#brian imagines

You had a school trip you would need to leave for Sunday morning, and given that it was already Friday night by the time Brian was suggesting you sleep over at his place, it really was your last chance to spend any time with him. Normally you would never consider something so risky, especially when you had never even met his roommates. There was a no visitor policy for student housing; not that anyone in the male housing followed that too strictly. 

You had weighed the chances of it all on the drive back, and you were going to say no, until Brian had kissed you so sweetly and your resolve completely shattered. It was so easy to get swept up staring at his pretty eyes or admiring the swoop of his nose or the plush of his lips. All sane thoughts practically went out the window, except for the inkling hope that you wouldn’t regret it in the morning.

It was quiet when you woke up— a good sign. Brian was still sleeping next to you, one arm slung around your waist, and him shirtless. You had thrown on one of his shirts as your pyjamas the night before due to being so unprepared. You took a moment to enjoy the peacefulness of it all. 

Brian’s bed was extremely comfortable, and the blanket was perfectly warm against your bare legs. Not to mention the scent of his cologne that clung to his sheets, giving you just enough of a whiff to feel like the blanket wrapped around you was his arms. His room wasn’t stuffy either, which pleasantly surprised you. You would never regularly bet on the dorm of 4 junior college boys to be particularly clean, but you would take what you could get.

But then you heard it. The distinct and indisputable sound of the front door opening. You tensed up slightly, glancing at your phone. Geez it was almost 10AM. 

You listened closely, hoping that somehow it wasn’t what you thought it was. You were so not prepared to meet your boyfriend’s friends like this. Your heart sank as you heard voices. There was no doubt that his roommates had arrived back home a day early, and your plan to have the house to yourself had been ruined just like that.

“Hyung, who’s shoes are these? Never seen them before.” 

You heard one of the guys speak, his voice gentle.

“I don’t know. Probably just forgot one of us owned a pair like that.”

The voices seemed to shift, becoming a little quieter as they got further away from Brian’s bedroom. You tried to ignore the pit in your stomach as you turned to your still sleeping boyfriend, nudging his arm with as little panic as possible. 

“Mmm… morning, baby,” he mumbled, eyes closed as he pulled you closer. 

“Brian, I think your roommates are back,” you whispered with some dread. 

“Hm?” he blinked one eye open, staring at you as if to really check if he had heard you right.

“Your roommates. They just came home.” The panic in your voice was rising. Brian sat up, seemingly wide awake now. He raked a hand through his hair, attempting to tame the bedhead he had woken up with. 

“It’s okay. You were gonna meet them eventually. Let’s just go say hi, explain the situation— that it’s definitely not what it looks like— and then everything will be fine.” 

“I can’t go out there dressed like this— in your clothes!” you whisper-shouted. Your boyfriend blinked, as if he had never considered that before. 

“It’s okay. You look sexy like that,” he stated, a smile growing on his face. 

“Brian.” 

“Okay, I’m sorry. I can try to sneak you out, but it probably won’t work. Jiho always notices everything,” he sighed, grabbing a random shirt from his dresser to throw on. 

“This is not how I wanted to meet your friends,” you groaned, head in your hands. “I wanted to make a good impression. Instead they’re gonna see me come out of your room, in your clothes, and fill in the rest.” 

“Y/n, you’re overthinking this. They’ve already heard so many great things about you. So what if you stayed the night? It’s not like we did anything.” 

“They don’t know that! How are you planning to convince them that this situation really is completely innocent?”

Brian sighed. “I’ll figure something out.” 

You hoped he meant what he said, but you could tell he was unsure himself by the nervous expression on his face. As your voices had naturally raised through conversation from the whispered tone you had started out with, you hadn’t considered the fact that his roommates would be able to hear your conversation through the thin walls, or that they were already prepared to tease Brian about all of it. 

You woke up the minute you felt the feeling of being pulled towards someone, that someone being your boyfriend.

