The Selection (Troyler AU)

♔Part II♔

The Next Day

Troye POV

I was just getting dressed in my room, preparing for today's routine work when a maid dropped by my room to deliver a letter. I was surprised, since I rarely got any mail, especially since I was an only child - and an orphan - and had next to no friends in the castle. How could I make friends, after all, when we're constantly busy with appointed duties or resting to store our energy for the next day? Though, I had one exception - Connor Franta, my appointed supervisor - thanks to special circumstances, but even he I didn't count as a true friend, that I could tell stuff to. Especially my biggest secret, the one that could get me kicked out of the palace and even banished out of the country, for good.

With that in mind, it shouldn't have surprised me that the note was from him. Usually, he'd just come to me in person to tell me something of any importance. Nonetheless, I opened the letter, figuring that it was just a new schedule or something of that sort - we got updated schedules every other month or so - but as I scanned upon the contents of it, my breath hitched.

Dear Troye,

I'm sorry to trouble you with this, but I'm too sick to do my work today. I have Trevor and Ricky covering most of my jobs, but I need you to help the Prince get dressed when he wakes up. Sorry for springing this on you, but I don't trust anyone else to do this for me. I'll make it up to you somehow.

Oh, and he gets ready at 8:00.

~Connor

I felt the wind get knocked out of me, as if I fell off of the top of the palace and landed flat on my back. I wanted to beg Connor to give that job to someone else, anyone else, but I knew I couldn't. For one, I had no idea where his room was, and for another, as I glanced worriedly at the time, I saw that I only had ten minutes until I was supposed to be at the Prince's room.

I took off down the hallways, heading towards the western side of the castle to wear the Royal Family stayed, going over what I was to do once I got there. Connor never described his job, but I knew that it wouldn't be smart to ask the Prince of Íllea how to do his hair or if I was supposed to bathe him or help him dress of what. All I knew was that I wanted to attract as little attention to myself as possible; that's how I've lived, since I was transferred to the palace, is staying under the radar. I didn't want to draw too many eyes to myself, because when you're a secretly gay man living in the palace of a very homophobic Royal Family, well, the consequences of anyone finding out your secret were very high.

I guess that's why Connor trusted me with this, and many other things.

༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄♔༄

Once, a year or so ago, I was simply doing my job and going to one of the closets to get my cleaning supplies, to scrub the kitchen floors after an accident in the kitchen involving a lot of sauce. Usually, I just had to get the standard mop and bucket of water to wash the floors, but I needed a coarse scrubbing brush in order to really remove everything, so I had to find one of the storage units just to get it.

Instead of finding what I needed, however, I saw Connor sitting on the floor, kissing another man that I didn't recognize, in what was clearly a private moment. As soon as I opened it, they jumped apart, both looking extremely terrified at what was to come next. I was never going to tell anyone, of course - how could I? - but they obviously didn't know that. The topic of being gay was so rarely discussed by anyone except the King and other politicians ( all of whom talked about homosexuality in a negative light ) that it was almost blatantly assumed that everyone was against the idea of it.