They came to stage intervention in the form of three voices shrilling with worry that cornered Cassette inside her apartment: "He's dangerous, Cass. You're not you anymore." Mann heard them from the corridor, his key still in the lock, their discording chorus gritting his nerves. Noise, Cassette, a din put against our duet," he thought, fingers glancing against that detonator in his pocket, small and cold promise he had birthed days ago. He'd silence them, loop her back to him alone.
He stood waiting until they packed into the rickety van-some three of them: Tara, Jake, and Mia-laughing nervously while still buzzing their plans to "save" her. Mann had rigged it before, slipping under the chassis in the dark, and wiring a bomb to the ignition-black powder and nails packed tight, symphony of ruin. He followed at a distance, parked a block away, and watched as Tara turned the key. The blast was instant, a fireball erupting-metal twisting, glass shattering in a glittering spray, the van lifting off the ground before crashing back, a smoking husk. Sounds stopped suddenly, flesh charred black, limbs strewed as nails killed through skin-pools of blood thick and dark on the asphalt. Sulfur and meat filling the air, the wreckage glowing like a fallen star-voices snuffed to ash: "They were discord, Cassette, a chorus I silenced. My love's a flame to keep our duet pure, my song's only a loop."
He met her later in the couch and then trembling with news of the "accident" flickering on the television. Red-eyed and trembling hands were cupped by his kneeling before her, followed by kisses on her teary cheeks-soft, then deep, his tongue tracing salt and her grief. "Just us now, Cassette," he murmured, and she clung to him, her sob a note he swallowed as he lifted her, pressing her to the wall. He peeled down her shirt, kissing her neck, then her chest, and his hands gripped her hips as she gasped, fingers digging into his shoulders. "You are my refrain, Cassette, all I hear," he growled, casting off his jacket, the faint scorch of gunpowder unnoticed on him, claiming her-lips on her thighs, her core, slow and fervent, her moans a melody he chased.
She pulled him up desperately, legs locking around him as he pressed into her-raw, possessive, bodies colliding in sweat and need. "Mann," she cried, her nails raking his back, and he moved with her, fierce, romantic, whispering, "No one else, my muse," as her release shuddered through her, pulling his own, their breaths a shared hymn. He held her afterward, kissing her trembling lips, murmuring, "Now we're one," echo of the blast a secret chord in his chest, her trust a song he'd burned the world to keep