Even if you were used to these type of affection, you almost always woke up. You didn’t mind but the only downfall was that you had a hard time going back to sleep, so you preferred to start your morning at that time. Good thing it usually occurred at around 9:30, so not that early.

Since it was the weekend, you stayed in bed for a while until you felt that it was appropriate to get up.

You carefully tried to peel away Brian’s arms from around your waist, not wanting to wake him but, as usual, it was impossible. The blonde was quite clingy in the mornings, and for some reason, he could tell when you were about to get up and away from his embrace.

“Baby, nooo.” He whined softly and tightened his embrace, placing his head on your shoulder.

You chuckled. “It’s 10 am darling, I think it’s time for me to get up.”

“But it’s Saturday, let’s sleep in.” He hid his head on your neck.

“And what do I gain from it?”

“Spending more time with your incredibly handsome boyfriend?”

“Hmm.” You pretended to think about it. “I guess that sounds alright.”

“Alright?” His tone sounded offended which made you laugh hard. You turned around on his embrace and saw Brian pouting.

“I’m kidding.” You kissed his cheek. “You’re too cute. Let’s rest for a bit more, then.”

The blonde cheered and hugged you, getting into a comfortable position under the covers.

Hours passed, three to be exact, when you stirred.

You yawned and rubbed your eyes lazily. You looked at your left and found the blonde still sleeping, which didn’t surprise you, at all. His head was resting on his pillow, a relaxed expression on his face, while his arms were, once again, around your frame.

Smiling, you ruffled gently a few hairs that fell on his face and kissed his forehead lovingly. That made him unconsciously smile.

Slowly, you freed yourself from his embrace, with a lot of difficulty and walked towards the kitchen.

You took out all of the ingredients you needed to make breakfast, as you did on weekends.

The weekend’s routine consisted of you preparing breakfast, cleaning the apartment and then lounging on the couch for the rest of the day alongside your boyfriend.

As you prepared the food, you heard light footsteps that came all the way from the bedroom and stopped behind you.

Then a pair of strong arms wrapping around your body.

“Good morning, pretty.” Brian said in a sleepy but husky voice.

“Good morning, my love.” You leaned into his touch. “How are you?”

“I was doing alright until I woke up without you by my side.”

“I’m sorry but I needed to make us something to eat, we would have starved otherwise.” You joked.

“Oh, yeah. What would I do without my personal chef?”

“You would probably live of off takeout.”

You felt him nod his head as he laughed. “True.”

“This is almost done.” You spoke a few moments later.

“Alright, I’ll set the table.”

It only took a few more minutes to finish preparing everything, and to bring it to the table.

You ate while animatedly chatting with Brian, talking about your week and future plans.

When you were done, your boyfriend washed the dishes. Meanwhile you cleaned the mess you made while cooking.

You spend the next hour and a half wiping, scrubbing and tidying your entire apartment.

Exhausted, you let yourself fall on the living room couch, the blonde doing the same.

“Oh my god, I’m so tired.” He complained. “I hate cleaning.”

“Me too.” You looked at him. “We should do it less often.”

“As tempting as that sounds, love, I don’t think we can do that.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right.”

You stayed looking at the ceiling for a while, too lazy to move. Deciding you needed your boyfriend’s warm, you slowly moved until you were laying next to him.

He smiled at you and hugged you tightly, your head in his chest.

“My favorite time of the day is definitely this.” You yawned.

“Mine too, without a doubt.”

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You have a cousin who’s kind of cool, most people only like him because he’ll take good pictures of you for your Instagram and he’s always got access to good alcohol, but his ego isn’t inflated so he just floats around everywhere. Usually, you’re pretty straitlaced, but you owe him some favors and he cashes them all in to get you to be his designated driver to Jae’s party. Basically, you’re babysitting for no pay. 

It’s the type of party that’s boring if you don’t drink, because you don’t have any friends — and that should’ve been your first clue. 

