So many fics talk about what temperature a vampire's skin is. Which makes sense-- they're trying to describe what it would be like to touch Spike or Angel or Darla or whoever.
I always just figured that the skin would be room temperature-- I think the show said sixty-two degrees or something like that. But then I got to wondering what that would actually mean.
Fairy Tale Skin came out of that. It went on a total tangent with the 'does this make me evil and is that so bad' stuff. But it was a pretty tangent, or at least I thought so, so I kept it.
The 'Xander and Spike were together but now Spike's gone' plot came from me wondering about vampire skin while wandering around my house one day. Everytime I touched a room temperature object-- table top, whatever-- I wondered if that's what they'd feel like. Then I thought about what it would be like if someone already knew what the real feeling was-- and had lost it.
I suppose the fic could have just as easily been about Buffy... but I really don't like her all that much. I don't hate her, and I actually like her lot better in season six than in season five, but I don't really want to write about her either.
So. Xander. My favorite character, though that's mostly due to fanfiction. And Spike, 'cause I still think that's more plausible than X/A (this was before 'Seeing Red').
The rest just sort of came while I was writing, like I said before, I don't normally plan too far ahead.
I think that the ending line could have had more impact if it had been less awkward, but I don't know how to fix it.
And somebody, somewhere, once said that part of the art of writing is knowing when to stop... or something like that. Sounds like good advice to me.