The Scent and Sensation Affair

Ode on Melancholy: beauty, joy, pleasure and delight: devastated. This is the scent of the hopelessness, torment and despair of love. Lavender and wisteria, heart-wrenching pale rose, desolate white sandalwood and thin, tear-streaked white musk.

Ode on Melancholy

Jack woke with a shiver to a damp cloth wiping down his shirtless torso. He opened his eyes with a confused groan and was answered by bloodshot green eyes and a muted chuckle. Concern quickly overtook his confusion as he took in Harry's state. Eyes still puffy with crying dropped back to the bedcovers as Jack sat up. Harry leaned over the side of the bed and rung out his rag over a bucket full of pink-tinted water. Jack allowed a moment to glance at himself and note a few long, bleeding cuts, presumably from his fight with Jones.

A choked sound brought his attention immediately back to his little lover who couldn't have looked more haunted had he tried. Jack had seen that look before, in his father's eyes and his own. Awful memories precluded that look – memories to sour the mind and torment the soul.

Jack was frowning himself by then, unhappy at seeing Harry so unhappy. He raised a careful hand, slowly brushing his palm along the curve of Harry's cheek, the side of his neck, and down the smooth expanse of Harry's own bare chest. He almost smiled to feel the shudder under his hand, and did smile when he saw that Harry's eyes were bright and entirely focused on him.

Their first time together in months was sweet and slow, the dance of lovers with the world and all the time in it. When they lay sated and at ease, Jack wrapped his arms around Harry once more and whispered his question, because it had to be asked to be answered and Jack knew Harry needed to speak, to purge whatever memories were haunting him so.

"What has upset you, my lad?"

Predictably, Harry stiffened in his grasp. Jack was patient, running calloused fingertips over the lad's back, lightly massaging his neck and shoulders, until Harry was boneless in his arms again. He waited, knowing Harry would not have forgotten the question.

Finally, Harry spoke into Jack's neck, chapped lips tickling tanned skin, "You remember I told you about Tom Riddle." Jack nodded and Harry took a deep breath, "I've mentioned there was a war, Tom and I, my friends and his followers, the Death Eaters. I don't think I've said how bad it got, though. It was…awful, by the end." Harry's voice was getting shaky so Jack resumed his stroking, soothing.

"People were dying and disappearing every day, vanishing out of their homes, turning up tortured and displayed for Tom's amusement. Tom Riddle, what he became, was sick and inhuman. I lost everyone I ever cared for to him or his Death Eaters. It wasn't even kept to fights between soldiers and vigilantes; he would send his men on raids of innocent people. They raped the women, murdered the children, tortured the men. No one was spared. And I had to watch it all. I couldn't even find escape in dreams since the second I let my guard down he would swamp my mind with visions."

Harry was breathing hard by that point and Jack was momentarily at a loss for how to calm him. Desperate, he framed Harry's face in his hands and kissed him, hard, leaving no room for any other thoughts or feelings. When they broke for air, Harry was breathing normally again and they both had small smiles on their lips. Their eyes locked and Harry leaned up, kissing Jack lightly, gratefully. When he continued, Harry was calm.

"What Tom became was a lot like Davy Jones. He wasn't human anymore, rather some sort of snake creature." Harry paused, trying to pull together the words to describe why he had reacted as he had with Jones and Calypso.

"But the reason he ever reached that point was because he never understood love. He never had it as a child, never felt it for anyone else. He thought love was a weakness. Like Jones, he tried to be rid of such weakness and along the way sacrificed his humanity. Yesterday, I looked at Jones and it was like I was back there, in the middle of a war I was losing a little more each day." Tears were streaming unnoticed down his cheeks and Jack's grip tightened automatically.

"Then I saw Calypso," Harry's voice dropped and for a moment he wasn't grieving, he was furious. "I saw her and all I understood was that this was her doing and all I could think, over and over, was What have you done? What have you done? She could have so easily created another Tom! With her carelessness, I could have lost everything all over again. All I could see were her and Jones and that horrible void where his heart should have been and all around us were the bodies of my family and friends and strangers I'd watched die unspeakable deaths."

Harry's face was buried in Jack's chest and his voice was muffled, but no less strident for it. He stopped himself, gulping heavy breaths, "I've trained myself to handle panic and horror. I knew I had to get Calypso away before I did something I might regret, then I had to get Jones out before I lost control. I did it. I couldn't tell you how, with all the dead around me, staring and staring, but I did it and I was just so tired once I was done. I couldn't see anything but the dead and the past…and then you." Harry's voice was clear and steady for the first time, his eyes met Jack's and he smiled, tiny and warm.

"Suddenly, you were there and you were all I could see. For the first time in a very long time, I felt…safe." Eyes never leaving Jack's, Harry pushed himself up to straddle the bigger man, settling so their lips were just short of touching, sharing breath.

"Jack Sparrow, I do believe I've fallen in love with you."

Jack blinked slowly, and smiled wide and smug. "Well, lad, of course you have. You know I'm a very easy fellow to love." Harry was glaring, though reluctantly amused, when Jack raised himself on his elbows for a searing kiss. He pulled away and Harry's head fell to rest on his chest, rough breaths tickling the hair there. Still smiling, Jack wrapped his arms around his lad from where they'd fallen as Harry shifted. He hummed a little to get Harry's attention and his smile widened as he found green eyes.

"For the record, lad, I love you, too."

.:.:.:.:.