That night, you’d sat alone on the porch and kept an eye out for your cousin, and none other than Kang Younghyun himself had sat down next to you. He smelled like beer and  cologne you couldn’t place, and you realized he’d dyed his hair blond for the summer. He had a black bandana to push the long strands away from his eyes. You wondered why he didn’t just get a haircut. 

“Hey, Y/N,” he’d greeted. He had a killer smile, you had to give him that. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah,” you replied. “I didn’t either.” Younghyun had laughed at that, and you should’ve known — those butterflies in your stomach were warning you to fly far, far away.

It was a whirlwind summer. Young K took you to bars where he and his band were going to play, kept you under his arm at gigs until eventually your body was replaced by his bass. Sometimes he sang and you forgot all about his reputation when you saw the way his eyes glittered. 

You didn’t tell anyone. Not because he would care if you did, because he wouldn’t, but because you had a reputation to uphold. You tried to convince yourself that Younghyun was just a bit of fun to pass the time, that all the kisses shared in seedy allies and the backseat of his car meant absolutely nothing to you — just fun. 

Except it wasn’t fun. 

It wasn’t fun when you saw other girls eyeing him, and sometimes you caught him eyeing them back. It wasn’t fun when he wouldn’t come around till night and you had to sneak out of your house. 

It wasn’t fun, and yet something about it was addictive. Maybe it was his eyes, or his lips, or the way he sometimes breathed your name when nobody else would hear him. You swear sometimes you saw light in those eyes, sometimes you saw stars, sometimes you saw the whole damn universe. 

And sometimes, you saw nothing at all. 

That’s how Younghyun looks at you now. When you pass him in the hallways, his eyes are always glassy like marbles, devoid of life. It’s for the best, you tell yourself, and yet sometimes you look at him and your breath catches in your throat — you think of all the times you heard your name in his honey-coated voice, all the minutes spent, wasted, with your mouth pressed against his as if he were oxygen. 

He thinks he’s a god. The whole band of boys thinks that. But you’ve seen him in the daylight, when he couldn’t seem to drag himself out of your bed soon enough. They’re nothing but devils, the lot of them. 

It hadn’t been a coincidence that Jae had suddenly started seeing in color when he met the girl he was now madly in love with (and, in turn, black and white had been added to her own vision color spectrum, so to deny the fact they were soulmates would just be silly!).

And Sungjin’s absolute adoration for anything his own girlfriend/soulmate cooked or baked... I mean, honestly, it wasn’t a sure sign they were soulmates because the guy had always loved food. But he (and his girlfriend) both insisted the food the other one made was just better than normal, so Brian took his word for it.

He was happy for both of them, truly. Jae and Sungjin were two of his best friends, and he wanted nothing more than for them to be happy. (False: he wanted nothing more than to annoy the crap out of them, but in a loving way, but we don’t have to count that.)

...He would be lying just a little if he said it wasn’t just a tiny bit annoying that their main focus was no longer 100% on the band, though. Many times in the past several months, he’d asked for input on lyrics or melodies or ideas for performances, but they had been too distracted with their love lives to be of any actual help.

I mean, except for the fact Jae had contributed some really nice lyrics for a love song. Brian had almost 100% decided on calling the song ‘Hi Hello’ but he still wasn’t ready to make a decision; it was about meeting someone for the first time and suddenly not being strangers anymore.

Jae, obviously, had some quite recent experience with that. Brian, on the other hand, was writing from his imagination.

Maybe that’s why he felt the song wasn’t ready just yet...

But, anyway. Back to the idea he had in mid-January.

“What if we just set up our instruments outside and do a set?” he asked the guys during one of their rare dinners together at the house. 

These days, either Sungjin, Jae, or both usually ate with their lady loves. (Sungjin, most definitely, preferred to, but that was understandable.)

“...Sing outside?” Jae asked with one raised brow. “It’s January. It’s freezing.”

“Yeah, but it’s unexpected. And you know nobody else will be doing it,” Brian pointed out.

