Version: 2

Of all the things they talked about they missed the most crucial detail.

How Chet was going to get to their date.

The tiny man could only blush in embarrassment at their... his oversight as a castle guard carried him.

It wasn't unusual. The hand of a guard was his typical form of transportation. To his meetings with Twilight, if he wanted another tour of the castle, whenever he felt the need to visit the library, whatever. Chet had even been assigned his own guard rotation. He had four guards who changed out every six hours. Why not three guards every eight hours he wasn't sure, but he assumed Celestia knew what she was doing when she made the arrangement. This guard was named... Something Cry. To be fair, they were a very professional bunch who took the job super seriously. Probably why Chet felt so comfortable being carried by them. It was easy to forget they were even there. That they were really people and not merely part of the background or a vehicle.

Chet and Vanilla's date was going to be a simple thing. Just lunch at a private table in the cafeteria. Couldn't get much more plain than that. Though the man was flustered that he had to show up with a guard escort, he also felt a bit special. How many others had a bodyguard with them just to go to the lunchroom?

Silly thoughts were about the only way he could keep a lid on how nervous he was. And the fact Chet was nervous made him even more nervous. It was proof he actually wanted this date to go well. What did that mean? All this time blowing off the very idea of ever being in a relationship again and yet he suddenly latched onto the first chance at one he was offered? It was strange. Suspicious even. Was Cadenza's understanding of people that accurate? Was her magic that strong? Twilight had explained how Celestia could move the sun, Luna could move the moon, and described many of the amazing things she herself had done. It always left Chet thinking Cadenza was the weakest Princess. After all, she was the Princess of Feelings.

Chet was starting to reconsider the abilities of the pink alicorn now that he was experiencing them himself.

The human rubbed his temple as his escort approached the doors of the cafeteria. The constant clicking of armor and hooves on the tile floor below made for great white noise as his mind worked. Chet's transport stopped in front of the entrance and used his free hand to push the barrier aside. The man felt a small shiver go up his spine. There were a lot of ponies here. Granted, it was a large room and it was far from packed, it was still more ponies than the human was used to being around. His eyes took in the various occupants as his guard moved him to a secluded corner. There were soldiers who had ditched their helmets and breast plates gathered at one of the larger tables chatting loudly and gesturing wildly. There were servants still in their uniforms at another table quietly enjoying their meals while engaged in polite conversation. And there were a few ponies wearing suits casually debating something or other. What really struck Chet though was the style of the lunchroom itself. It was like a restaurant but with far more tables and booths.

This was the cafeteria? Chet had never been here before. There had never been a reason for him to come here. Now he was intimidated. How could he have a good time with Vanilla if he was constantly eyeing the room's other towering inhabitants? The man was already predicting a disaster.

Cry carried him to a booth farthest from anyone else and gently lowered his hand to the table. Chet had made sure to come a bit early for no particular reason other than to avoid some possible delay. Like if he and his escort had randomly run into Twilight on the way here and stopped to gossip for a moment. By coming a bit early they would have had the time to deal with that and anything else that might have come up. Was he being overly paranoid? As Chet stepped off the giant hand he groaned in frustration and smoothed the wrinkles in his plain clothes.

"Something wrong?" Cry asked, his voice gruff.

"Huh?!" Chet yelped in surprise and looked back over his shoulder. "Oh. No. Just... I'm thinking too much."

The stallion lifted his hand away and stood tall. Cry was a unicorn with gray fur and he sure struck an intimidating figure in that golden plate. Doubly so being the only guard in the room still fully armored and with his arms crossed behind his back. "You want some advice?"

Chet sighed. He must have looked pretty worried if even his stoic escort was trying to help. They never spoke unless he said something first. "Please."

"Relax."

Chet blinked. "That's it?"

Cry nodded once. "That's it. This is not a test, there are no right answers. You came here to have a good time. So have fun."

Chet was quiet for a moment. Then he chuckled. "That's actually some pretty good advice."

Cry smiled and puffed out his chest. "Glad I could help."

Chet stayed where he was as the armored pony moved to the side to guard the table. Then the human regarded the surface he was on. He hummed in thought. What could he use as a seat? The napkins might work, but he would need quite the stack and he didn't want to waste them. A piece of silverware? Not nearly thick enough. Chet strolled across the table towards the wall where there was a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of mustard. He scratched his head. Should have brought some bits. That always worked. Chet was starting to feel very unprepared. Hadn't figured out transportation and now he hadn't thought about seating. What else had he overlooked?

