Chapter Text
Jian pressed his cheek to the airplane window, letting the vibrations echo through his skull. The coldness of the glass was almost refreshing, its chill a gentle reminder that there was a vast world beyond the confines of the cabin. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine that he was floating in the clouds.
He’d always hated flying, ever since he was a kid. The Lee family’s yearly pilgrimage to Hong Kong to visit family brought with it enough anxiety for Jian that the stress of flying made him wish he could just stay at home rather than visit his cousins. Something about the idea of being trapped in a metal box, hurdling at god-knows-what-speed over the ocean never did it for him.
Even when he got older and could conceptualize that no, the airplane was not going to fall out of the sky, Jian still hated it. He hated the canned air, and the suffocation of being surrounded by strangers, breathing and talking and eating and making all sorts of noises that intermingled with the roar of the engines in a horrible symphony. There was a reason that, when he moved to America for college, he didn’t visit home much. Very few things were worth spending twelve hours in the air.
You’re ridiculous, Terriermon said silently, his voice echoing with mirth inside Jian’s mind. The little Digimon was currently curled up on his lap, face covered with his big ears. Jian gave him a soft squeeze in response. He did appreciate the silent manner of communication, after all; the last thing he wanted was his partner’s voice adding to the overwhelming din of the airplane cabin. As much as Terriermon was an asshole, he wasn’t a jerk.
Outside the window, the first signs of sunlight had begun to peak over the horizon. Jian had chosen a red-eye flight on purpose; the first few hours, at least, would pass by in the dark and quiet as passengers tried to sleep. Jian hadn’t gotten any sleep, of course. The diluted wolfsbane pill he’d swallowed before takeoff made sure of it. The thing made him wired as all hell but it did succeed in suppressing his senses. Not quite to human-level, but close. In the darkness, swimming under the wolfsbane, he could almost pretend that he was just normal, every-day, fear-of-flying Jian.
Because even as much as human-Jian hated flying, the wolf inside him hated it more.
The lights in the cabin flicked on one-by-one, bathing everything in cold fluorescence. Almost immediately, a baby started screaming. The speakers crackled— “Good morning, folks, this is your captain. We’re just about four hours into our flight, with low headwinds over the Pacific. Estimated time of arrival is at three-oh-five PM at Tokyo Narita International Airport. We’ll be beginning our breakfast service soon…”
The speaker crackled again and Jian winced, causing the woman sitting next to him to look over in concern. Immediately, a wave of scents swept over him— toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, human sweat— and he breathed out quickly, shutting his eyes. Underneath his skin, the wolf was waking up. Trapped, it screamed at him. Trapped!
“Oh— no, we’re fine, really. Just some indigestion— oh, no, we’ve already got a puke bag. No, thank you, really,” Terriermon was saying from his lap, probably trying to convince the woman that he wasn’t about to die. And then to Jian, silently— Where’s the ‘bane?
Backpack, front pouch. Jian tried to slow his breathing, blocking off his nasal passages as best he could. God, he could taste the air around him— people and soap and plastic and the metallic scream of the airplane. Terriermon’s ear brushed his fist lightly— he’d been gripping the arm rest so hard his knuckles were tingling.
Here. Terriermon dropped a pill into his palm, which Jian promptly dry swallowed without opening his eyes. The capsule left a numbing sensation in his mouth and throat as it slid down, the wolfsbane forcing his heightened senses to recede. He waited a few moments before blinking an eye open and catching Terriermon’s gaze with a questioning look. The little Digimon scrutinized his face before nodding slightly. The wolf was gone.
There was a shuffle of movement and Jian turned to see the woman next to him scoot further away, a look of distaste on her face. She quickly shoved a paper puke-bag into his hands. “Just take it, okay?”
“T-thanks,” Jian said sheepishly, accepting the bag with trembling hands. Even as the smells faded, his heart had begun racing at a million miles per hour and he could see the tremor in his fingers. Wolfsbane worked magic sometimes, but it was still poison.
