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The first time Jim and Harlow slept together, it was completely innocent.
Harlow was a guitar technician and toured with Slipknot. It had mostly come from the fact that she'd been newly eighteen when Corey had originally left for his first big tour with the band and she had absolutely insisted that she come too.
Corey had been understandably hesitant, not totally convinced his baby sister being on the road was such a good idea. She was young; eight years younger than Corey himself and even more in comparison to some of the other guys, and Corey was worried about her. She spent weeks begging and pleading, insisting she needed to get out of their shithole hometown just a much as he did.
Eventually, it had actually been the band's other guitarist, Mick, who'd talked him into it. She'd known Mick the longest of the other guys and he really advocated for her. She was a good guitarist and a good tech, knowing a lot of their songs already and what they'd need with the guitars as far as tuning and fixing things went. They needed someone to tech for them anyway, plus she was offering to work for free, which is what she was pretty sure fully sealed the deal in the end.
Years later, there she still was. She'd started getting paid somewhere along the way, but had still become a part of the family just as much as anyone else and all the guys were her brothers. They'd all grown just as fiercely protective of her as Corey was, and there wasn't a moment that went by on the road, no matter how crazy things got, that she didn't feel safe and completely at home.
The only one she hadn't bonded with was Jim. Completely honestly, she'd always just kind of assumed he didn't like her. He was shy, much shier and quieter than anyone else in the band by far, and she just kind of guessed that he didn't have any interest in getting to know her for whatever reason, and it drove her absolutely insane. She'd spent plenty of nights talking both Mick's and Corey's ears off about it.
"Why doesn't he like me?" "What did I do wrong?" "How can I make him like me?" "He's nice to everyone else. He's close with all of you guys and the rest of the crew." "He's almost rude to me and I've never done anything to him. It doesn't make sense."
"Harlow, it doesn't fucking matter. Just leave it alone or I'm going to throw you out the window of this goddamn bus on this goddamn highway in the middle of nowhere, okay? I'm sorry it's bothering you but Jesus Christ, just shut the fuck up," Mick had finally gotten tired of it and snapped at her one night, eyeing her carefully afterward to make sure he hadn't hurt her feelings. He hadn't, but she did punch him as hard as she could in the shoulder (he didn't even flinch) and pretty much shut up about it after that.
She did everything she could to just try and put it out of her head, to listen to Mick and not worry about it. It didn't matter whether Jim liked her or not, it didn't matter why. That worked for the most part until she heard Jim's quiet voice outside her bunk in the middle of the night a few weeks later.