Shrugging helplessly, Chet simply sat on the table. He could have tried striking up a conversation with Cry, but Chet wasn't sure what to talk to him about. Chet had been on dates before so he had some experience to pull from. Back home. When he was in the same height category as his date. How was this going to work? The human covered his face anxiously. He had to relax. He was asking too many questions. Relax. Just go with the flow. As Twilight had said, all he had to do was trust Cadenza's matchmaking powers. So he watched the activity in the room and waited for Vanilla. It was a frustratingly boring few minutes.

Vanilla snuck into the room like a mouse. Chet had to hold back a snort of laughter at the sight. She was wearing a hot pink blouse and an azure blue pleated skirt. The mare was practically a glowing beacon for attention. The bizarre clash of outfit and behavior eased some of the tension in his mind greatly. At least he wasn't the only one nervous about this date.

It took Vanilla only an instant to spot Cry in his armor across the room. At that she froze for a moment, seemingly afraid to approach. When she did it was with hunched shoulders and a lowered head. Like she was trying to appear small and nonthreatening. Now Chet was starting to feel like a jerk for finding her fear amusing. The mare navigated the simple obstacle course that was the cafeteria and paused in front of the armored stallion. With the two of them standing right there Chet finally realized just how short the mare was. Cry might have been a hair above average height, yet he was at least two heads taller than Vanilla. Perhaps more.

"Miss," Cry said as a form of greeting.

"Sir," Vanilla replied, struggling to make eye contact.

Chet was tempted to hurry along the awkward silence that followed.

"I'll be leaving him in your care. It is your job to keep him safe now. Understood?" The stallion was serious. As usual.

Vanilla nodded. "Of course, sir. I won't let anything happen to him."

"Good. I'll be waiting outside until you two are done. Enjoy your date." Vanilla was left blushing at his words as Cry made his way for the door and disappeared.

Chet briefly wondered why Cry didn't go spend time with the other guards here in the lunchroom, but his thoughts were quickly pulled away as Vanilla made those last two steps that put her in front of the table. Her skirt hung below the table's edge, but the various overlapping cuts of fabric waved teasingly. The human was momentarily hypnotized. Then Vanilla snapped him out of it.

The mare hummed thoughtfully before greeting him with a single word. "Hi."

Chet responded in kind. "Hi."

"May I have this seat?" she asked while pointing at one side of the booth. Good, she hadn't noticed him staring.

Chet rolled his eyes dramatically. "Make yourself comfortable. I haven't been waiting long."

Vanilla stepped to the side and moved to slip into the seat. She bent forward and her skirt fluttered. The table wobbled under Chet, but he barely noticed. Finally the pale mare was planted on the padded bench. She took a second to fix her clothes and folded her hands on the table opposite where Chet sat.

"I'm not late, am I?" Vanilla asked with a hint of worry.

"Oh no," Chet assured her. "Me and Cry just got here early. I've never been in the lunchroom before is all."

The mare tilted her head in obvious curiosity. "Why not?"

"The danger, I guess."

"Danger?" Vanilla glanced around the room.

Chet snorted. "Vanilla," her eyes snapped back to him, "I'm small and this is a busy place. It would be easy for there to be an accident."

"Oh," her ears dropped. "Maybe we shouldn't have come here then."

"Nah," the man waved a hand dismissively. "Twilight and the guards are always overly worried about me. Going the extra mile to make sure I'm safe and all."

"Somepony has to," she asserted. "You're not scared of... something happening?"

Chet bit his lip as he hesitated to respond. "I... was at first. Like, really scared. You're all so... big. But I have yet to meet a pony who wanted to hurt me. When every giant you encounter is obsessed with making you comfortable and feel safe, it doesn't take long to forget fear." He paused after his explanation for a moment before laughing. "Wow, that sounded pretty deep."

Vanilla chuckled with him. "Yes it did."

They lapsed into silence after that. The mare played with her fingers while he shifted his legs so they wouldn't fall asleep. This was the worst part of any date: actually starting a conversation. Chet found his mind scrambling for a topic. Of course! This was strike three. He should have considered this too. Once they got something going they'd be fine, but he had had a whole day to plan for this. Maybe he should just ask her to get them something to eat. He could come up with something while they ate and maybe some of the stress would be eased with a full belly.

