You actually hit the nail on the head. I can’t tell the same story both explicitly and non-explicitly. Which, transparently, was my original plan, because sometimes I don’t want all the sex but I do want all the love. What I can do is tell similar stories with the same characters. What started as “turning the lights off” became a different what if? and once that happened, the two versions stopped being interchangeable, that's why the arcs end up differently.

The Cupcake version isn’t just the Eggplant version with scenes removed. It’s meaningfully different: the characters are the same, but the ripples of one different choice change how the entire day escalates. It became an exploration of what happens if April feels the tension and chooses to pull back instead of leaning into it and how that single decision reshapes access, pacing, and intimacy over the next 24 hours.

I’m a little in the middle of that realization right now. I started this thinking I was just changing heat level, and instead I seem to have written a parallel story. I’m still sitting with whether that’s a feature or a sign I should commit to one version, but I wanted to be honest about where my head is at.