Should he fuck with Sasha?

Well, Harry did not get to this point in his life by repressing any random impulse that came into his head.

Harry goes up to Sasha, kisses him, grabs his hair with one hand and squeezes his dick with the other. Then he pulls away. "Looking forward to it."

It's too brief to really respond to, and Sasha can't decide if he's glad of that or not. 

"Yeah," he says, instead of anything with substance, and then he leaves the room, not going towards any destination in particular. 

Chen isn't particularly looking for Sasha, but when he sees him he's not going to turn down the opportunity. 

He taps him on the shoulder. "Can we talk?" 

He is really not looking forward to this. 

"Sure." 

"Great! There's a study room that's usually open, it's just over this way —" 

It is in fact open. Chen lets Sasha pick his seat first, then sits down himself. 

"So your roommate decided to talk to me after you left." 

"He mentioned." 

"Oh, good. I was wondering if you could explain some of the things he said?" 

Fuck. "I can." 

There are any number of questions he could ask first but the one that comes out is "How many injuries are you hiding?" 

Then, at the look on Sasha's face, he adds, "I'm not going to do anything unless you ask me to, I just want to know." 

He looks at Chen for a moment, and then he unwinds the scarf and tilts his chin up to show the cuts. 

"There's more on my back, they're long but they're not deep." 

"Are you alright?" 

"I'm better than I was before I got these." 

That much is true. He doesn't particularly want to examine why it's true. 

He nods. "That was the most important thing. Thank you. 

Do you have any idea why he referred to you as merchandise?" 

How do you even explain —

"....because........I'm yours. You're the leader, I'm the — I mean, he was also kind of being an asshole, but like, I'm yours, that's why he'd think that was the way to be an asshole." 

".....what do you mean you're mine," Chen says, and he is not entirely succeeding at keeping the horror out of his voice. 

"I follow you and if anyone fucks with me you're the one they answer to, and if we were on the island I'd bring you whatever food I found and distributing it would be your job and — there's kind of a sense in which it means taking care of me is your responsibility but this is Auradon so that's not really going to come up —" 

Does Chen not know that? He has to know that. Just from the way he treats Sasha and Kaleva he has to know that. 

Okay. Okay. That's not, that's not awful. 

"None of that makes you merchandise." 

"I know. He was being an asshole. But that's what he was being an asshole about." 

"Okay." 

He still doesn't think he gets it, not really. 

"Okay. Thank you." 

Kaleva totally missed all of this!

He is... maybe okay now. Well, no he's not, and it definitely feels like he's never going to be okay again, but he thinks he can look at Sasha without wanting to die, and isn't that what really matters in life?

He goes back to his and Chen's room and reads a book and tries not to think about anything.

He gets back to their room and flops on his bed and doesn't share what he's thinking about, not yet. He still doesn't know what it is that Sasha and Kaleva are upset with each other about, sharing that conversation seems likely to make things worse. 

(He's very sure that if there's any sense in which Sasha is his, so is Kaleva. He feels… a way, about that. What way remains to be determined.) 

Sasha doesn't love Kaleva.

That's why he ran away when Kaleva said he loved him. That's why he had sex with someone else. That's why he asked Harry for whatever-it-was rather than Kaleva, even though Kaleva would give him whatever he wanted and not ask for anything in return and certainly not make him limp-- because it's easier to do a single close-ended trade with a known cost you can pay than to take a gift from someone who only wants you to love them back.

It makes sense that Sasha wouldn't love him. Sasha is very attractive and has been with lots of other people. Kaleva is kind of ugly and can count the number of people who have given him positive attention without being paid for it on one hand with fingers left over. Kaleva is from Auradon, where people get married four days after meeting each other. Sasha is from the Isle, where love is a weakness that gets you killed.

He sits six inches away from Sasha. He doesn't touch him. He jerks away when Sasha tries to kiss him. He does the tutoring, because he promised and Sasha needs him, but if Sasha tries to bring up a different topic he goes back to talking about homework. He moves to a different table when Sasha tries to sit with him. He stares open-mouthed at Chen when Chen strips off his jersey; he doesn't feel guilty. He keeps an eye out for other guys he's attracted to, makes a list. King Ben, Prince Asher, Mordred. No one who is likely to be gay or is remotely attainable even if they were. 

It occurs to him that if things had worked out differently he'd be having a crisis about whether he was really gay or whether gay people were capable of love or whether gay sex was wrong. But his feelings about Sasha are so obvious they've crowded out the other worries. Obviously, he's gay; he's never felt like this about a woman. Obviously, he is in love. And if gay sex is evil he cannot possibly bring himself to care.  

He doesn't cry.

He doesn't feel much of anything at all.

He stops eating in the dining hall. He stops trying to kiss Kaleva, stops trying to touch him. 

He doesn't cry where Kaleva can see. He doesn't cry where anyone can see.

Unrelatedly, he takes a lot of showers. 

Harry Hook is having a wonderful time! He makes out with a drunk mermaid at a party and steals some gorgeous jewelry and makes very pretty designs on the answer sheets for all his quizzes. Clearly other people should follow his illustrious example. 

It turns out that trying really hard to pretend you don't love someone actually does NOT work to make you stop loving them.