"What was it like?" Vanilla asked suddenly.

"What like?"

"Coming here, to our world?"

Chet scratched his neck. "Confusing."

"What happened? Or is it, like, a government secret?"

Chet snorted. "It's no secret. At least, no one told me to keep my mouth shut," he said with a shrug. "I can try explaining it to you, but it's a bit complicated and I don't really understand it all myself."

"Please do," Vanilla pressed, leaning forward with interest. "There's been a lot of gossip about you since that day. But it's all over the place."

He shrugged again. "Alright, I'll try. Twilight told me that all realities exist in these massive bubbles and float around in this huge place called the Void. Like a bubble bath, these spheres drift and occasionally bump into each other. Normally these bubbles are just supposed to bounce off each other because each world is surrounded by a powerful barrier, a wall that keeps everything inside. But sometimes when these worlds smack into each other their walls can fuse together for a moment, causing worlds to be connected."

"Wow," Vanilla mumbled. She was clearly mesmerized by his sad description. "So our world and yours fused together?"

Chet nodded. "Only for a moment. Only long enough for a small exchange of stuff."

The mare blinked. "You came to our world, do you mean somepony was taken to yours?"

"I hope not!" Chet gushed. "That would have been insane. I can only imagine the chaos if a random giant pony just appeared somewhere. Can you imagine if a pony the size of a skyscraper just dropped into Canterlot?"

Vanilla put a hand to her muzzle and held back a laugh. "Yes, that would have been bad."

"I'm pretty sure the exchange was just some grass from Equus going to Earth while me and part of the hotel where I worked came to yours."

Her ears shot up. "Part of the hotel? What? I never heard anything about this. Weren't you the only thing that came through?"

Chet shook his head. "It was me and a little bit of the building I was in. And it was a weird experience, I can tell you that. I had just put some paperwork away in the office and was going back to the front desk when there was this crackling sound. Like electricity going nuts. Then everything shook and the lights went out. There was this sense of being stretched, like someone was pulling on my arms and legs. Then... I was in Equestria. Well, I was in the ruins of a part of the hotel. Outside that was this field of grass where every blade was as tall and thick as I was. That freaked me out. I hid there until Twilight came to investigate and found me."

Vanilla didn't say anything for a moment. She just stared at her hands on the table. "That must have been scary."

Chet cleared his throat uncomfortably. "It was. But Twilight said I was impossibly lucky. The exchange could have taken place literally anywhere in the entire universe. I could have ended up on the moon or somewhere out in deep space. Showing up in an empty field? Very lucky. Impossibly lucky."

"But... you were taken from everything," the mare pointed out somberly. "Can you ever go home?"

Chet licked his lips. "The same impossible circumstances that got me here would have to be repeated. Though talented mages like Twilight can sense when and where the world touches happen, there is no way to reach them before they're over. They only last a fraction of a second. Then the two worlds separate. So... I'm never going home."

She stared at him. "That's very sad."

The man chuckled darkly. "I guess. I would have liked to say goodbye at least. Maybe patch up some of the messes I made too."

"What do you mean?" Vanilla urged.

"Eh," Chet rubbed his head. "I know it's cliche, but I was a lot like other people. I'd done a pretty good job of screwing up my life. My relationship with my dad was... gone. Mom at least kept in touch, if only barely. Most of my friends from high school had moved on. So I was basically alone in the world. Just me and the hotel. I guess the only dream I had by the end was that I could impress my boss enough that he'd put me in charge when he retired. I wonder what happened when giant grass suddenly replaced the main lobby." Though Chet had intended that last bit to be a joke, to lighten the mood, Vanilla didn't laugh.

"You and your dad," she began seriously, "what happened?"

This date was a disaster. What had Twilight's big advice been? What had Cry just told him a second ago? Have fun. Keep the conversation positive. Try to talk about happy things.

Yet what were they doing? Talking about how terrible Chet's situation before and after being ripped from his world was. However, Chet lacked the charisma needed to make a fluent transition off the current dark path they were on. He wasn't sure what to do but go with the flow and hope the conversation turned more cheerful soon. Very soon.

"My dad... just had bigger plans for me," the man sighed. "He wanted me to be better than he was. He wanted me to graduate from high school with honors, go to an expensive university, then get a well-paying job and become someone important. But I failed at step one. I never made it through high school. I just... couldn't understand the lessons. I... was too stupid for school."

