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He should hate the snow as much as he hates the rain.
It also had the nasty habit of leaving everything damp and cold in the flats that he lived in growing up. And yet, he didn’t.
When he saw snow Roche instead thought of the way that it would cover the carnage of the battlefield.
There had been nothing more soothing to him on a multiple days long campaign than the short, sometimes only hours long, reprieve from the blood and gore and the stench of fallen soldiers.
However, that currently didn’t change the fact that this snow had come out of nowhere, and the fireplace was nowhere near stoked well enough to keep the chill out of his and Iorveth’s apartment, or his aching bones.
Begrudgingly, he crawls out from underneath the piles of blankets to go and toss a couple more logs into the fireplace.
When he returns to bed he discovers that his blankets have shifted to Iorveth's side of the bed and that there was very little chance of him getting them back easily.
“Hey, that’s not fair. I get up out of our nice warm bed, to keep us from freezing to death. And this is my repayment?”
Roche gives the blanket a gentle tug, he knows that his body handles the cold weather a lot more easily than Iorveth’s does, so he can’t be too upset.
He doesn’t expect the blankets to pull away from Iorveth without any fight, or the whimper he gets in response.
Roche crawls up next to Iorveth, and drapes them both back in the blankets.
Iorveth had curled himself up into a ball underneath the blankets, and then Roche notices why.
He’s pressing the palm of his hand hard against the hollow of his eye, against his scar.
It hurts.
He was trying to keep the cold out.
Roche reaches his hand out and starts gently brushing his fingertips against Iorveth’s shoulder blades.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No.”
Iorveth’s voice is small and pained sounding, moving his mouth to speak only further aggravates the scar tissue. Roche feels helpless on how to make him feel better.
He traces his fingers up and down the length of Iorveth’s vine tattoo and scoots his body closer until it’s directly up against his, he knows it won’t block out the cold, but he’s not sure what else to do.
“You can go to sleep.” Iorveth’s voice is nearly a whisper. “It’s not new.”
“I’m not going to sleep.” Roche presses his mouth against Iorveth’s shoulder. “I’m not going to leave you alone like this. You’ve never done that to me, with anything.”
Iorveth hums in acknowledgment, Roche doesn’t expect him to speak.
“Vernon, it wasn’t you. It was before you were born. It’s not your fault.”
Roche sighs, he’s unfortunately all too familiar with Iorveth’s line of reasoning.
“Iorv, you don’t have to go through it alone anymore. I was a commander too, I know how hard it is for there to be something wrong. But you aren’t leading an army, it’s just me.”
Iorveth hums.
“Sounds like you’ve been in your head.”
“Hmm maybe.”
Roche was awake a lot and his thoughts tended to drift, leaving him more introspective than anyone would guess.
He felt Iorveth’s body relax against his. And he wrapped an arm around his waist, careful not to jostle him too much.
He couldn’t fix the deep gouge or the hollowed out eye socket, but he would do anything to convince Iorveth that he wasn’t alone.