Y'all, writing has been really hard for me lately, and the words haven't been coming out right, but I managed to write this short Prince Lance and Knight Keith snippet, and I hope you enjoy. Warnings for angst involving usual battle injuries + worries of death:

Lance imagines that this is as close as he will ever get to getting inside Keith’s beautiful head. Here, with Keith’s hand in his.

The palm is a page in a story, inked with callouses and scars, and it is laid bare without its usual leather cover.

There is history in Lance’s grasp, a past that doesn’t need to be spoken to be felt.

Lance wants to write over it. No, not write over it. No matter what he does, he knows that he will never be able to erase the ink of the chapters that have already been written.

Rather, he wants to add to it. He wants people to shake Keith’s hand, and the reason for its newly added softness to be that someone like him had cared enough to rub some lotion into them.

He wants to make sure that the hardest decision of Keith’s day is not about whether or not he should jump in front of a fellow knight to protect them or slash his sword at the enemy, but instead what pair of new gloves he should wear that day.

He wants to kiss those hands. Wants to trace his calluses and those scars with such softness that Keith can distract himself from the fact that a sword, whether it be the hilt of his own or the blade of an enemy, was ever there. Just for a moment.

Even now, Keith lets his hands be hurt with little regard for himself. He lets Lance squeeze onto it tightly—painfully, probably—as he gently cleans his wound with the other hand. Lance tries, really, to not put so much pressure, but he’s always had a low tolerance for pain.

Keith doesn't seem to mind though.

God, he wants to yell at Keith for that. Wants to tell him to stop and be selfish and take care of himself. To be less brave and loyal, to run away from battle.

But he can't. There's too much to say, so nothing is shared at all.

It’s quiet between them. Hardly a word shared other than Lance’s whispered apologies and Keith’s gentle shushing and reassurances—reassurances that he feels he should be giving Keith, not the other way around.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, but he’s not just talking about his relentless grasp or the way he didn’t listen to Keith when he had said to get to the royal bunker or how he had gotten injured by the intruders.

Keith finishes wrapping the bandages around Lance's arm, but his hands remain on his skin.

It just sends an ache deeper into Lance's chest. His voice breaks, bordering on a sob as it tries to push past the pain there. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He kisses his temple.

He lingers there, forehead against Lance’s, breath shaking out between them. His hand runs through brown locks, cradling the back of his head. “It’s going to be okay.”

Lance wants to memorize those hands for so long,

that he ends up knowing them as well as he does his favorite fairytale. Like the back of Keith’s hand is his own.

But on his desk is a letter from the general, detailing how a war has been declared by Lance’s father against the Galra,

and Keith has been called to lead the front lines.

Now Lance knows that these hands, though as gentle with him as they always are, will not be the same when they return.

There will be new chapters. New pages. New memories that won’t be spoken but will be felt through marks on skin and in the silence on a balcony under the stars.

There may never be a time for their story.

And Lance worries that there may not be much of a story left for Keith at all.

Okay, I actually kinda want to use this thread and make a series of short Knight Keith and Prince Lance fics. Just moments of the boys.