Hongjoong gnawed on his fingernails on his way to work. Every glance he threw into the rear mirror seemed more distressed than normal. To any police officer on patrol, he likely looked like a car thief. That was entirely against the goal Hongjoong was trying to achieve. Which was not getting caught up with the police.

San threw him a concerned glimpse the moment he entered the car.

"Are you alright? Seonghwa again?"

No matter how hard he tried, Hongjoong couldn't get it out of his head. How Seonghwa had approached him so confidently, knowing that something was wrong. It had never happened to Hongjoong. The fact that this was the man he liked only made it worse. Hongjoong felt like vomiting most of the time. His delight and satisfaction at garnering such attention from the bold officer made it worse, only adding into the mix of emotions messing up his insides.

While San got comfortable, Hongjoong rested his forehead against his steering wheel. A warm hand rubbed his back.

"I actually asked Wooyoung about it. He mentioned that Seonghwa wanted him to ask me about you, too. Discreetly."

A shaky breath wet the plastic of the wheel. Hongjoong wiped the little condensed drops off as he sat back.

"Wooyoung said he's been reading a lot lately. About lucid dreaming and how to remember his dreams better. I think he's also trying to defeat those nightmares."

The whirring white noise of the engine hummed in the back of Hongjoong's head as he pulled from the parking lot. The sunrise dawned on the horizon, throwing the long shadows of the buildings on the street.

"I hope he succeeds then. Not that I want to get rid of him, but I'm terrified," Hongjoong mumbled with another fearful glance over his shoulder. Every police car he saw nearby had his heart freeze. He felt like a criminal without ever having done anything wrong.

The phantom sensation of shackles on his wrists bore into his brain. Followed by slender, leather-gloved fingers pulling him in and trapping him.

Hongjoong shook his head to rid himself of the imagination of Seonghwa's dark eyes staring down at him. Those usually so mild eyes that had no mercy for people he deemed dangerous.

"He might, yeah. I gave Wooyoung vague answers, too. We should think of a cover story for you so it adds up."

Miserable, Hongjoong drove both of them to work. Mingi wasn't in today since he visited a different office for his studies. Jongho lived in his office, unbothered as usual. Hongjoong's expectations of being approached by him the second he stepped in with a warrant forwarded by Officer Park didn't come true. It alleviated the weight on Hongjoong's shoulders only slightly.

Less than keen to see Seonghwa tonight, Hongjoong slinked up the stairs. He just wanted to bury his face in the carpet full of cookie crumbs and shut off his brain for the next few hours. He hadn't got much sleep either, and his exhaustion wore him out.

Since he was a special case, Seonghwa had a nightmare still. With no regard for Hongjoong's attempts to dodge him.

While Hongjoong stared at the screen, the information changed. The word 'station' switched out as his location shifted.

Predator, home, snakes.

"Snakes again?"

Seonghwa really had a snake problem.

Hongjoong equipped his various poisons and weapons. His joy to visit the man's home again was short-lived. The moment he appeared in Seonghwa's dream, he knew that he was fucked.

Well, not literally. That would be the cherry on top.

Hongjoong appeared in the room right opposite Seonghwa. The man had crossed his arms in front of his chest, donning all black today. The second Hongjoong materialised, a crooked grin broadened on his lips.

"There you are. Again."

He remembered.

Fuck.

Hongjoong picked up his hands, ready to move back. The snakes the monitor had mentioned slithered from under the furniture. Seonghwa paid them no mind. His brows twitched, but he stared ahead at Hongjoong, tricking himself into disregarding the danger. Confused, the snakes hovered around him.

"Listen, this all has a great explanation," Hongjoong tried weakly. Those shackles dangled from Seonghwa's belt again, contrasting with his black jeans. Hongjoong was scared by the tug in his stomach regarding them.

