"Nothing happened." He's holding his pencil tighter than he strictly needs to. 

"You're limping." 

"I tripped and hurt my ankle." 

"I won't do anything on your behalf unless you want me to. You know that, right?" 

"I tripped and hurt my ankle," he says again. 

Kaleva is just going to. sit. in a corner of Auradon Prep's extremely beautiful grounds. and cry a lot. 

He messed up the best thing in his life and there is nothing he can do to fix it and now the person he loves is going around having his ankle twisted by Harry Hook.

"Okay.

Do you need anything? For… your ankle?" 

"…Can I hug you?" 

It takes him a moment to process the request. 

"Of course," and he stands up and hugs Sasha from behind his chair so Sasha doesn't have to stand, firm and gentle and putting pressure on Sasha's shoulders and chest and back. "Of course." 

This feels — good. Warm. Safe. 

He leans back against the chair, lets his head fall against Chen's shoulder. It's been too long (a shorter time than it's been since before he was ten, and still too long) since someone held him. 

He manages to not cry. It's a close thing. 

He keeps up a stream of "Hey, hey, I've got you," soft and steady into Sasha's hair. 

After a couple of minutes, he lets go. 

"Thank you." Objectively, the air isn't cold. 

Sasha smiles up at Chen, grateful, and takes his things and leaves. 

Harry is lurking around the outside of Chen's room waiting for him. It is BORING. This is the sort of task you send a minion to do, back when Harry had minions. Well, actually, it is the sort of task Uma did-- gang leader to gang leader diplomacy-- but Uma is back on the Isle and Harry is stuck on this stupid continent with its stupid rules about not torturing people and its stupid demands that you know how to "read" and "do math" and its stupid lack of Uma or Gil or any minions at all. 

Waiting is really boring. Harry amuses himself by drawing a design into his arm with his new switchblade, but then he starts getting a little lightheaded and he has to dress the cuts so he won't be out of it for talking to Chen, and then there is nothing fun to do at all. 

His plan was to catch Chen when Chen left. But when he sees Sasha leave, he waits ten seconds for the kid to go away and knocks on the door. 

He answers the door. 

"…Hello." 

Harry comes inside, looks Chen up and down, and whistles. "Sasha's a lucky boy."

He has no idea how to react to that, or indeed what he would be reacting to, so he doesn't.

"Is there something you need from me?" he says instead. 

"I am here to tell you that I returned the merchandise in good condition. Cleaned his cuts and gave him a scarf-- which I will expect back, by the way, so no funny business."

What does that mean. 

"I genuinely have no idea what you think I might be planning to do with your scarf, but there will be no funny business." 

(Cleaned his cuts — how many injuries was Sasha hiding — he will figure that out when he's not talking to Harry Hook, who apparently thinks of Sasha as merchandise.) 

"Good," Harry says, apparently satisfied. "Happy to be of service. --You really should hit him more, there weren't any injuries on him at all and he went under when I'd barely pulled his hair. It can be a pain but I know him, he really does need it, he gets so twitchy without it."

what what what what what 

"I'll take that into consideration. 

Have a good day." 

"Toodles! And seriously, any time, happy to help."

Harry feels extremely satisfied about how successfully his first attempt at gang leader diplomacy went. To celebrate, he's going to go desecrate a temple. 

 …

"What just happened," Chen says, in Chinese. 

He probably could get Sasha to explain it, when they next see each other in private. He probably should get Sasha to explain it, and not just because apparently Sasha's more hurt than he's letting on. He definitely should not and will not do anything to Harry Hook, at least until he understands what's going on, "returned the merchandise in good condition" notwithstanding. 

Harry sees Sasha when he returns to his room to pick up some stuff for the desecration!

"I talked to Chen," Harry says, "so I hope we'll be able to see a lot more of each other."

"…yeah," he says, like that makes sense and like he isn't trying to rapidly figure exactly how much Chen and Harry are respectively likely to know now. "Hope so too." That's maybe 20% true but it's more than zero true.