Vanilla opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. She closed her mouth with a click. She looked down at her lap. Her fingers tightened into fists. "Did your dad... get mad?"

Chet sighed again. "Well... sort of. He wasn't the kind of man to yell or anything. It was just the constant look of... disappointment. Every time I came home with another low score he'd give me this look. He'd ask me why I wasn't taking school seriously and why I wasn't trying harder. He kept pushing me. It was me who yelled at him. I kept trying to tell him... something. I don't know," Chet grumbled and threw his hands up in frustration. "I was an only child. My mom had suffered complications during her second pregnancy and that was the end of the family plans. I was the only child they were ever going to get. So dad dumped all his expectations on me. Then I had to go and ruin that by getting interested in the hotel."

"What's so interesting about a hotel?" Vanilla queried with a confused squint.

"There was this hotel in town, an old family run place, but the kids didn't want to take it over for their old man. So there was just this one grandfather, a friend of my dad's, left to keep it going. A few times my dad took me with him there when he wanted to chat with Arthur. Arthur was the guy who owned the hotel. I remember running down the hallways while they just... talked. It was a fun place. When I got a little older I'd take my bike their and help the old guy out. With permission from my dad I kind of became Arthur's assistant. I'd help him clean rooms, I changed light-bulbs, I even helped paint the outside when it started to fade too much. It... became more important to me than school."

Chet caught a ghost of a smile forming on Vanilla's muzzle. "Your dad didn't understand, did he?"

Chet looked down at the tabletop he was sitting on. He stared at his empty hands. "No. He didn't. He and Arthur stopped being friends when Arthur made my job official."

"Did you drop out of school?" Vanilla asked quietly. Expectantly.

The human nodded. "Yup. I was going to fail anyway. There was no point. So I just stopped going. My dad... that was the first time he yelled at me. At least the first time that I can remember."

Vanilla took a moment to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "So you started working at the hotel. Was it fun?"

Chet laughed. "I'm not sure fun is the right word. I enjoyed it though. People didn't walk in and see an idiot. They walked in and asked for a room. A service I knew how to provide. It wasn't a quiz. They weren't testing me. It was so much easier than school and it was a legitimate job. My dad just didn't care for it though. That was the hard part. He was never proud of me and I destroyed his friendship with Arthur. Now I've gone and disappeared from the universe. Some son I turned out to be."

The mare looked pained. "I don't think that's fair. You chased your dream is all. And you didn't choose to get dragged to Equus."

Chet shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe I could have tried harder to explain. Make him see the hotel was important to me and that it was a legitimate job. I don't know. I just feel like I could have tried harder."

"That must be tough," Vanilla commented sadly.

Chet couldn't help it. The question popped out of him before he could think better of it. The man wanted to know. "What about you and your dad? How does he feel about you working as a maid in the castle?"

Vanilla's eyes went so wide he thought they might fall out of her head. Then she looked away. "I... don't know if he even knows."

Chet was lost by that. "How can your dad not know you work here? This is a pretty prestigious place."

The mare squirmed uncomfortably, obviously not liking being the target of these kinds of questions. "Me and my family don't talk. I haven't spoken or written to them in three years now."

Again, Chet couldn't help himself. "Why?"

Vanilla didn't say anything for a while. Just when Chet was starting to think he should hard shove this date in a direction that wasn't an interrogation, she found the courage to answer.

"I... don't actually know much about my dad." Vanilla sighed and hugged herself. Chet could hear her legs moving under the table. "He had something to do with the nobles. An assistant or an administrator? I never found out. But he retired early and bought a ranch out in the country. He raised me and my older brother to be tough and hard working. He gave us each a choice. We could join the military or work the ranch. I didn't like either."

Chet felt a sense of horror creeping up his spine. "Did... he beat you?"

Vanilla's gaze snapped to him. "No. Well... he shoved me a few times. He held me against a bookshelf once and yelled at me. He told me that if I wasn't strong the world would chew me up and spit me out. I think he saw it as 'tough love'. My older brother agreed with him. Only my mom thought my dreams were worth something."

Chet was disgusted. And he had had the nerve to think his own upbringing was rough. At least the mess could be called his own fault. "What did you want to be Vanilla?"

