"It's from the king. It says, 'The royal family would like to invite every eligible bachelor (over the age of 16) to the palace for a royal ball to meet the lovely Princess Santana and enjoy a night of dancing and frivolity on Friday evening at seven o'clock.'"
"Awesome, the princess is hot," Adam replied around the food in his mouth, spewing some into Blaine's face, who was sitting across from him.
"Totally hot," David added.
"I bet they're trying to find someone to marry her, since the prince is the one who will become king," their mother, Blaine's stepmother, said.
"We'll finally get to see the inside of the palace," David commented.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked Blaine, who had a small smile forming on his face which quickly vanished at her words.
"I---I just---" he stuttered.
"You can't think they want a faggot like you there!" she exclaimed, laughing with her sons.
"It--It did say---" Blaine started.
"They don't mean you. And even if they did, you aren't allowed out of the house!" his stepmother reminded him. "Besides, the boys have a game on Friday afternoon, you'll need to clean all of their gear before their game on Saturday, along with doing that paper that you and Dave have due on Monday, and I need all the floors waxed because we're having company on Sunday."
"Oh, I thought--" Blaine started.
"Don't think! Haven't you learned anything from your therapist? We've been paying for you to go to him for the last three years! Is it really an entire waste of money?!"
"Sorry, I---"
"I think you need to go work on your homework; you've eaten enough," his stepmother snapped at him. Quickly, Blaine shuffled off to his room in the basement even though he hadn't finished even half of what was on his plate.
Blaine had been living in the basement, out of the way, as long as he could remember. His mother had died when he was nine and his father had remarried when Blaine was eleven. By that time, Blaine had realized he looked at boys the way people thought he was supposed to look at girls. His father sent him to therapy when Blaine told him at the age of thirteen and his therapist explained to Blaine on a daily basis that he didn't really like boys and that they could fix him. After two weeks with no improvement, his stepmother told his father that he shouldn't be interacting with normal people if he was going to insist on being this way, so his father decided he wouldn't be allowed to leave the house for any reason other than therapy and school. His father was at work all the time, so his stepmother started taking advantage of him being at home all the time. She expected Blaine to keep the entire house spotless with no help from her or anyone else. Her two sons, David and Adam, weren't expected to do anything other than focus on their sports. They beat up Blaine on a daily basis until high school, when he started doing their homework for them and then resorted to slushies to the face while at school and verbal abuse and constant threats that they occasionally followed through on. Blaine escaped to his basement room, the only thing that had been consistent through the years. It was a small room to begin with, but it had become a storage space after his stepmother and her sons had moved in, so there was little room to move beyond his bed and the small desk. He'd had his own laptop before he'd come out to his father, but his father had taken it away, believing that he'd gotten the idea from the internet and that it was a bad influence on him. Now, Blaine was only allowed to use the computer upstairs when he had homework that required typing or internet and was watched closely if he was on there for more than thirty minutes at a time. He'd become a very fast typer very quickly to avoid the insults thrown his way while doing homework on the computer.
Blaine threw himself onto his bed and laid there staring at the ceiling, wondering for the billionth time why his family hated him so much and when the day would come that he could leave.

"Wake up! You need to start your chores!" his stepmother's shrill voice rang through the door and down the stairs. "You better have last night and this morning's dishes done before you leave for school!"
"Yes, ma'am," Blaine hollered back, groggily, rubbing his eyes. He always set an alarm to wake him up in time to get ready and do chores in the morning before school, but his stepmother always woke him up before it went off if she was home. Blaine stumbled over to his closet and slipped on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
"Hurry up! I need you to make your brothers breakfast! They have a very important test today!"
"Ughh," Blaine groaned, still barely awake. David and Adam didn't even need to worry about the tests, they paid and threatened the nerds that sat in front of them in all of their classes to let them cheat off of them. Blaine was still expected to make them breakfast, though. His stepmother would be leaving for her meeting with her boss soon and he would have to have breakfast started before she left. He snatched his backpack from his desk chair and shuffled up the stairs, reaching the door just as his stepmother was about to knock again.
"Oh, there you are. I don't know what takes you so long to get ready," she told him as she turned and walked back down the hall to the kitchen. Blaine rolled his eyes behind her, knowing it had only taken him ten minutes to get up the stairs and she was just impatient. "I need you to do all of these dishes before you leave for school. David and Adam will be leaving early, so you'll have to take the bus today or get a ride. I should be home before you get back from school, but if I'm not, I need you to start laundry like usual and wax the floors. I'll definitely be home by then and I can tell you what to start for supper."
Blaine nodded as he got into the refrigerator to get out eggs and bacon to start on making breakfast.
"Will you be staying for breakfast, ma'am?" he asked, knowing it was expected even though she always said no.
"No, I have to leave," she replied glancing at the clock. "Now, I have to leave now. Make sure you get your chores done or you won't be getting any supper. Come straight home from school, no hanging around," and with that she was out the door.
Blaine had about fifteen minutes before David and Adam would be getting up. Fifteen minutes of silence. Fifteen minutes alone outside of his bedroom. Some days it was the best fifteen minutes of his day.