"Humour me. I would love to hear what keeps bringing such a find back into my dreams. And see, I also figured out your pattern." Seonghwa spread his arms, gesturing around the room grandly. Surroundings that he was comfortable in, most likely changed via door hopping earlier. The snakes on the ground, a reason for fear, but condemned with ignorance.

And the front door, thickly webbed by white spider webs. Outside, Hongjoong heard the shrill voice of a lady as she hammered and pounded against his door. The webs muffled her.

"I wrote down every dream I remember seeing you in. And they all were nightmares. The only time I saw you outside of one, it wasn't this you."

Seonghwa gesticulated up and down Hongjoong's form. Self-conscious, Hongjoong crossed his arms in front of his open leather jacket.

"Which was the first you joined? I think you were there the first time I dreamt of shoes. You were chasing me."

Hopeless, Hongjoong glanced around some more. No way out of here. He could only be mean and shoot Seonghwa in the head again to startle him awake.

Hongjoong clutched his arm tightly with his fingers. He shouldn't use that emergency rule. Not when Seonghwa was thriving in his lucid dream currently.

He sighed.

"I joined you on a field, a few weeks ago. You dreamt of corpses and somebody attacking you," he confessed. Seonghwa's eyes lit up, intrigued. He knew he had tapped the source of valuable information.

"And ever since you were in my every nightmare? What are you doing in them?"

Hongjoong had to tell him. He couldn't avoid it any longer. Seonghwa would only dig deeper and endanger their jobs as he went.

"I'm an Oneiric Shaman. If you want to call it that. It would be the original title."

Seonghwa tilted his head, perplexed at the words. When Hongjoong's brain uselessly compared him to a curious bunny, the man cursed himself inwardly.

"A dream therapist? Not for you, but for your dreams. I try them to get better. I do therapy for that part of your brain."

Silence, still.

"I try to resolve bad dreams," Hongjoong ended flatly. Seonghwa's lips thinned, but recognition shone in his eyes.

"So, a dream catcher? But a person."

Hongjoong nodded. He was that dream catcher in Seonghwa's room, that was pretty close.

"But I am not making you up as a personalised version of an object. You really exist," Seonghwa pointed out, ever so sharp.

Hongjoong's eyes dropped to one of the snakes at his legs. The officer's stance was tense and trembled slightly as he desperately tried to overlook the dangers around him. He knew there was no other way to approach Hongjoong.

Hongjoong's eyes flicked back up before Seonghwa saw it necessary to follow his gaze. Instead, he pulled his gun.

Neither flinched when he shot that particular snake. It disappeared into nothingness.

"I do. And I come here to help you defeat the things that scare you in your dreams so you get some healthy sleep. Because you have a dream catcher in your room. They are emergency buttons for us. At least the real ones. Did you visit some American natives? Most of them don't alert us since they are just decoration without the real spirituality in them."

Seonghwa nodded slowly.

"Wooyoung gifted it to me after his travels in America. Because of my bad dreams."

His voice had got more friendly. The pointed edge vanished when he became more sure that Hongjoong didn't mean bad.

"So it was you. In the hospital, and also on the ship."

Hongjoong didn't need to glance down to know he was wearing a pirate's outfit again. The fabric felt lighter on his skin.

"Yeah. My job is to stay undercover and resolve the dream before the worst gets to you. It didn't always work. Especially when you subconsciously created traps for me because you viewed me as a threat."

Seonghwa chuckled. It was less devious this time, less the chuckle of a winning detective. This was just him being amused.

"I thought you were some sort of soul-sucking demon. Seeing a dark shadow follow you in your dreams? A person I never saw before being so central? It was super scary."

With a wince, Hongjoong forced himself not to look at his shoes. So Seonghwa wouldn't be distracted by the snakes, either.

"Sorry about that. It's difficult to seem like no danger when a person is already in the middle of a nightmare. I would also trust nobody slinking around there."

Seonghwa smiled despite the awkward empathy.

"So you can only visit me when I'm scared? That's sad. It would have been fun to meet in a dream world that wasn't super unsettling. We could have gone to a customised theme park together while you tell me your story."

