"I," and then words stop working. 

Kaleva kisses his ear. "You what?"

He puts his head on Sasha's chest and lets Sasha keep petting his hair. "You've got me." 

"We're going to keep you. Right, Sasha?"

"Of course we are," he says, and kisses Chen's forehead. 

He makes a soft torn sound and presses his face into Sasha's shoulder. 

"Are you going to be alright?" 

He nods, pauses, nods again. 

"...What was that actually all about?"

"I shouldn't want this." 

He shifts closer and keeps smoothing down Chen's hair. 

"Why not?" 

Frustrated sound. "I shouldn't, it's not — it's not supposed to work like that." 

Kaleva is not sure how to respond usefully to this. Because... Chen's right, honestly, they probably shouldn't want this. It's just that when given a choice between doing what he's supposed to do and getting to kiss Sasha, Kaleva is going to kiss Sasha. But Chen is a better person than he is, he's just... not going to try to do things that are wrong. 

Ugh. Kaleva feels kind of guilty now. It's one thing to decide for yourself that you personally don't care about being good, and another thing to try to talk someone who actually does care about being good into not caring. The latter makes you kind of a jerk. 

But how could he explain it to Sasha...? Sasha barely knows what being good is at all and certainly doesn't know why it's valuable. 

He kisses Chen's cheek and resigns himself to not getting to do that again. 

There has got to be a way to argue this that doesn't boil down to "well maybe being good is bullshit." 

"According to who?" 

"Everyone." 

"Is this the same everyone who thinks it was right to trap me on an island with Cruella deVil and feed me garbage but wrong for me to steal to survive? Or is it a different everyone?" 

Chen… doesn't have an answer. 

"That's a little unreasonable-- King Ben agrees that it was wrong to trap you on an island but he still thinks gay sex is wrong."

King Ben is engaged to an islander; Sasha's got his own theories about what King Ben might think about queer people. "My point is that sometimes, what everyone thinks isn't true." 

"You shouldn't have been trapped on an island." He says it very softly, like it's an admission. It kind of is one. 

"You shouldn't have been trapped on an island but like. I think being gay is wrong, I just don't care because I'd rather date Sasha than be a good person, and I'm not sure that I should try to stop Chen from being a better person than I am." He turns to Chen. "Although if you refuse to hug me when you need a hug I'm going to sit on you."

His shoulders curl forward. 

"Chen, you're tearing yourself apart over a set of rules that says it's okay to stab people with a sword but not with a knife." 

"Sasha, we threw all the worst people in the world on an island and raised you on it. That was obviously a horrible thing to do but one of the things that made it horrible was that literally everyone you grew up around was evil. I think you actually don't know what's valuable about goodness!"

"I know Claudine Frollo. Apparently she's the best student Fairy Godmother has ever had in Remedial Goodness. She never speaks unless she's spoken to, she flinches if anyone gets too close to her in the halls, and I have never seen her smile. 

If Chen becomes Claudine Frollo, everyone loses something to the benefit of nobody. Don't sleep with me if you think it would hurt you, but don't rip yourself in half over wanting to."