"I haven't been on television in a long time, Dad, I really think I could slip into McKinley for the day and out without anyone spotting me."
"It's not worth the risk, Kurt. I don't want you being attacked by press or mobbed or something. You're the crowned prince of Owhyo," the king replied, watching his son pace in front of his desk.
"I just want to be a normal teenager for a day before I have to start making public appearances as the crowned prince. I want to meet people my own age other than my sister and her friends."
"You will meet people. At your ball on Friday."
"Except it's not my ball, Dad, it's Santana's according to all the invitations we sent out," Kurt stopped abruptly, glaring at him.
"Everyone in the castle may know that you are gay, Kurt, but the public doesn't know yet and inviting all the eligible men to meet you didn't seem like the best way to announce it."
"It's not like I'm the first!"
"You are the first that is actually in direct line to the crown, though," his father explained for the umpteenth time. "You are going to be their king, that's different than Prince Louis and Prince Simon. They were gay, but they weren't in line for the crown. Now, the people will have to accept having two kings when you get married and that's a lot to wrap their minds around."
"I know, Dad, we've been over this, I just hate that I have to be the first to do it. If only a king had been gay before me, I wouldn't have to be going through all of this. Can I please go to McKinley, though? I don't even have to go the whole day. I slip in for lunch, act like I'm a new kid. Doesn't Phillip's daughter go there? He could go have lunch with her and be my bodyguard from a distance at the same time. How about that?"
"You better leave at the end of lunch and not a moment later."
"Thank you, Dad. I promise, I will."
"Don't miss your afternoon lessons, either."
"Okay, Dad," Kurt replied, hurrying out of his father's study before he changed his mind.

"Did you get the invitation to the princess's ball?" Wes asked Blaine across the lunch table.
"Yeah, but I'm not allowed to go, of course," Blaine replied, taking a bite out of his hamburger.
"Everyone's expected to be there, they can't just forbid you from going."
"Oh, you wanna bet?" Blaine was surprised that Wes still hadn't figured out how awful his stepmother could be. They had been friends since the beginning of high school when Wes had transferred from some private school a couple hours away.
"Hey, check out the new kid," Wes nodded towards the door behind Blaine. Blaine turned and found himself being studied by a pair of the bluest eyes he had ever seen for a few moments before the young man turned and practically fled back out the door. "He looked lost. And rich. No way does he actually go here."
"Yeah," Blaine responded, absentmindedly, still shocked by the gorgeous guy he had just seen. McKinley sure doesn't make them like that.
"Does someone have a crush?" Wes quietly taunted from across the table. Blaine quickly glanced around to make sure his stepbrothers weren't anywhere nearby before blushing slightly and telling Wes to shut up.

"He was gorgeous, San. Totally gorgeous. And then he turned around and looked at me and I turned and took off out the door! I'm so embarrassed." Kurt was in his sister's room, watching her try on a million and one dresses for Saturday's dance.
"I've never heard you talk about a guy like this," Santana commented, smiling as she stood in front of the mirror in a strapless, red floor-length dress. "Do you think he's on your team?"
"I didn't speak to him, San, I just saw him from across the room and then left."
"But you're gay. Doesn't that mean you have awesome gay-dar?" she teased.
"No, San, if you'll recall, I had a crush on our very straight gardener for a good six months."
"You knew he was straight, though. That's different. Is this guy gay?" she stepped back into the closet.
"Well, he had decent fashion sense, even though he wasn't wearing anything brand-name and he was sitting with just one other guy…oh my god, San, that was probably his boyfriend. He's probably already taken," Kurt threw himself back onto her bed, covering his face with his arms, trying to block out the world.
"Kurt, you are the crowned prince of Owhyo, you can have any man you choose." Santana came out of the closet wearing a dark pair of skinny jeans and a band t-shirt and sat down on the bed next to Kurt.
"Except most of the country is unaware that I want a man and not a woman and most of the country is straight or in the closet."
"He should be at the ball on Saturday, I think everyone is expected to come. You can talk to him then. You can figure out if he's gay, then, too."
"It won't be the same. I lost my chance, I should've talked to him today when he had no idea who I am. At the ball, I'll barely be able to get away from people, much less carry a conversation with somebody I've never met--much less find somebody I've never met." Kurt pounded his hands on the bed beside him in frustration.
"What if you went to the ball anonymously?" Kurt sat up and looked at her with wide eyes.
"What?"
"You said it yourself, barely anyone knows what you look like thanks to Dad keeping us out of the press most of our lives. You could just blend in, meet some people."
"Dad'll never go for it."
"I'll talk to Dad. I think I can convince him it's a better way for you to meet people. Less intimidating." Kurt grinned and leaned over to hug his sister.
"Thanks, San."