“Nobody’s going to want to stop and listen because they’ll be too cold. Or too busy, on their way to class,” Sungjin countered in-between bites.

Brian was about to retort with a semi-snarky remark about nobody else coming up with any other ideas, but Wonpil spoke before he had the chance.

“I’m down,” he stated, lifting his shoulders into a small shrug. “I think it’ll be fun.”

“Yeah,” Dowoon agreed. “Something we’ve never done before.”

“We can only play a few songs if you’re that worried about freezing to death,” Brian smirked.

“Yo, shut up, dude,” Jae tsked, trying to hide an embarrassed blush.

“When were you thinking?” Sungjin asked.

“Can we do it this weekend?” Wonpil pleaded, letting it be known with his slightly whiny tone that he had quickly adopted the idea and was now desperate to do it.

“No one’s on campus during the weekend.” Jae rolled his eyes before reaching out and thwapping the back of Wonpil’s head.

“Friday, then,” Brian suggested as Wonpil reached around to nurse his stinging cranium.

Sungjin opened his mouth to say something, and Brian just knew he was going to say he had plans with his girlfriend on Friday. He threw his friend a Look, though, and Sungjin’s mouth quickly formed into a forced smile.

“Friday afternoon works for me,” Sungjin said instead. “My last class ends at 3.”

Everyone else confirmed they were done with classes either before or around then, so they decided to meet at the house at 3:30 and set up on the North Quad around 4pm.

As Brian and Dowoon began cleaning up after dinner, Brian had to admit that he felt... he didn’t want to say ‘uplifted’ because that made it seem like he was discouraged or depressed about his current situation.

And he wasn’t at all!

But, still. He felt like things were back to the old days as far as the band went. Except not really because they really had come so far in turning things around since Battle of the Bands over six months ago. But you know what I mean!

“All right, Friday at 3:30, yeah?” Jae asked as he grabbed a coat from the hall closet.

“Friday at 3:30,” Brian confirmed. He carefully handed a freshly washed dish to Dowoon who dried it off with a towel and set it in the dish drain.

“Friday, 3:30,” Jae repeated, sliding his coat on and reaching for his keys on the key hook.

“Wait, where are you going?” Brian asked, his brow furrowed. “We should probably start rehearsing for that.”

“I’ve got studying, bro,” Jae told him.

Brian pursed his lips in slight annoyance. “Jae, the semester just started. There’s no way you already have an exam.”

Jae paused for a few moments... and then he rolled his eyes in a sort of guilty way. “Okay, fine, I’m going to study my girlfriend’s face. Sue me. We can rehearse tomorrow!”

Brian opened his mouth to issue a rebuttal, but Jae had hurried to the door and fled before he had the chance.

Sungjin, who was standing behind a chair at the kitchen table, began drumming his fingers on the seatback. His facial expression was that of someone who was trying to be cool and casual but also trying to be obvious. He might as well have been whistling a suspiciously jaunty tune.

With a soft sigh, Brian shifted his gaze from the plate he was scrubbing over to his slightly older friend.

“Go ahead, then,” he murmured. “We’re rehearsing tomorrow. Go have some dessert with your soulmate.”

A smile split Sungjin’s face, and he rushed to grab his own coat from the closet in the hallway.

“See you guys!” he called out as he dashed toward the door.

As Brian and Dowoon continued to do the dishes, Wonpil leaned against the kitchen counter, resting his elbow on the granite surface and setting his chin in his palm. A dramatically mournful sigh escaped his lips, and he waited until Brian looked over at him to voice his thoughts.

“When are we going to find our soulmates?” he asked pitifully.

Brian let a tiny smirk tug at his lips, and he shook his head. “The whole point is that we don’t know,” he reminded the sweet but sometimes naive keyboard player.

Wonpil pouted slightly and let out yet another sigh. “Yeah, I know. But still. Aren’t you lonely?”