She smiled, but there was something broken in her expression. "An actress. My parents took me into the city several times when I was young. We went to various places, but I always loved the theater. The actors, the stories, the songs. It was... fun. Then they'd drag me home and put me to work. I always looked forward to those trips though."

Chet glanced around the room as he thought. Vanilla wanted to be an actress, then what was she doing working as a maid? Something must have gone wrong. Did he... did he dare ask her to relive that?

Chet stood up, which made Vanilla watch him curiously. "This hasn't been a very fun date."

She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Oh," was all she could say.

"Vanilla, I'm not going to lie. I'm really curious about your... past. But we're supposed to be on a date so maybe we should talk about something more upbeat."

She rubbed her arms a few times like she was cold. He heard her hooves tap against the floor below. "You told me about your life, shouldn't I do the same?"

"Well," Chet mumbled while scratching his head and ruffling his hair. "Yeah, I guess. But dates are supposed to be fun. Are we having fun?"

"I thought dates were about bonding?"

The man pursed his lips at that. "Are... are we bonding?"

"I thought so."

Chet scoffed. "I never understood that idea. Bonding over... pain. You're supposed to bond over things you enjoy."

Vanilla looked away. "I... do want to talk about it though."

Chet blanched. "You want to talk about that terrible stuff?"

"I never told anypony before. It feels... good," Vanilla asserted. "And Cadenza said I should."

"I thought you said you never told anyone. How can Cadence tell you anything about it?"

Vanilla glanced at the ceiling. "Cadence explained to me the best way to make this relationship work. She used a weird analogy that went something like..." the mare droned off for a moment as she struggled to remember what she had been told. "Princess Cadenza said that the two of us are gears and that we fit almost perfectly together. However, my gear has two teeth that don't fit with yours and your gear has a tooth that doesn't fit mine. If we can deal with those three bad teeth we will become inseparable."

"Sounds like a dentist joke," Chet mumbled.

"The first bad tooth on my gear... is my past," Vanilla finished, ignoring his interjection. "I want us to be... a thing. So... I have to talk about it. I think."

"I... I want this to work too," Chet added. It was now he also realized that, while he had come to this date with no real plan, Vanilla had been almost entirely prepared. From the very start she had intended for them to talk about this.

Vanilla smiled a little at that. "So... did you want to know more?"

"Not if it hurts you."

"I... don't think it will."

Chet was very curious. His life at the hotel was one constantly collecting gossip. It was natural for him to want all the juicy details. But he was trying to hold that back. This wasn't a happy story he was poking into. He licked his lips nervously. "You... you wanted to be an actress, right?"

"Mhm," she hummed confirmation.

"Did you run away from home?"

"Yes," she said simply. "My brother was getting more and more aggressive. Trying to force me to do more chores. My dad was yelling all the time. He didn't like anything I did. How I dressed, how I walked, anything. So I took some money and fled to Canterlot."

"Did anyone come after you?"

Vanilla shook her head, her mane flopping back and forth. "I haven't been arrested yet."

Chet sat back down, getting more comfortable for this. "That's good. So why didn't you go to the theaters, start working on your portfolio and all that?"

Vanilla sighed. "I tried. But that's not how the theater works." She glared down at her lap. "Funny, I loved the plays so much but I didn't learn anything about how they worked before running away. You see Chet, to get an acting job at even the cheapest theaters you need an acting degree. They won't even talk to you if you don't have one. But guess what you need to attend an acting school?"

Chet swallowed back the dread. "Money," he guessed.

"And connections. The exact connections my father had." Vanilla scowled. "In order to achieve my dream I needed my father's help. But I wasn't about to go back. I had already begged him before, his mind was never going to change. So I was trapped in Canterlot, there was no way to pursue my dream, and the money I had was running out. I was sure I would have no choice but to crawl back home. I wasn't sure what else I could do. Then I got a job in the castle." The mare's face brightened a little. Not much, but a little.

"A lucky break? Do you like being a maid?"

Vanilla seemed to think about that for a while. She tapped the table with a finger. "I don't know," she eventually admitted. "It's kind of a weird place to be."

"What do you mean?"

"Being a maid isn't exactly a respectable job. Few ponies appreciate it. However, I'm working in the castle for royalty," she gushed with a hint of pride. "Being near the Princesses is an honor. There are a lot of ponies who just might do anything for a chance to see royalty every day."

Chet sighed with relief. The tense part seemed to be over. Hopefully it would be smooth sailing from here. "So you do like it."

