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Lance was nervous as he set up the pods for use, a thing he had done what felt like hundreds of times before. The rest of the castle was dark and quiet besides the sounds of machinery that were always present. It was in the middle of the night cycle.
It’s always night in space, Lance thought, so he never called the night cycle the night, unless they were on a planet for once, causing the night cycle to actually happen during the night.
He had just finished setting up when Keith entered the pod room.
“There you are,” he said, giving Keith a quick kiss. “I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten cold feet.”
“I just made sure I wouldn’t wake anyone.”
Lance gave Keith a look.
“Okay, I was nervous. Happy?”
“Very.” Lance looked at Keith fondly, his boyfriend of several years, and tomorrow, his fiancé. “I’m also nervous, you know. But I think it’s mostly just nerves and excitement. I can’t wait to be with you forever.”
“Is everything ready?”
“Yep, just waiting for you.” Lance gave Keith another kiss which he eagerly returned. Hands reached up into the other’s hair as they made out. After a while, Lance broke the kiss.
After taking a moment to breathe and compose himself he said, “We should probably get going if we’re going be done in time.”
Keith also took a moment to compose himself before replying. “Yeah. I really want to do this, marry you.”
They weren’t going to have the wedding Lance had imagined growing up, but Lance didn’t care that there wasn’t going to be girl in a white dress waiting for him at the end of the aisle. He was going to have something even better. He was going to have Keith waiting for him instead.
When Keith had asked if he wanted to marry him, he’d immediately said yes. He loved that boy with all his heart. Choosing to marrying him was a no-brainer. But they were in space with no way of knowing when they would be able to return to Earth, no way of knowing when they would be able to settle down. Lance didn’t want to get married without his family, something Keith didn’t want either.
Even without knowing when they could wed, they wanted to do something for their engagement. It was kind of spur of the moment when Keith proposed, something he’d been thinking about for a while and then finally, as they were relaxing after a successful mission, Keith had looked at Lance where he was lying in his arms, overcome with his feelings of love he couldn’t hold back any longer and asked.
Since their engagement wasn’t really planned and they were in space fighting a war, it wasn’t like they could just pop into a jeweller. They didn’t have any rings, odds were they would lose them anyway. Both Lance and Keith were great at fidgeting. But they wanted to do something.
Keith said that Shiro had told him that traditionally in Sweden, the engagement didn’t happen the same time as the asking-to-marry part, so if they wanted, they didn’t technically have to be engaged as long as they kept quiet about it.
“But I want to able to call you my fiancé,” Lance whined playfully.
“I mean, you will eventually be able to, after we get rings, or figure out what to do instead of rings?”
“Hmmm, fine,” Lance relented, giving Keith a quick kiss on his nose as a compromise.
It took them almost a month to figure out what they were going to do instead.
Lance remembered a tool Coran mentioned once when they were cleaning the castle.
It was designed for removing damaged eyes without hurting the eye socket. It didn’t damage the eye further when it removed it, and it could also be used to insert a replacement eye: natural, fake, or cybernetic. Instead of exchanging rings, they would swap eyes. Of course they didn’t want to hurt each other, so after they decided they were going to swap eyes they carefully researched how to use the “eye tools” as Lance called them, both by asking Coran casually as to not raise suspicion, and by reading the information they could find about it in the castle’s database. They needed to make sure what they had planned was even possible, especially with Keith being part Galra. They didn’t want to both end up without an eye.
As the days and weeks passed and all of the information they’d gathered said it would work, they only had one thing left to do before they could go ahead with the switch: choose which eye to swap.
For Lance, the choice was easy. He was going to give Keith his left eye. He uses his right for taking aim, so in case Keith’s eye didn’t work the same as his, it wouldn’t interfere with his aim.
For Keith the choice wasn’t so clear-cut. He didn’t have a reason behind choosing one eye over the other like Lance did. It was completely up to him. That being said, it didn’t take him long to choose. When they were going to look into each other's eyes, Keith wanted them to look into each other’s eyes. He didn’t want his remaining eye to be looking into his old eye. He wanted to look into Lance’s eye. Therefore he decided he would give his right eye away; it also had the added bonus of their eyes matching, a blue right eye, a grey-purple left.
Since they’d decided they couldn’t tell anyone about their plan to get engaged before they actually got engaged, that also meant they had to keep their plan to swap eyes a secret, which they thought might be a good idea regardless. They weren’t sure the rest would like the idea. Whatever, they weren’t doing it for them. They were doing it for themselves.
So that’s why they were now standing in the pod room in the middle of the night cycle, ready to get engaged by swapping eyes.
“Are you ready?” Lance asked a final time.
