disclaimer: I do not own "One Piece" or the song "Fake Plastic Trees." I also do not own New York City, although I hear a well-calculated marriage can work wonders.

notes: Am I the only one who can no longer listen to "Fake Plastic Trees" without laughing hard? That's where this fic came from. Except a fic set to this song can only take place in Manhattan, in the latter half of the 20th century...hence the AU-ness. Read, review, critique, please.

"Another Romantic Dawn" 1

"Her green plastic watering can
For her fake chinese rubber plant
In fake plastic earth
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself
It wears her out, it wears her out"

If you asked me when it started, I'd tell you it all began when Nami came in with that god-awful rubber bonsai.

Well...maybe not. After all, it wouldn't have mattered what she came in with if it hadn't been Luffy who'd sold it to her. So I guess it started the day Luffy and Zoro first came into the Baratie for a drink.

It's a small place, the Baratie. Near the corner of East 23rd and Lexington, right inbetween the greengrocer's and the Taj Mahal. That's the restaurant, not the palace.

Yeah, it's a small place, but the food's good. The food's good 'cause I'm here. Me and old peg-leg Zeff. It's small because Zeff doesn't give a shit about business. He just wants to make his food. So we take in enough money to pay the bills and buy groceries, and Zeff lets the rest go hang. All right for him, I guess. With that leg of his, he's got nowhere to go anyway. Me, I stay for the girls. Swear to God, New York's got the best-looking women on the planet. If you went around the world twice, you couldn't find better ones. I mean, yeah, I've never even been up past Poughkeepsie, but I just bet.

Anyway, when Buggy's Circus is in town, Luffy and Zoro always come in for a drink.

They're funny, those two. Luffy's one of the acrobats up at the Circus and Zoro was the sword-swallower until he quit. I've seen them perform a couple of times, when Zoro gave me tickets instead of paying the damn bill, and yeah, they're all right. You'd think no one would be able to stick three swords down his throat, but Zoro downs them like they're fucking candy. He says only one of them's real, but still. Weird as he is, though, Luffy's weirder. I swear that kid has no bones, or if he does, all two-hundred-and-six of them are made out of rubber. He can bend himself double (I mean really double, head touching his knees double), put his feet behind his neck, everything. His stomach's made of rubber too, I can tell you that. I took some physics in high school, but there is just no scientific law to explain how Luffy manages to eat all that food. We've had him clean out the entire kitchen before. He puts it away like not only has he not eaten for a year, but isn't going to for another. Crazy kid.

You can kinda see why he is crazy, though. His mother - she's dead, now - used to do the trapeze in the circus, but his father's some hot-shot businessman out in L.A. So this West Coast business bastard decides it's not good enough knocking some circus girl up once. He does it twice, and like the gentleman he is, leaves her to deal with the baby both times. God forbid he take in some circus brats or pay child support or something. Jesus. And people ask why I prefer the company of women.

So Luffy and his brother Ace grew up in the circus with their mom. They used to call Ace "Fire-Eater." He put flaming sticks in his mouth and blew out fire, walked on hot coals, stuff like that. I never could tell if it was real fire or if he was faking it, but it looked pretty real from the bleachers. Three years ago, though, he took off, just like that. Sometimes I wonder where he is. I never really knew the guy, but every time he did his show, you could just tell - here's a guy who really has it together. Anything he wants, he gets. I bet if he walked up to the guards at the Tower of London and asked for the crown jewels, they'd say, "Sure, knock yourself out." I wish I could do the same, but...you know how it is. When you've got a business to run.

A few years ago, Luffy and Zoro started coming around. Luffy just wants food, but Zoro always orders a whole lot of beer. Yeah, I know the law as well as the next guy, but I say screw that. I've been at the Baratie since I was nine, cooking and serving and being general shit-boy, and Zeff never said "Oh, no, what if I'm breaking Child Labor laws?" So I don't feel too bad about giving alcohol to anyone who asks, so long as they don't give us away when they step out to the street again. Zoro knows how to hold his liquor, though. Luffy doesn't. The most I'll let him have is a rum-and-Coke, with half the rum.

I used to think it was weird that they always hung out together. Luffy never shuts up, and most of the time he's like the annoying kid brother you can never get rid of. And Zoro, he's a cocky asshole when he wants to be, but he's quiet and usually doesn't talk unless you talk to him. For a couple of months, I thought, okay, Zoro's like this kid's babysitter. Seems to like Luffy well enough, but mostly he's just here to keep the guy from getting screwed over or mugged or whatever. But then I noticed how Zoro's eyes would get this far-away look in them sometimes when Luffy wasn't talking to him, and I realized that wasn't it at all. Zoro's got a Past, with a capital 'P." Bad memories he doesn't want to think about. He needs Luffy to distract him and keep him in the present moment, always, where the memories can't reach him.

I try to help. I pick fights. I insult him. I gang up on him with Luffy. Anything to get his mind off whatever bad thing happened. Yeah, I act like an ass sometimes, but I'm not actually a total bastard, get it?

But you know, it wouldn't have mattered that it was Luffy who sold Nami that bonsai if I hadn't been going with her at the time. So I guess it all really started when I walked into Arlong's On the Park for the first time two years ago.

-----