The Other One {Harry Styles AU}

1. Then

I can't eat oranges. No orange juice. No creamsicles. No zest shaved onto whatever else I'm eating. No mandarins or tangerines or tangelos, or any other variety of orange-ish citrus.

I can't even smell the blossoms on the breeze.

Orange scented kitchen cleaner makes me vomit. Literally. Hazel and Augustus might want my head for my use of literally. But I mean it. The literal heart of Jesus vomiting.

We had four fruit trees in our backyard when I was a kid. The yard was huge. Two levels. The second floor, as I always thought of it, was an expansive grass field with plum and apricot trees against the far fence. The lemon tree was tucked beside a tall pine tree my mom called a deodar. The orange tree was perched on the ledge of the low wall dividing the two levels, just across from my bedroom window, its branches reaching out toward the house in desperation.

That was where I found him.

His face was purple like a plum, the orange extension cord looped over an outstretched branch and around his neck. His fingers were curled into monstrous claws, clutching onto nothing. His eyes and lips were too large for his plum face.

I don't much care for plums anymore either.