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There's been a moment - fleeting, lovely in its bliss - after Plato had heard the crack, and hadn't known what it had meant. There'd been a brief tumble of bodies as some dancers, half-realizing the danger, shoved their way clear of the falling beam. Of course, it wasn't until after the beam hit the ground that anybody fully understood what had happened, or had a chance to survey the damage.

Plato, jostled roughly, had been knocked firmly on his rump before he'd even realized there was a danger. He'd scowled before anything, of the thought that someone had lost the measure and taken a wrong step. An instant later, he was drawing back from the beam with the rest of them, scooting back as quickly as he could with his a** in contact with the ground. Soon thereafter, he'd been helped up to his feet to join the others who were milling about in shocked confusion.

Just one problem. The second he'd tried to put any weight onto his left foot, the entire thing buckled. After barely being caught by one of the stage hands who proptly began swearing in his ear, the dumbfounded Herald pushed himself back, twisted his torso around, and got a glance at his foot.

It didn't even look broken. But one quick glance from the coach brought back the grim verdict. He wasn't going to be walking, skipping, or dancing for weeks.

Now, whether this was the fault of the beam, come crashing down, or one of his fellow dancers, trampling away from the danger, Plato didn't really know. But word spread pretty quick back-stages, and Plato (who was handling the pain remarkably well; this wasn't the first time he'd faced a broken bone, it seemed, and he went through the process with a manfully stoic face) learned quick enough who was to blame.

Lucy. The celloist's daughter, and a Herald.

The unguarded look she caught from him across the room, sitting white-faced with his swelling leg propped up on a chair, was one of betrayal. Rationally, of course, he couldn't blame her - she was a child! But emotionally, well....

Frankly, Plato didn't know how he was supposed to get by with a broken foot. No dance meant no money; no money meant no food. Plato had gotten to like eating on a regular basis. He'd put on a couple pounds since he'd started this job - no small feat, given the hours of practice it had required of him - and he treasured every little ounce. And no matter how the stage manager was acting now, swearing up and down that he'd get his medical needs taken care of (and would he please sign these papers promising not to sue the opera house, please?), Plato knew enough about the business to know: There was no way in hell that this job was going to be waiting for him until his foot got better.

Plato was, in short, screwed. And it had been one of his own kind that did it. There was something tragically poetic about that....

Sorry. As if that half-covered it. And what was Plato supposed to do? Paste a smile over the pained grimace and jovially send the girl off with a finger-wag, it's fine, now don't do that again!

"Yeah. Me, too." It was all he could do to keep the tartness from his voice. He wasn't going to forgive her - not that easily - but damned if he was going to blast incoherent rage all over a little girl. Even if it was the little girl that had just cost him his job.

As it happened, though, Plato didn't need to say anything. That's what Moonie was for.

"'Ey 'ey, watch yer feet! Cabrón!" Pattering by on four dainty paws, with a distressingly human-like scowl on his face, came a brown Chihuahua, wearing a radiation-green vest. His eyes, beady and watery, quickly picked out the Herald duo from the room. His brow furrowed as he galloped the rest of the way to the pair. "HEEEEEY, Plato, my boyo, what is this, yeah? Lucy, chica, you tell me now: What happen?"

The vaguely Spanish accent was an invention of the last two months, as Moonie had decided to contrive an "image" that would sell better when he was begging treats off of strangers. Plato had encouraged it as a worthy social experiment at first, but it had grown stale after just a week. Now, not even the fact that it had proved (marginally) effective could make Plato forgive himself for his ill-thought support. Better to have quashed the notion in the bud; now, it seemed like Moonie couldn't even help adopting the accent, even around friends.

Moonie's ears went back, and his whole body quivered in a truly pathetic manner. Even with Plato's foot turning black and blue - and with it, the sudden evaporation of a steady paycheck for them both - he couldn't help himself. In the arms of a pretty lady (and, whatever her age, Lucy was to him a pretty lady), how could he be angry?

"Aaaa, por casualidad! Them's bad beans...."

"Does anyone even actually say that?" someone muttered from the background, but their voice was quickly lost in the general hub-bub. Moonie, for one, took no notice, whining a bit as he cocked his head down to get a look at his scantily-clad friend.

"Looks like no more dance for you for a while, eh?"

It was just as Plato was nodding his reluctant agreement that Etienne arrived. Moonie laid his ears a bit further back, cringing more properly in Lucy's arms; Plato squirmed to sit more aright, careful not to jostle his leg with the movement. "Don't really know, Mr. Langlois." If the word sir had been built into his vocabulary, by golly, he'd be breaking it out now like a life raft. "I'll be all right for a couple days, but... you know, I haven't really been saving that well...."

Haven't really been saving that well. Of course Plato hadn't. Growing up in a beach shack hadn't really taught him the value of a dollar in the first place, and if he'd been bad about pinching pennies before, now...! Working at an opera house came at a hidden cost, and that cost was the high quality of people you met - particularly, of attractive females that entered into your social circle. Up until two weeks ago, Plato had been an item with a lovely piece of blonde arm-candy named Jenine. It hadn't been altogether quiet that she'd dumped him for being an ambitionless, good-for-nothing bum; the polite way of saying, b***h done run through his checkbook.

Moonie was grumbling about it even now.

Poor, poor Mr. Langlois. If he'd approached Plato with even an inkling that he might escape the burden of being the host, he'd already failed. If there was one thing that Plato was good at - and, as he had explained to Jenine approximately a month ago, Plato was good at many things - it was getting people to provide to him, to the very last drop of their compassion.

And so, before the man had any way to subtly suggest an alternative - say, that Plato first try to work over the folks who owned the opera house for a handy cash buy-off that would put a roof over his head, or more respectably, go to one of those halfway homes for errant youths - the teen had already assumed a look of disbelieving gratitude. It was the face of every puppy ever kicked, rolled together with every starlet ever gotten the callback to their first big role; you'd do that? For me?, burbled the happy-if-dubious look in his eyes.

There was no getting out of this one.

"That's quite generous of you to offer," Plato answered quietly, as though not daring to hope - but clearly, he was hoping to dare, as he ventured on with a relieved, "Moonie and I would be happy to accept. Just for a few weeks, of course, until I'm - well," he sheepishly smiled, "back on my feet. Thank you."

No getting out of it, EVER. At least Moonie was housebroken!... one should hope....