It was going to be a long flight.
—
It took him four more pills to make it through the flight, and by the time the plane touched down in Japan Jian couldn’t help but be thankful to have an extra puke-bag. As he stepped off the jet bridge and onto the gray carpet of the airport terminal, his legs shook violently and he grabbed onto his suitcase handle to steady himself, a wave of nausea rising in his throat.
Breath, Terriermon coached silently, ears wrapped protectively around the sides of Jian’s head. Don’t go puking on me now, okay?
“Never going on an airplane again,” Jian mumbled aloud in response, allowing his partner’s touch to calm him. Terriermon helped sooth his human side like nothing else, their partner bond creating a sense of safety that little else could supersede. It helped a little with the wolf side, too— but not nearly as much as Jian needed. Only a pack could do that.
And that, of course, was why Jian was currently kneeling on the floor of Tokyo Narita airport, trying his best not to puke.
At twenty-two, Jian was far too old to Spark. He’d spent over two decades as a human, and to become a Were so quickly and violently had been overwhelming, to say the least. First Sparks were always unpleasant, and the older someone was when they occurred, the worse they were. When it happened, Jian’s body had fought hard to stay human. If not for Terriermon, he probably would have died— at least, that’s what his Lead had told him.
Except, not his Lead. The man who’d taken him in was the Lead of the Northern California Pack, but he wasn’t Jian’s Lead. He should have been— Jian had wanted to be a part of the Pack, and the Pack had accepted him fully. They’d found him when he Sparked for the first time, howling in fear and confusion on the side of a coastal road with a very confused Terriermon riding on his back. They’d nursed him back to health, let him stay at the pack compound, initiated him through the ritual magic of the waxing moon, ran with him when the full moon came only days later.
But when he lost himself under the moon, the Pack couldn’t pull him back. His wolf, the Lead had said, had allegiances elsewhere.
Unfortunately for Jian, a packless wolf was a danger to itself and to society. With the magic of pack bonds, Weres could blend in with human society without too much issue. Pack magic allowed a Were to find harmony with their wolf side, satiating its need for order and companionship just enough to give the human side the upper hand. Without a pack, a Were had no such luxury— even with incredible self-discipline, the human-side could be Sparked away at any moment as the wolf reacted to fear, or anger, or even joy. The wolf desired self-preservation as much as the human— how could it know that transforming into a beast in reaction to a startling noise actually achieved the opposite?
All that the Northern California Pack could do for Jian was provide a safe, stable environment for him to exist in— at least until he figured out his little pack problem. Going back to grad school was out of the question— hell, leaving the pack compound was out of the question. Jian knew that the Northern California Pack, but he wasn’t an idiot. They sure as hell weren’t going to risk letting a lone, packless wolf wander back into society and create an even bigger issue to clean up. Thankfully, the compound had more than enough space for an under-fed grad student and his asshole of a Digimon partner to sulk around— at least for the time being.
It was Terriermon’s plan, in the end. Jian had enough on his plate trying to control the freaked-out wolf that now lived under his skin, let alone figuring out why he couldn’t join the local Pack. Hell, he hadn’t even known what a pack was until a few months ago— let alone a Were. At least he didn’t have to hide Terriermon anymore; keeping Digimon a secret as well as the fact that he was a literal werewolf would have been near impossible.
“That’s the idea,” Terriermon had said one evening, hopping along after Jian on the grounds of the sprawling compound. “It’s like how we’re bonded, you know? You’re not gonna go out and partner with a different Digimon, cause we’re already together. That’s what this pack is— it’s like trying to bond to another Digimon.”
Jian kicked at the grass, a wave of anxiety rising from his belly. The horrible, knotting feeling in his stomach had become common place lately, made even worse by the inevitable growl that followed it— the wolf on high alert. “So it’s hopeless,” he muttered, his voice thick.
