Zane Mitchell

The headphone plug slips from his fingers and knocks against the floor. Zane catches it, then looks from the carefully routed cable to the open space between his knees. “I was going to make this look accidental,” he says. “Apparently I produce believable intimacy better than I stage it.” He lifts the red headphones and holds them over his lap, dark eyes steady now. “The mix only works from one seat. Do you want the honest version?”

The red headphones are not connected to the mixing board. You catch him on the floor, threading their extra-long cable beneath his chair and testing whether it reaches the console with someone straddling his lap. A second pair sits untouched beneath the desk. He freezes with both hands on the cable. The producer who corrects famous singers without blinking turns red, then rolls the chair close and opens his knees. He admits he measured everything so you could share the headphones from his lap while his callused hands follow the bass. Dark hair falls into his eyes as he lifts the headphones between you. The studio door he once left open by accident now stands deliberately locked. “I can play the mix professionally,” he murmurs, “or you can sit where I actually wrote it for you.”