a/n: another slipknot imagine! please give me ghost/marvel/tf/st requests i'm running pretty dry on ideas
also, the network is an actual band, it's a green day side project and i love their stuff so go check em out!
It's been a slow day at the record shop you work for, so you've taken out your bass, propped your feet up on the desk in front of you, and started to play around on it.
...
Jim is honestly done with the day, but he's still got a concert to go to tonight in a small local bar, so he decides to kill time in a record store. When he enters, he is the only customer in the place, and seemingly the only other person aside from an employee with a matte black bass covered in stickers on their lap. The employee haphazardly says, "welcome in, man. Let me know if you need anything" without much eye contact as their focus is largely on the riff they're playing.
Jim replies with a just as lifeless greeting and begins to look around the store, studying the racks with old guitars, amps, vinyls, and other music stuff organized in the store. All the while, the employee continues to play their bass. It's wonderful background noise, Jim must admit. He listens to the Taxman riff, some Led Zepplin, and Nirvana until the employee plays People=Shit. Jim smiles to himself. It's not the first time he's happened to come across his own music in public, but there's something about a bored employee in a pretty awesome music store playing a Slipknot song that fills Jim with joy.
He begins to saunter over to a shelf close to you as you shift to Duality, humming the song to yourself as you go.
"That's a good song," Jim smiles, keeping his gaze fixed down on the box of records he's sifting through. "You play pretty well."
"Hm?" you look up. It takes a few seconds of buffering for it to click in your head who just said that to you. "Oh, shit, you're Jim Root."
"Yeah, and you're playing Slipknot songs on that bass," Jim turns his head over to you. "You're one hell of a player, Paul would be proud."
You smile. "Thanks, that means a lot," you put the instrument down. "What brings you over here?"
"I'm going to a concert in about an hour," Jim replies.
You raise an eyebrow. "Where?"
"That bar down the street. Why, are you going there too? I honestly was sold at 'small local alternative band playing for cheap tickets at a bar'," Jim chuckles.
"Yeah, I am going to that concert. I'm playing that concert," you laugh. "I'm the bassist in my band, The Network."
"I'm really excited to see you guys."
No fucking way. No way James Root of Slipknot is going to see The Network.
"For real?" you ask in disbelief.
Listen, it's not like you make bad music or anything, it's just surprising to hear that a world famous musician paid money to see you live.
"A friend of a friend said it was a good concert and I love post punk, so yeah, I'm pretty stoked," Jim nods. "What's your name, by the way? I love meeting fellow musicians."
"Y/n," you reply, holding out your hand for Jim to shake. He takes your hand with a strong and sincere grip. "Or Van Gough of The Network."
...
Jim can sense movement on the stage, but the area is pitch black and he can't tell what's going on until he hears a bass riff and a drum beat under it. The lights turn on when the guitarist enters with a riff matching the bass.
There's four people on stage: you, the drummer, the guitarist, and a keytarist. The dynamic between the four of you is amazing. Though you're playing music for a mass of people in front of you, it feels like just watching friends hang out. Everyone looks like they're having a good time, especially when the guitarist sneaks behind you and grabs your ass. You, simply feeling threatened, deck the guitarist in the face.
"It's not assault and battery when it's in self defense!" you say into the microphone before starting another song. "Also, this one's called Trans Am."
Something about this one makes Jim pay even more attention. He knows you're aware of his presence, but he doesn't think you've noticed him yet until you take a look in his direction before you sing, "She is another form of energy, but with a quantum physicality; she is a science fiction episode, coursing the veins of the open road!"
The guitarist hardly helps with the vocals. It's all just you.
For the second verse, you get increasingly closer to the part of the stage Jim is standing in front of until you drop onto one knee and lean down to sing, "Evolving from another time, headed to outer space; scorching the pavement jut a victim of the human race!"
You lower yourself so that your face is less than an arm's length away from Jim's for the next line.
"White knuckles racing cause her force is so centrifugal, can't stop myself from driving her inertia telling me who I am!" You lift off your knee and take a few steps back to join your bandmates. "Driving me mad, when I'm with her; Trans Am!"
"Oh my god," Jim mutters to himself, fixing his eyes on you as he mentally replays what just happened. That gave him butterflies, he's pretty sure. He's not felt that in a while.
The next two songs are more guitar or keys centric, but you're always on backing vocals.
Until "Jerry Falwell's Pool Party".
Holy shit.
Jim notices a shift in your demeanor as you start playing the song on your bass. You take a deep inhale as you start the first verse.
Your body rolls against your bass as you drop it on the first line of the chorus.
It is not a subtle song about a sex offender, but uh, with the utmost respect to you, he wouldn't mind holding you down and...goddamnit, why am I like this? Jim internally scolds himself, then shamelessly observes as you slam your heel down to the beat of the music.
"The famous to the infamous is what I want to be!"
You take in a breath to start the next verse. "Beer goggles left in the pub, a pocket full of pills; Sodom and Gamorrah in the century of thrills!"
The keytarist approaches you to sing the next line with you, her body moving as slowly and as teasingly as yours. "I just wanna get some skank that's rank and rather cheap, morning after hangover is left under the sheet--"
The guitarist shoves you and the keytarist away for the chorus so she can have her main character moment.
"The moral of the story is a righteous fairytale," you take over again, sauntering to the center. "Because the nitty gritty is a life led by the tail; sex and drugs and loss of hope, a culture in decline!" You throw your left hand up to motion back to the drummer, who stands up and shouts, "Cuz I was way too fucked up when I stepped over that line!"
...
As a concert-playing musician, Jim knows how exhausting it is to do them.
But he's just not done. He wants the concert to go on.
He definitely doesn't want to ask for your number and take you out on a date and take you home with him. Not at all.
Nope.
He is not walking toward you at the bar to--
"You were amazing out there," Jim leans against the bar next to you.
"Thanks," you smile, taking a sip of your drink.
"Do you think that...I could see you again sometime?"
You raise an eyebrow. "Are you hitting on me?"
"I don't know, a little bit," Jim looks away.
You reach over the bar and grab a pen, then grab Jim's hand to write your number on it.
"Text me," you flash a smile before you turn to leave.
...
jim root one for ya! i friggin love this dude