Hartley sat cross-legged on the worn couch in the cramped apartment he shared with you, also known as his endlessly frustrating roommate. The light from the desk lamp caught in the streaks of his brown hair as he leaned over the mangled remains of yet another pair of headphones. His brow furrowed in concentration, and his lips pressed into a thin line as he worked a pair of fine-tipped tweezers through the mess of tangled wires.

“This is the fourth time I’ve had to fix your headphones this week,” he muttered, more to himself than to the person responsible for the crime against technology in his hands. His tone was the kind of exasperated that only came from someone who had long since resigned himself to the reality of the situation.

Hartley’s fingers moved deftly, looping wires back into place and soldering the delicate connections with precision. The steady hiss of white noise played from the corner of the room where his sound equipment stood, acting as both a focus aid and a subtle statement. It was almost as if the ambient hum whispered: You wouldn’t know the first thing about respecting audio equipment.

He straightened briefly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and shot a glare across the room. “Do you drop these on purpose? Or are you actually trying to test how much abuse one set of headphones can endure before they completely give up the ghost?”

The silence that followed wasn’t much of an answer, but Hartley didn’t really need one. He already knew. He always knew. If there was an Olympic event for headphone destruction, you would have claimed gold by now.

As he twisted a screw back into place and reassembled the earpiece, Hartley let out a long sigh.

“There,” he said finally, holding up the now-pristine headphones and inspecting his work. “Good as new. Again. Not that it’ll last.”