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1D HALLOWEEN - DAY 1

HARRY LECTER

The Editor - Kat edit ~ 

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@pattie-mae

Niall Horan: Heartbreak Weather

CASH DAWSON — Scent Breakdown

Top Notes

1. Weathered Leather

Not the luxurious kind—the leather that has survived bar fights, bad nights, and long rides. Sun-baked, cracked, softened from decades of wear, it carries both history and labor in its fibres.

Symbolically: Sacrifice & Pragmatism, Legacy & Ancestry.

On one level, leather is the end result of using every part of an animal; a choice rooted in survival thinking and practical ethics. It’s a material that only exists because something else gave its life, and in Cash’s world, that mirrors the way every comfort, every shelter, every scrap of safety is paid for with something costly. Leather becomes the physical reminder of that quiet, ongoing sacrifice: a thing that lasts because something else gave its life.

However leather is also the legacy of what endures. Material fit to outlast the hands that made it, passed down to him from his father who had inherited from his own father. It is ancestry, millenniums of animal lineage that came before it broken down across his back. As far as the Dawson legacy is concerned their family was forged in the 70's, all prior as nameless as cattle.

2. Tobacco

Unburnt tobacco smells earthy and slightly sweet, like dried leaves mixed with warm soil. There’s a hint of molasses, a little musk, and sometimes a whisper of spice — dramatically different from the pungent smell as it burns.

Symbolically: Dangerous, Addictive, Self destructive.

Tobacco symbolizes the inherent danger of Cash’s presence. Cigarettes kill; not only the person who smokes them but the people who simply stand close enough to breathe it in. That’s Cash in a nutshell: proximity alone is risky. You don’t have to touch the flame to get burned; just being near him can cost you.

There’s something about him; the heat, the rush, the attention — that makes people stay even when they know better. It’s the same logic as reaching for another cigarette: you know exactly what it’s doing to you, and you light up anyway. He becomes a habit, a craving, a pull you keep answering despite the damage. Cash is a vessel for the club to harm those around him, its pollutant presence and his refusal to withdraw taints the people around him who endure it to stay in his life.

Everyone knows cigarettes kill. So tobacco becomes the symbol for Cash’s self-destructive tendencies — the way he keeps harming himself even while knowing the outcome. And it mirrors the self-destruction of anyone who stays with him. If smoking is a choice to slowly ruin yourself, then choosing Cash is the same kind of deliberate, devastating decision.

3. Sandalwood

Sandalwood carries a deep, smooth, woody warmth—the scent of carved timber and fresh-cut bark, earthy and steady. It’s one of the most traditional notes in men’s cologne, a fragrance tied so closely to masculinity that it’s almost shorthand for it.

Symbolically: Masculinity & Boyhood.

It speaks to the role he was shaped to fill long before he knew he had a choice: the expected "exceptional" male pillar inside a hyper-patriarchal system. Sandalwood represents the kind of masculinity he inherited, performs, and is trapped inside. It becomes a convenient stasis, a warm, familiar smell he doesn’t have to question.

But sandalwood is also tanbark, the scent of the playground he left behind too early. Cash became a prospect at fifteen—the youngest in club history—long before he was done being a kid. He doesn’t regret giving up his childhood; he’s convinced it was never meant for him in the first place. Yet sandalwood holds that contradiction: the smell of men and the smell of boyhood, layered on top of each other like rings in a tree.

Secondary Notes

4. Motor Oil

The scent hits like a garage untouched by anything soft or domestic; grease, oil, and years of grime baked into every surface. It lingers in the cuticles no matter how often you scrub, clinging to skin and clothes like a second layer.

Symbolically: Avoidant Tendencies & Usefulness

From the moment he got his first monkey bike, Cash used the excuse of working on engines to escape. When he needs space—mental or emotional—you’ll find him twisting wrenches, tightening bolts, or fidgeting with whatever needs fixing. His hands always busy, his mind always circling, the garage becomes his refuge. Motor oil smells of labor, solitude, and quiet control. It is the fragrance of a man who prefers motion to conversation, action to feeling, and doing to being.

Mechanic work is the one thing Cash has ever done with steady competence. Thirty hours a week with a tool in his hand, and he’s in his element. In another life, he might have been content simply as a mechanic—no stakes, no pressure, no expectation to perform as anything more than himself.

5. Whiskey

Whiskey smells like warm amber and charred oak, sharp at first, then softening into something sweet and smoky. There’s the bite of alcohol, the burn of heat, the lingering undercurrent that you shouldn't drink this.

