Five Star Service Part 27 Rewrite - Draft Complete · 3:36pm Feb 26th, 2018
Current projected release date is Wednesday; just waiting on two more prereads. And in a change, there will NOT be any sex scene in it. In the course of writing this, I realized something I should have long before--sometimes a scene is more powerful without overt sex; sometime’s it’s better if you just leave it in the background undescribed.
So those of you who did not want to read the previous chapter because you didn’t like the idea of the character in a sexual setting will be able to safely read this, and, I hope, enjoy. The new chapter is about is about 2000 words longer than previous version and the first 7000 words of it are, as promised, brand spanking new--a completely different approach to what happens, one far more in keeping with the character, and one that’s so far gotten thumbs way up from at least one prereader.
If you’d like a preview, here’s the opening section:
Continued from page 26
I didn’t sleep that night, or the next one.
I had but days to act before Nick collected his pay and departed, but I simply didn’t know what to do. I considered and discarded a dozen different ideas, everything from a romantic night in Neighagra to simply seducing him in my office, giving him a choice between me and an open door. But nothing felt right and nothing seemed to work; no matter what I came up with, I kept hitting this roadblock where it felt like I was using a mental or emotional bludgeon on him. He didn’t take kindly to people trying to manipulate him, as I gathered had happened to him repeatedly in the past, and most of what I came up with felt like exactly that—like I was trapping him somehow.
There was no question in mind that even if the direct approach had worked with the other four, it would not with him. He needed an entirely different angle, but I had no idea what that was. Nick was just too far outside my expertise at that point to say. The closest in experience to him I’d ever been with was Cruise Control, who had plenty of grief and somepony he cared about deeply. He needed a great deal of time, patience and comfort before he was finally ready to shed his grief and open his heart to me, and even then it took a slew of dates and rutting sessions to really pull him out of his shell.
But Cruise didn’t have the extra baggage of finding and then losing his life’s calling, and in the end he was as equine I was; I wasn’t asking him to have sex with a female of different world and species (never mind as a profession!). Even aside from that, Nicholas was far more mature than him and wouldn’t take kindly to being babied, so the motherly approach I’d used with Cruise was out. He’d see seduction as manipulation, so that was off the table as well. Nor was I about to tell him about Judy’s desire for him to become my coltfriend and a Gentleman because ultimately, he had to decide to be with me and/or be a Gentleman for himself, not for her, else he’d never be happy in his work.
That was a bit of an irony with him, now that I think about it—Gentlemen should always put the needs of their clients first, and given his need and outright desire to help others, that should have made him the ideal candidate. But a Gentleman also ultimately needs to have no reluctance about rutting in order to derive their job satisfaction from that of their clients, and as things stood, he would not.
So I was back to square one, as I’ve heard humans say, trying to figure out how to heal his damaged psyche with alien parts. I asked the other mares and new Gentleman for advice, getting some that was half-decent and others that was outright fantasy. But no matter what I was told, I kept circling around to the same conclusion: he needed time and had to come to me on his own, and trying to force things before he was ready would make them worse, not better.
But time we did not have. He was scheduled to depart in just three days when I sent an urgent message to Platinum explaining the situation, telling her that we all wanted Nick as our fifth and final Gentleman, but he seemed a lost cause for all he had already been through. I told her that I thought seducing him would do more harm than good, and wasn’t sure I was up to the task anyway, even if he had shown some signs of interest in me. He needed time, and I had run out of ways to keep him in Equestria; he’d already made train reservations for the portal, much to Judy’s dismay. She all but begged me again to rut him, even offering to tell her ‘Daddy’ how she felt, but I told her very firmly no—that even if she understood what sex was, she didn’t understand all that went into it emotionally and how it could hurt just as easily as it could heal.
At that point, I very much wanted him—not just for G4M but for myself—but at the same time I was prepared to let him go, even at the cost of breaking poor Judy’s heart.
I didn’t get an immediate message back from Platinum, which surprised me given how good she normally was about responding with advice or instructions. But what did surprise me was the sound of a commotion outside my office the very next morning followed by a knock at my door.
What follows is quite a twist, folks! This chapter has a story-behind-the-story that I won’t be telling directly, but I think enough information is given for the reader to figure out what’s going on. Expect a slew of surprises and a very neat segue into the original aftermath scenes, which are tweaked to accommodate the new first half of the chapter. Comments are invited and appreciated, as I really would like to know if people think this is an improvement on the original version. Be looking for the new chapter on Wednesday morning!