Brian shrugged as he handed Dowoon a clean glass to dry. “Not really. I’m focused on our music. That keeps me company plenty.”

He just wished all of his bandmates were the same way...

By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, the guys had managed to get in a few rehearsals - at least, enough to be fully prepared to perform four songs out in the most crowded area of campus in near-freezing temperatures.

As agreed, they all met up at the house at 3:30 and began to gather up their instruments in both Jae’s and Sungjin’s cars. The two guitarists took their acoustics, Wonpil lugged his keyboard, Dowoon brought along the wooden box he used in lieu of actual drums, and Brian simply brought all the microphones.

Brian didn’t own an acoustic version of a bass guitar, so whenever they decided to perform a song scaled-down and raw, he simply used his voice as his instrument.

Sungjin led the way with Dowoon and Wonpil in his car, Jae following up with Brian in the passenger seat. 

“How’s that song going?” Jae asked as he turned onto the main road toward North campus.

“Which song?” Brian murmured absently. He was already getting into the performance zone, and his mind was on the four songs they would be singing.

“The one you’ve been working on for a while. About the moment you stop being strangers with someone?”

“Oh, yeah, that one. I...” Brian inhaled sharply, quizzically. “I don’t know. I just can’t seem to finish it. It doesn’t seem quite right yet.”

Jae scoffed and glanced over at Brian with an overly offended expression. “Dude, I helped with some of those lyrics. What do you mean it doesn’t seem quite right?!”

Brian smirked a little, letting out a soft ‘you’re something else, Jae’ chuckle. “It’s not your part I’m having trouble with. It’s mine.”

“That’s because you haven’t met anyone lately.” Jae briefly took one hand off the steering wheel and reached over to nudge Brian’s shoulder. “You need to get out more. Sungjin and I have met our soulmates...”

“Not because you were looking for them,” Brian pointed out. “Besides, you know I don’t need to write lyrics from experience. Let me just sit on that song for a while longer. Something will come to me.”

“All right,” Jae sighed. “Whatever you say.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence, arriving by the quad only five minutes later. Jae parked next to Sungjin, and all of them began unloading instruments and sound equipment.

The frigid air spurred them on to set things up more quickly than they usually did, and it wasn’t even 4 o’clock when Wonpil stepped up to his keyboard and began to play the opening notes of the first song they’d chosen to perform.

Jae had barely sung one line before people walking by noticeably slowed their steps. Of course, Jae and Sungjin’s girlfriends were already there forming a two-person audience, but it had grown to a substantial handful of people by the time they got to the first chorus.

As Brian began to sing his part of the bridge, he noticed someone coming to stand next to Jae’s girlfriend at the very front. Instinctively, his eyes locked with yours, and... 

Why were you staring at him like that?

And why was there something so familiar about you?

He had definitely never seen you before (trust me, he would have recognized your face), but he just had a very eerie feeling that he already knew you?

For some reason, he figured you would leave after the first song.

But you were still there as they sang the second... the third... the fourth and final song.

And you still had that look on your face. Come to think of it, you looked kind of how Brian felt. You were gazing at him with a clear question in your eyes: Do I know you?

As the crowd applauded and cheered after they finished the fourth song, Brian heard Sungjin explaining who they were and why they were out here singing in the freezing cold. He asked everyone to introduce themselves, and after Brian greeted everyone with a smile and a wave, he set his microphone down and stood.

There was no way he was going to let another minute go by without talking to you. He had to figure out why you seemed so familiar.

Your eyes widened slightly as he headed toward you, and Brian tried his best to look friendly rather than seriously curious. The last thing he wanted to do was scare you away.

“Hi...” Brian said a bit cautiously once he was close enough to you. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but notice...”

He tilted his head slightly as your eyes gazed up into his, your eyebrows raised and wrinkling your forehead. It was just so weird that he had absolutely no idea who you were, but still had the unquestionable urge to ask:

“Have we met before?”