“Hey— let me finish, alright?” Terriermon scrambled up one of his legs and landed on his shoulder. “I said it’s like trying to bond to another Digimon, not that it is like it. But what if the problem is the same? Maybe you can’t join this pack cause you’re already in one.”
“How could I possibly be in a pack?” Jian crossed his arms, fingers grabbing at his sleeves. “I was human until a few months ago! Unless I somehow joined a pack before they found me—which is impossible, by the way.”
“But what about before that?”
His wolf growled in irritation, the noise escaping Jian’s throat before he could stop it. “Terriermon, I’m pretty sure humans can’t join Were packs.”
“Okay, I mean, not officially, but— just, listen.” Terriermon scrambled on top of his head, peering down over his forehead to look at his partner upside-down. “Did you know Takato’s a Were?”
Jian blinked, his partner’s words hanging in the air. “Excuse me?”
“He’s a Were. Ruki is too.” Terriermon tumbled forward and Jian reached out to catch him instinctively. The little Digimon glared up at him. “What? I emailed them.”
“You emailed… you emailed them!? What if— I mean, how do you even ask that? What if they’d been humans!?”
Terriermon shrugged. “Good thing they’re not! How do you feel about taking a trip back to Japan?”
—
Ruki was easy to spot even in the crowd of people, her shock of spiky red hair like a neon beacon. Jian stumbled towards her, trying to keep from swaying on his feet. Now that he was out of the horrible airplane cabin, the wolfsbane’s sensory muting-effects had left him feeling blind and defenseless rather than protected. It was funny how fast one could get used to the heightened perceptions that being a Were granted— being brought back to (almost) human level was jarring, even when you didn’t factor in the side effects.
Still, it didn’t take wolf-level senses to tell that Ruki was concerned. Her face was already in a deep frown by the time he was close enough to see— if she really was a Were, like Terriermon said, she’d probably smelled the wolfsbane on him from across the way.
“How many’d he take?” she said to Terriermon as soon as they were close, not even bothering to address him. Fine, really. He was pretty occupied trying not to puke.
“Six?” Terriermon’s voice was muffled through his ringing ears. “I think? It was rough.”
“Shit,” Ruki said softly. “How long ago was the last one?”
Couple minutes before the seatbelt sign went on, Jian offered silently. He’d popped the wolfsbane after a final trip to dry-heave into the airplane toilet. Terriermon relayed the message to Ruki, gently squeezing Jian’s shoulder with one of his ears.
Apparently that was enough information for Ruki, because she just nodded and grabbed Jian’s suitcase, gesturing for him to follow her. He did, somehow, his legs threatening to give out with each step. The wolfsbane had, he realized, muted everything. He could see the terminal around him, but somehow his brain wasn’t reading his senses correctly— the information came in and got jumbled up somehow, leading him to trip over his own feet and bump into people left and right.
At some point Ruki grabbed his arm and lead him, rather forcefully, until they reached the sliding door to Arrivals and stepped onto the street. There was a car waiting and Ruki half-helped, half-pushed Jian through the door to sprawl out over the back seats. He squeezed his eyes shut and hugged Terriermon close, feeling the vibrations of the car as it carried them away from the airport and into the heart of Tokyo. At least here he couldn’t bump into anything.
Jian drifted in and out of consciousness for most of the drive, his heart pounding from the effects of the wolfsbane. He remembered waking up to puke at one point and apologizing profusely to Ruki and whoever was driving the car. The next thing he knew, he was stumbling down a stone path towards a traditional Japanese-style house, its walls nestled amongst thick forest. There was a flash of movement among the trees, and Jian blinked, his rattled brain trying to comprehend what it’d seen.
“Later,” Ruki’s voice said, soothing yet forceful. She led him into the house and, eventually to a large room with a futon. After showing him the bathroom— “don’t puke on the tatami, please—“ she slid the door shut and left him in blissful silence for the first time in almost a day.
Jian had about ten seconds to enjoy the silence before he heaved violently. He barely made it to the toilet in time.