the wound is held open by something, suppression serum notwithstanding. Buddy, we need to get you to a hospital to get that bullet taken out."

"No!" Garrison said and the force he put behind the exclamation had him grimacing in pain, staggering again.

Stiles pushed him up against the wall and held him there, pinning him by the shoulders to keep him fucking still so he wouldn't injure himself even more. "Goddamn it, you're even more stubborn than I am!" he hissed. He ignored the dark look Garrison sent him, eyes flashing a vivid red again—and right, alpha, okay, good to know—and lips pulled back over sharpening fangs, and said, "Look, one way or another, you need help. You can't go back to the station, you won't go to a hospital, and you're too hurt to make it anywhere on your own. That means you need my help, since I'm the only one offering at the moment."

Garrison didn't have a rebuttal for that, just grit his teeth and kept glaring. Stiles bit his lip, turning over options in his head as the sirens drew closer and closer, close enough to make Garrison's eyes flit nervously over Stiles' shoulder. "I have somewhere I can take you," Stiles said, sending up a prayer that this would go well and that Scott wouldn't tear him a new one for it. "Somewhere safe that you can get some treatment. But this is a leap of faith on my part, okay, and I'm gonna need a little something from you in return."

"What?" Garrison asked, reluctance in every tense line of him.

Stiles flexed his fingers where they rested on Garrison's shoulders, thick with muscle and pulled taut with pain, as he ran down the list of questions he could ask in this moment. He had plenty, more than enough to fill up three hours' worth of conversations, but they didn't have three hours. And really, there was one question that had been burning a hole in his metaphorical pocket since the suspicion arose in him.

"Is Michael Garrison even your real name?" he asked.

The man's eyes, suddenly sharp where they had been glassy with shock and pain, flicked up to meet his with uncomfortable intensity. There was a long moment in which Stiles felt like he was being x-rayed, scanned inside and out and judged against some unknown standard, but eventually the clench of his jaw eased a bit.

"Derek," he said. "My name is Derek."


Trigger warnings: protests turned violent and gunshot wounds.