Thinking about how mammals, including humans (and presumably elves and whatnot) are endothermic. We make our own heat, via the processes that keep us alive, and move that heat through our bodies via blood pumped by a beating heart. Blankets and other insulators work, not because they're inherently warm, hut because they trap our own warmth and don't let it dissipate.
Thinking about how vampires, as - essentially - walking corpses, are exothermic. They don't have any internal processes that create heat, they don't have a beating heart to distribute it. Blankets and clothing might feel nice against the skin, but they don't keep them warm because there's no heat to trap. Any warmth has to come from something outside themselves - drinking living blood (and oh, that adds yet another layer of nastiness to the idea of Cazador giving his spawn already-dead animals to drink), or a source of warmth like a fire. But unlike real-life exothermic animals, because they're animated by magic and not biology a lack of warmth won’t kill them or make them sluggish. They don't need warmth to survive. So a vampire could conceivably just be cold, with no respite, for years or decades or centuries. It wouldn’t feel good, it might even hurt, but in a survival situation the comfort of warmth is a frivolous luxury that can be done without.
Thinking about Astarion finally being able to rediscover that luxury, to indulge in it.
First, of course: sunlight. Imagine him basking in the light and heat like a lizard, like a snake on a desert rock, drinking it into his skin until he's warm to the touch. (The Floridian in me almost said 'like a gator on a log' but I doubt he'd like that comparison!)
And then: blood. Whether taken in the heat of battle or offered in the night, imagine him finally experiencing the feeling, the novelty, of warmth spreading through his body from the inside.
Cuddling! Feeling the heat of another body flush against his, curling up into it. A thick blanket over them, catching and keeping his lover's warmth and wrapping him in it, waking up on a chilly morning to find himself unaccustomedly warm and comfortable for the first time in 200 years.
Hot baths. You cannot tell me this man does not pay extra for a bath at every inn, and then spend far too long in the tub. He claims it's because of vanity and that's not UNtrue, but also just. Hot water covering every inch of him, ah gods, it's bliss.
I truly believe we'll find this man a way to walk in the sun again after the game ends but until we do, my god can we get him a sauna? Find a natural hot spring? Something? Let him be warm, dammit!
(I'm working on a new fic that features some cuddling, and the idea of warmth came up and then my brain started working overtime on the concept)