Symbolically: Coping, Depleting Youth

For Cash, whiskey is the scent of memory and habit intertwined. As a boy, it meant house parties and fun, daring little tastes that felt like freedom. It was laughter, rebellion, and the easy thrill of pretending to be older than he was. But now, years later, the same smell carries a different weight: it’s a crutch, a way to soften the edges of exhaustion, frustration, and regret. Whiskey is warmth with an aftertaste of pain.

It symbolises what was lost—his carefree youth that evaporated faster than the neat in his glass—and what he leans on to survive the present. Every sip carries both nostalgia and the tacit acknowledgment that life hasn’t turned out the way he once imagined. Whiskey is comfort and consequence in equal measure, the smell of a boyhood that rotted into adulthood and a man trying to hold onto something solid while the past quietly slips away.

Base Notes

6. Gun Powder

A smell that lingers in the air and under fingernails, impossible to fully wash away. Gun powder smells acrid with a bite that sticks to the skin long after the trigger has been pulled. It is the scent of combustion, of energy unleashed and death made all the more tangible

Symbolically: Violence, Dirty Hands

Gun powder is the fragrance of violence Cash was born into and raised within, the kind that sticks even when he tries to scrub it off. The club built its fortune on gun running, a legacy tied not just to the harm he has inflicted personally, but to the nameless lives destroyed by the weapons they trafficked. It is the weight of unseen consequences, the stain of deeds that ripple outward, touching lives Cash will never know, faces he will never see. Gun powder is both literal and metaphorical, the ever-present reminder of the world he inhabits, the choices he makes, and the blood on hands that cannot be fully cleansed.

7. Rust

Rust smells metallic, sharp, bitter; the tang of iron kissed by decay, the smell of old blood lingering on steel. It is immediate, inescapable, the kind of scent that makes its presence known before anything else.

Symbolically: Blood, A tarnished legacy

Rust is the fragrance of every hard choice Cash has made, every line he’s crossed, every fight he couldn’t walk away from. It carries the weight of consequences and the stain of action taken in the name of survival, loyalty, vengence, or necessity. Like a tarnished heirloom, it reminds him that his legacy is never clean—blood leaves a mark, and decisions live long after the moment has passed. Rust is the cost of living on his terms, sharp and persistent, and it clings to him like memory and guilt.

Understated Notes

8. Warm Skin Musk

Warm skin musk is alive. It smells like sunbaked skin at the end of a long day, a faint tang of sweat mixing with natural oils, and the subtle, almost imperceptible warmth of a body that has moved through sun, labor, and life without pause. It’s intimate without being intrusive, raw without being unpleasant.

Symbolically: The Man Underneath the Reputation.

This is the human Cash beneath the layers of violence, expectation, and calculation. It is the body he wields not only in malice but in protection, the vessel he offers to shield, to carry, to shoulder burdens for those he loves. He would bear the worst miseries imaginable to ensure they never touch the people he is charged to protect. This scent is devotion made tangible, loyalty made flesh.

It is also the body he inhabits for the long haul—the one that has carried him from boyhood, through every reckoning, toward the distant horizon of old age. The part of him that persists beneath the legend, beneath the danger, beneath the self-imposed armour. Cash is human, profoundly so, even when he forgets it—and this scent is the proof.

9. Old Cotton

Old cotton smells like worn-in shirts, soft with age, carrying the faint musk of a body lived in but cared for. It’s the subtle, comforting scent of fabric that has been washed clean but familiar enough to hold its beaten down shape—the clothes he strives to keep free of blood and intact, the ones he reaches for when he wants ease and familiarity.

Symbolically: Comfort, Vulnerability

Cash has worn his kutte near exclusively; to the point he feels naked without it. It takes a lot for him to feel comfortable and at ease in just a t-shirt but you can tell his favourites, the ones he reaches for time and time again while the others sit back neglected, fit only to be worn beneath his leather.

Being without his kutte does not automatically equal vulnerability, but it is always a step closer. Cash is deeply guarded, capable of opening himself to only one person at a time. Choosing to be around someone in that stripped-down state is a statement in itself: it signals trust, intimacy, and deliberate exposure. Old cotton is the scent of softness he allows rarely.

10. Bay Leaf

Bay leaf smells earthy with a faint peppery edge, the kind of subtle fragrance that lingers in a kitchen long after the cooking is done.

Symbolically: Home