“Yes, Lance. I’m ready.” Keith answered, slightly annoyed but foldly. “I’m ready to spend forever with you, to have a piece of you with me wherever I go, to give you a piece of me to you, to be united in a new way. I love you. I want to be with you always. I want to marry you. I want to be your fiancé finally. I’m ready to give you my eye and get yours in return.”
Lance looked into Keith’s eyes, into the eyes of the person he loved with his entire heart, eyes he wouldn’t see again come morning, not in the same way. He hadn’t been prepared for Keith’s sincere speech but Lance wasn’t lost for words for long.
“I love you, Keith. People say that the eye is the window to the soul, and I can’t wait to give you a piece of mine. I have been yours since our first kiss, since you first said that you loved me back, it’s only fair that I give you a part of myself. I love you so much. I just want to be with you forever, and doing this will make sure that a part of you is with me always. I accept your eye and give you mine in return.” Having said that, he couldn’t stop himself from pulling Keith into a kiss.
“I thought you were supposed to kiss after exchanging rings,” Keith said teasingly after breaking the kiss.
“First of all,” Lance said, giving Keith a quick peck, “I’m pretty sure that only applies to weddings. Second of all, we don’t have any rings to exchange. Third of all, after we’ve switched eyes we can’t waste time before getting into the pods. And forth and most important, I wanted to kiss you. So there,” Lance finished with a smirk. “Those sounded like wedding wows though.”
“True,” Keith said with a small chuckle. “Now that we’re almost engaged, I can barely wait for when we get back to Earth so that we can get married.” When, not if, they came back. Keith looked at Lance fondly. “Come on. I want to do this already.”
Keith and Lance took turns applying the numbing cream to the other's eye before they each grabbed an eye tool. They didn't have to wait long before it took effect, the eyelids sliding closed as the muscles relaxed. Out of curiosity, Lance used his fingers to lift his eyelid but he still couldn't see though it.
"Huh, must affect the optic nerve," he remarked.
"Enough investigating, let’s get this over with."
Lance went first, carefully lifting Keith's eyelid and putting the tool to Keith’s eye. When the tool activated it grabbed hold around and behind the eyeball before it retracted, removing the eye from the socket. Keith did the same to Lance before they switched tools and inserted the other's eye in the eye socket through a reversed process.
“Time for the pods?”
“Yep. I’ll see you tomorrow, fiancé.” If Lance wasn’t keeping his left eye closed, he would’ve winked.
Getting into his pod Lance could hear Keith say “Seriously, Lance? I can’t believe I’m in love with you,” with exasperated laughter in his voice before the pod closed and he fell into cryo-sleep.
Lance was surprised to find the entire castle waiting for him when he got out of his pod. Keith wasn’t there, though. He was probably still in his.
“Lance! What happened?” He’d fallen right into Hunk’s waiting arms who was not waiting for him to reorient himself before launching into his questions. “You were fine last night but then we wake up to find you both in pods!” Lance only half listened to his ramblings, having only one thought on his mind.
“Keith.” It came out like a coarse whisper as he turned towards Keith’s pod. He got out from Hunk’s arms almost in a daze, the only thing had could think about was Keith. Despite that, he was slow to react when the pod opened, only arriving right in time to catch him. He couldn’t help his gasp when their eyes met.
“It worked…” Keith said sounding as breathless as Lance felt. Lance stared in awe for a few moments before breaking into a large grin.
“It worked!” he said with delight. He didn’t have time to say more before Keith pulled him into a passionate kiss. Lance could barely make out Pidge asking, “What worked?” consumed by the kiss as he was. When they finally broke the kiss all they could do was stare into each other’s eyes.
“God, I love you so much,” Lance said before kissing Keith again. They probably would have kissed for a long time if Shiro hadn’t stepped in and forced them apart.
“All right, that’s enough. Why were you in the…” Shiro trailed off as he locked eyes with them, noticing what had changed about them. “...What did you do?”
“We got engaged!” Lance explained.
“Uhhh, that… doesn't really explain anything.” Lance could see the gears turning in Shiro’s head.
“We don’t have any rings so we switched eyes instead. This is better anyway,” Keith said, giving Lance a sweet smile. “It’s harder to lose an eye than a ring.”
“Hold up,” Pidge decided to join the conversation. “You’re telling me, that you got engaged, in the middle of the night, and instead of exchanging rings you swapped eyes?"
“...Yes? It seemed like the best option. We have no way of knowing when we’ll be able to return to Earth and get married. It felt important to do something for our engagement. And it isn’t like we could just go get rings, odds are we would lose them anyway. Now we will always carry a part of each other with us.”
“That’s amazing,” Pidge said with glee.
“Okay! I need some time to process this,” Shiro said. “I can’t believe you swapped… Nope! Haven’t processed it yet. If you’ll excuse me.” Shiro promptly turned to leave, only stopping at the door saying, “Uh… Congratulations on the engagement, I guess,” before almost running away from the pod room.
