Brian is a very quiet man. He’s naturally observant and seclusive in social settings, choosing to stand off to the side and watch the crowd as the people around him go on with their lives. He doesn’t make himself known to people upfront, no; he watches and waits, lurking behind them to memorize their schedules, the routes they’d take, the way they walked, the breaths they’d take per minute. He knows the full legal name, address, and history of someone before he ever steps in front of their path to introduce himself to them.
He first saw you at the supermarket, walking the aisles as you shopped mindlessly through throughout the stores, grabbing your usual items and then walking straight to the register to pay for them, like you have a million times before. You always went on a Sunday evening, and you always put little clips in your hair to get the pieces out of your face, something he noticed immediately about you. The clips were always different though, some were mismatched, some were more put together, but without fail, you’d decorate your hair with little clips every time you went out to the grocery store. He thought you were cute, and almost unconsciously, he began following you around after one of your many store visits.
He found out where you lived, and got up before sunrise the next day, driving over to the neighborhood you lived in. He took a shot in the dark, and predicted that you wouldn’t be much of an early bird and would most likely end up leaving for work or errands when the sun was shining—and he was right. He continued that routine for weeks, waking up early, following you to work, to your friends’ homes, to your family’s homes, every store you stopped at, all of it.
He would sometimes stalk you in public. He would dress in normal unassuming clothes, walk ten paces behind you, detouring and hiding in the crowd when you turned around in his direction. He would stop outside of whichever cafe you decided to go into, waiting patiently for you to walk by him with your little coffee in hand and headphones in your ears, preventing you from hearing the faint sound of footsteps trailing behind you.
Eventually, he came over one day, in the darkness of night, to see how hard it’d be to get inside your home undetected. You had been out with your friends, and decided to stay with one of them—your alcohol tolerance was terrible, you could only get a few drinks in before the blurriness got to you, poor thing. He was pleasantly surprised to be able to enter the backyard fairly easily, and with no animals or security systems to keep him out, he snuck inside of your home and began mentally mapping the layout, memorizing it for when he’d be invited in by sweet little you.
And at long last, after looking through every nook and cranny of your life, finding every little detail in each section of your medical records, stealing small items from your house that he knew you wouldn’t look too hard for, and being able to predict where you would be at in almost any given moment—he decided it was time to properly meet you in the supermarket, tearing your focus away from the fruit in your hands towards his oh so friendly smile, as he complemented the dainty little clips in your hair.
a/n: im so into Brian being creepy it tickles a part of my brain ngh