I'm not sure if I'll have anything worth sharing for WIP Wed tomorrow, so instead, here are some cold weather facts for my infected Leon! (Verdugo/Plaga mix from my fic You Pay the Cost)
Very minor spoilers for post fic stuff.
Leon doesn't do well with cold at all anymore. For obvious reasons, bugs aren't typically out during the winter. The base he's moved to is in northern North America, where the winters get pretty brutal.
The first winter is terrible, mostly because he doesn't know how he's going to react, everything is a new experience. It gets easier the more years he has behind him.
He is quick to freeze and moving around helps but mostly he just wants to go home and sleep. Leon notes that it feels like he's being torn on what to do. There's a part of him that wants to go into a deep sleep, like torpor, but there's another side of him that wants to keep being active. The remedy to this is just that he sleeps more frequently and for longer. Occasionally he becomes very slow to wake all the way up, esp if its from a nap. Danger snaps him to attention more quickly, its hard to override some of the survival instincts and he can be alert fast if something triggers that kind of response.
Clothing is hard for him that first year, it takes him a while to learn how to sew his own clothes. But eventually he gets a winter and summer wardrobe down. For winters he's in layers. Two layers of shirts and then a thick poncho over the top. Coats and things with sleeves are not worth the effort due to his multiple arms. The one coat he made had just two arm holes for his main arms with the secondary arms kept tucked to the chest. Similarly pants are difficult for him, but he manages. Those are typically baggy or tied at the knee to avoid the spikes on his shins. He cannot wear shoes or boots, and during the warmer parts of the year, that's not that bad. But in the winter his feet get cold pretty quick. He usually wraps his feet with cloth, which helps a little bit. For his tail he made a custom cover that is attached with various belts all the way down the tail and secured around the waist. Gloves are tough with his talons so he prefers mittens when he's just walking around base. If he needs the use of his hands he made custom gloves that go around his claws. He can wear hats normally, and scarves. Even though his outer jaws cover his face, they too get cold, so its not uncommon to see him with a scarf pulled up over his outer jaws as well. (I will someday draw out a full dress guide for the various things he wears)
His apartment on base is kept very warm, like, you should plan on changing into shorts and a tank if you decide to visit warm. If for whatever reason he can't heat the apartment to an obnoxious degree, he'll always have a blanket or two around his shoulders. Heated blankets are a blessing, and Ashley gets him multiple for Christmas. (Heated mattress pads are also a blessing.) Sometimes he'll just curl up around a space heater. Due to the amount of heaters or space heaters running, the apartment gets pretty dry, so there's also a couple of humidifiers in various rooms, his carapace and skin are prone to drying out and its best to not let that happen. He's very fond of long, hot, showers and then just sitting in the steamy room after. Ashley will frequently come home to find him under a pile of blankets on the couch sleeping.
When he's cold he'll sometimes vibrate his wings, its good to help blood circulation without needing to go anywhere, and keeps the thin wings from freezing too bad. He gets more irritable in the winter but tries to not let it get to him too bad. Leon can still go outside, he can still do winter activities, he just has to be aware that he has different limits now and will get cold, sometimes dangerously so, faster than he used to. But with proper gear he does a lot better.