“Yeah, congratulations,” Hunk said, giving Lance and Keith big hug. “Engaged, wow that’s… I’m not surprised really. You were crushing on Keith since the Garrison and I know you have been dating for several years now. It’s just that it’s not every day you wake up to find that your best bro got engaged and has swapped eyes in the middle of the night.”
“Hunk, breathe. You’re starting to ramble,” Lance interrupted.
“Yeah, it’s just a lot to think about, a lot to process, like Shiro said. Congratulations, I can’t believe you swapped eyes, how did you even do that?”
“Ooo, I want to hear this,” Pidge piped up.
“We used these tools designed for removing and inserting eyes,” Keith explained, probably tired of not contributing to the conversation. “Then we went into the pods so that the nerves would connect.”
“So you actually, physically, switched eyes with each other? That’s… wow, that’s something.” Hunk gave the couple a few claps on the back before dragging Pidge with them out of the room.
“So I’m guessing this isn’t how it’s traditionally done on Earth?” Allura asked.
“Traditions vary depending on where you’re from, but I don’t think I’ve heard of a culture where you switch eyes; Earth doesn’t have the technology first of all,” Lance answered. “What’s most commonly done is a ring exchange, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t good enough for us.” As he finished the sentence, he turned to face Keith again, his fiancé, and looked into his now different-coloured eyes.
“We can exchange rings when we’re back on Earth, when we get married,” Keith said softly and Lance thought it was totally unfair how sweet he looked. He couldn’t help giving him a quick kiss.
“Right then!” Coran said interrupting them, which though it annoyed Lance, probably was a good idea. “I’ll just do a quick eye exam to see that everything works as it should! Then you can be on your merry way.”
“You’re so beautiful.” Lance was sitting on his bed, staring into Keith’s eyes. They had gone to Lance’s room after Coran had finished their eye exam. Everything was fine, which was what they’d expected — they had been very thorough with their research — but hearing it from Coran had lifted a weight of their shoulders that they weren’t aware they were carrying.
Walking to his room afterwards had been a trial for Lance. He had to force himself not to look at his fiancé — how he loved being able to finally be able to call Keith his fiancé — because he knew that if he did, he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop and then they’d never get to his room. But now they were here and he could look at Keith as much he wanted.
So he did.
“You were gorgeous before but now…” Lance had to take a moment and gather his thoughts. “Keith, that’s my eye, and it’s yours now, and it fits you so well, and it’s my eye and I can’t believe this, Keith! We’re engaged! And you have my eye!”
Lance probably would have continued repeating the same thing for a long while if Keith hadn’t interrupted him with a kiss.
One moment Keith was sitting on the bed looking at Lance, and the other he had his lips pressed hard against Lance’s. Lance was shocked by the sudden kiss for half a moment before he returned it. As soon as he did, Keith relaxed the kiss. It’s been a while since Keith had kissed him like that. All hard and sudden before going soft and gentle. It was as if Keith needed to kiss him right then and didn’t have time to wait.
Lance reached up to rest a hand in Keith’s hair, pulling him closer, deepening the kiss.
Eventually the kiss tapered off, ending up with them just holding each other. Lance didn’t know how long they held each other before Keith spoke.
“I’m really happy we did this. I love you and I don’t— ” he paused, suddenly looking serious. “I don’t care what other people might think, that it was a weird thing to do or whatever. I really want to marry you, but as we wait… Lance, we’re fighting a war. There’s no way we can ignore that. We have no idea what’s going to happen in the future, but now… I feel comforted that whatever happens to us, you have a piece of me with you. And I have a piece of you. Whatever the universe might throw at us, it can’t separate us.”
Lance pulled Keith into a hug, feeling the need to hold him close, not just to comfort Keith, but for his own need to confirm that they were together now. Keith was right, they were fighting a war, no matter how much he liked to pretend otherwise.
“You know I would never leave you, right? Not willingly.” He let up the hug slightly so that he could look into Keith’s eyes. “I’m with you forever, literally.” He rested his hand on Keith’s cheek, the side that had the eye that used to be his. And despite the fact that the smile he got in return was small, it filled his heart with love.
They stayed in each other’s arms for a while, just enjoying each other’s presence, exchanging a few kisses but not desperate ones like before. They couldn’t stay cuddling all day though.
"Come on, we should probably go eat something,” Lance said getting up from the bed and stretched his arms over his head. “Besides, the others got to get used to this eventually," he said as he tapped the cheekbone under his left eye with a smug smile. Keith rolled his eyes fondly and stood up, stepping close so that their chests were touching.
“Get used to it?” He placed his hand on Lance’s cheek — his thumb gently stroking the place Lance’s finger had been just seconds before — before pulling him close for a chaste kiss. "I hope I never fully do."