She shrugged. "At first it was scary. But after watching Princess Celestia walk by a few dozen times the novelty starts to wear off. The job is just a job now. Doesn't really feel that special anymore. I still want to be an actress."

"You work for the Princesses, you should have enough money."

Vanilla frowned. "Acting lessons are very expensive and I still don't have the connections to even get in the door. I... I've almost given up honestly."

That was a hammer through the glass window that was their date. So much for a fun time. This was truly a disaster. How was he supposed to comfort her after that? Chet scrambled for something he could say, but drew a complete blank.

"I'm sorry," the man said pathetically.

Vanilla shook her head. "It's okay. Dreams change." The way her eyes were locked on him and seemed to brighten gave Chet an idea what she meant. He felt himself starting to sweat under that gaze.

"We REALLY need to talk about something happy now."

"Alright. What should we talk about?"

Chet groaned in frustration. "I don't know. Here I wanted this to be all cheerful and romantic. But all we did was... share horror stories."

Vanilla's ears fell. "I'm sorry. I just thought we had to do that."

"Because of Princess Cadenza?"

"I trust her."

Chet chewed his lip for a moment. "Are we closer now?"

"I... I think so. We're a lot alike." Vanilla rubbed an arm.

The man considered that. "I guess we are. We both had dads that didn't understand."

"We both lost our dreams," Vanilla said with a wistful look.

"We both have new dreams now." God that was the cheesiest thing Chet had ever said.

Vanilla giggled. "Now that is romantic."

Chet blushed with embarrassment and turned away from her. "Yeah... well... I'm hungry!" he suddenly announced.

"I am too," the mare glanced at her stomach as though abruptly realizing the same thing. "Do you want me to get you something specific?"

Chet shrugged. "Just don't get me any flowers. I can't eat flowers."

"Okay," she nodded and shuffled out of the booth.

As the towering equine made her way across the room to where the food was, Chet watched. Her tail swayed, her hips rocked, her skirt flapped. The man stared at her bubble butt as she walked away.

"Three teeth that don't fit," Chet muttered. "One was her past, that leaves two more. Was my bad tooth my past or my height? No, she wanted a man who was smaller than her. Oh well, we'll figure it out on the next date."

Author's Note

Three drafts and two tone shifts later created this final piece. I'm honestly not sure how to feel about it myself. I always knew I wanted both characters to have semi-tragic backstories and I knew I wanted them to share their stories during the first date, but when I wrote that first draft I immediately felt like I'd made a huge mistake. Because date + tragedy = bad? It didn't feel right. So I wrote a second completely opposite draft where they just sat and chatted for a while. It. Was. Boring! So I went back and tried "backstory date" again. The first time I had done it more like speeches. Each of them just described what happened in two or three long paragraphs. When looking at that a second time I realized that was the problem. Normal people do not talk like that. We interrupt each other. We ask questions. We comment. Once I had them breakup each other's stories it read much better. But there was still the oddity that this was supposed to be a date, why was it so dark? So I tried to lean into that strangeness. Make it feel unusual to the characters too. Not sure how well that worked.

The hardest part of this story is the "twist". It's the kind of thing there is no way to do without ambushing the audience. But if I just tell everyone in advance, it's not much of a twist. It felt like an unwinnable position to be in. How do you tell an erotic story where the big surprise is the mare actually being a stallion without pissing off a large portion of your audience when the reveal is made? So I just spoiled it with the title and the description and felt like a bit of a failure. Then this chapter naturally created something I really liked. A double-story effect.

From Chet's perspective Vanilla's story is a tragedy. Her father wasn't interested in raising a daughter and tried to force her to act like a stallion. However, we as the reader know the one key detail Vanilla didn't share with him. At one time we can understand both Chet's opinion of the story and what likely really happened. A father who didn't understand why his son was so feminine. Who thought he could "work" the submissive nature out of him. Vanilla's father isn't necessarily a bad man, though it is easy to interpret that he was given the vague details, he might have just been a very traditional masculine male who didn't know how to deal with his son. More of a failed father than a bad father. If the difference matters.

I liked that effect. The two layered stories we as the reader can pull out of this at the same time. Made me feel like the decision to reveal the ending twist wasn't simply giving up. It let me do this instead. I may not be entirely proud of how the date itself turned out, but I'm definitely proud of the double-story effect going on.