Hongjoong came up short. His blank face made Seonghwa snicker.

"You are interested in my story?"

"Well, I never met a dream catcher in person before. And you seem like an amiable individual when you aren't shooting me through the head."

Another audible wince.

"Please forget about that dream. I did my best, but when you set everything aflame, I couldn't help any better than waking you up. And there are only so many possibilities how I can do that in a dream."

Over the noise of the agitated woman and the hissing snakes, Seonghwa chuckled again. When he noticed himself relax a bit too much, he peered at the snakes. Instantly, he dived away from their lunging bodies. His long limbs swung him up into a secure spot. On top of the kitchen aisle, he warily observed them as he continued their conversation.

Just when he opened his mouth, however, he faltered. Curious, Hongjoong watched him. Some snakes came over to him, relaying Seonghwa's thought process that they would attack any person in the room. Hongjoong shot them idly.

"If-If you saw every nightmare..."

Hongjoong glanced up from the snake. Seonghwa knelt on the aisle, his head lowered. Even through his dark locks, Hongjoong detected the blush on his cheeks. Faint and pretty like rose petals, it was barely visible in the dim light of the kitchen. Hongjoong spotted it only because he was so close to the single light source. The row of fairy lights on the kitchen counter.

"Did you know Yunho before I mentioned him at San's?"

Hongjoong couldn't help how the blood rushed into his cheeks, too. When Seonghwa peeked up at him and saw, he slapped his hands over his face, yelping.

Hongjoong cleared his throat, awkward. His heart sung for Seonghwa's adorable antics that contrasted so much with the threatening persona he had dreamt up the night prior. At the same time, his mind screamed and ran in circles as it tried to keep that image from the basement from resurfacing.

"I didn't hear much, I promise. I can't stay for longer than you feel uncomfortable."

"Where were you?"

"Behind the boiler. I shot her, but you praised him for it so confidently," Hongjoong snickered.

It was the weirdest thing to bond over a nightmare gone sexual. But it worked surprisingly well.

"The washing machine is in sight of that, right?"

Hongjoong could barely hear him anymore. As if trying to drown in his palms, Seonghwa pressed them on his face so tight he nearly suffocated.

"... it is. Is that a basement you know well?"

The distraction worked. Seonghwa's shoulders stiffened before they relaxed again. Then he flinched at another harsh bang from outside.

"Kind of. But it's not important. I'm sorry you had to see that. In my defence, I had no way of knowing you were hiding there."

Helpless, Hongjoong waved it off and shot another snake.

"Yeah, I can't blame you, either. Let's just pretend it never happened. Not that your relationships with your friends are of any matter to me or my work."

It was a lie. But Hongjoong needed it to reassure Seonghwa. The man had enough to think about these days already, Hongjoong didn't need to drop it on him casually, how he had come across as so sweet and attractive in his dreams that Hongjoong had developed feelings for him purely based on that.

"Yunho and I aren't... We're not like that. I woke up from that dream super embarrassed myself. I couldn't look him in the eyes for a week," Seonghwa mumbled weakly. Finally, he took his hands down and sucked in a few deep breaths. Their shared helplessness eased the tension in the air.

"I wondered if that would happen, yeah."

For a moment, they shared their space in mutually shy giggles. Entertained by their absurd behaviour in their even more absurd surroundings, Hongjoong ultimately nodded his chin at the webbed door.

"Want me to take care of that? Even if you are learning how to lucid dream now, those things are scary."

For a moment, Seonghwa seemed apprehensive. A bunch of question still showed in his eyes, and he had a hard time letting go of them.

"It will help you sleep. As many questions as you may have, ask me over time. A nightmare drains your strength and you have work tomorrow," Hongjoong reminded him diplomatically. Finally, Seonghwa nodded. His inquisitive eyes followed Hongjoong the whole time until the dream dissolved around them.

Hongjoong had woken his interest.