I watched a video of a baby reacting to their father after he had shaved his beard and it watered my domestic/married Klance crops!

"Ok babe, last chance," Lance said cautiously as he combed a chunk and Keith's mullet through his fingers. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I either let you do this or I continue to walk around with a chunk of burnt off hair." Keith said, sounding determined with his decision.

"I know." Lance combed his fingers through the said chunk of shortened hair and frowned. "But you know I could just trim it for you. We don't have to cut it all off."

If Lance were to tell his younger self that he would end up falling in love with Keith's mullet, he would surely double over and laugh till he couldn't breathe anymore. But he does love it, even with the missing chunk that needed attention. Lance loved tying it up for Keith, braiding it whenever he was bored, and running his fingers through it pretty much any and every time he was able to.

"Lance, I've already decided. It's time for it to go and for me to grow up."

In Keith's mind this made complete sense. With his new-found family he helped save the universe, found his place as a leader, opened his heart to love and matrimony, and is now a father. The mullet was the last thing that he still recognized as being part of someone he used to be and saw his close call on the other end of laser gun a blessing in disguise.

"Now just do it before I change my mind." Keith's words said one thing, but his tense shoulders said something completely different.

Lance combed his fingers through his husband's mullet a few more times before raising the scissors. He sectioned out a small part of Keith's hair between his pointer and middle finger and slid the scissors in place.

"Are you sure you don't want to think about it some more?" Lance said suddenly, pulling the scissors away from Keith's wavy hair that he loved so much. "I mean, you can sleep on it tonight and realize that just letting me trim it and even it out would be better. We don't have to do something so drastic so soon."

There was a nervous laugh in Lance's voice. He would cut his family members' hair all time growing up but this… this was different. The was Keith. This was Keith's mullet. The one thing that he chose to focus on when he needed something to fuel his anger for their made-up rivalry that then turned into one of the many things he loves about Keith. It was just so Keith to Lance and he loved it. He loved how soft and fluffy it was. How it would be a tangled, curly mess in the morning till Keith brushed it out. How Keith would fall asleep whenever Lance played with it. How just perfect it felt to pull at it when they were intimate.

"Lance just do it," Keith spoke up, snapping his worried husband out of his nostalgic thoughts. "If you don't then I'll get Shiro to do it; but knowing him he'll mess up and make it even worse."

"Ok I'll do it!"

Lance ran his fingers through Keith's hair again, enjoying his last few moments doing what he loved. He sectioned off a small cluster of hair between his pointer and middle finger again. He opened and slid the scissors in place and paused. If his hands weren't shaking, his whole body certainly was.

.

.

.

.

.

It was weird. It wasn't bad, but it was weird.

The mullet was gone.

Like, gone-gone.

Lance had cut Keith's hair back to the hair line at the base of his head, just as Keith requested, and reshaped it to something a bit more tamed and "helmet friendly" as Keith put it. Luckily, Lance was able to keep some of the fluffiness in Keith's bangs, which was a compromise for him so that he cans still have something to play with.

Keith continued to stare at himself in the mirror hanging in their master bedroom, thinking that he looked like a completely different person, but his scars reminded him that he was still Keith. He tugged at one of his newly shorten bangs and pushed it out of his face.

"I still think we should've taken it slow." Lance said after catching Keith in the same spot he left him in to clean up the mess from their home salon and wake up their son from his nap.

"Well, too late to go back now." Keith said as he made himself look away from his reflection. "I thought you were waking Kai up?"

"I did," Lance said as he bounced the one-year-old his hip to show that he got him up. Did Lance need to cut Keith's bangs even shorter so that he could see?

"No you didn't." Keith pointed at the little chubby baby to make Lance look.

Lance looked at his shoulder and found that their son had fallen back asleep on his shoulder. How he couldn't stay awake during the short walk from one side of their home to the other Lance couldn't understand. One-year-olds just live busy lives apparently.

Lance groaned as he handed the infant over to Keith. "I'll go get one of his movies. That will keep him up."

Keith went to sit down on the bed and made Kai sit up on his lap, knowing that having him keep himself sitting up would keep him awake. Once sitting up, the baby woke up to only doze in and out of sleep again.

"Come on bud, you have to stay awake. If you sleep any longer, you'll be grumpy when it's bedtime." Keith made Kai stand up in his lap and tried to keep him moving.

Making the infant stand seemed to do the trick. Having to focus on balancing on Keith's legs, Kai started to wake up more and become curious about where he was. He looked at his father and his face seemed to change from curiosity to slight shock and confusion. After a few more moments of observation, Kai's face quickly winced out of fear and he screamed in a way that all babies did that could make even a deaf person cringe.

"What happened?! Is Kai ok?! Did he run into the dresser again?!"

Lance came running right when he heard the ear piercing scream he knew all too well. Once he was able to assess the situation, he found his son screaming, tears running down his face, and his honey colored skin a bright tomato red. Keith was trying his best to console him, but Kai kept resisting his affection by trying to push away.

"What happened," Lance practically screeched.

"I know," Keith yelled back in a panic. "I was trying to keep him up and when he finally woke up he just looked at me and started crying! He doesn't need a diaper change and he shouldn't be hungry till dinner! I don't know what else to check!"

Kai looked over at Lance and quickly switched from pushing away at one father to reaching and begging for the other.

There it was. Their answer.

Kai had done that kind of gesture several times before when Keith and Lance took him out and their friends and other people wanted to see the shy little baby.

"He, he doesn't recognize me," Keith said, sounding defeated. His grip on the child loosened as the realization washed over him and Kai slipped out and quickly ran over to Lance and hid behind his legs.

"That's not true! Kai recognizes you! You're his daddy!" Lance tried to reassure his husband but knew that he was right. Children don't lie. They overreact, but they don't lie. Lance bent down to his child's level and tried to wipe away his tears. "Now Kai, calm down. That's daddy, you know him. Papa just gave him a haircut today, that's all."

Kai didn't seem to believe Lance one bit.

"Now I think you hurt daddy's feelings so why don't you go give him a hug to make him feel better?"

"No," the usually shy and quiet one-year-old yelled before running out of the bedroom.

If there was any way to describe what heartbreak would feel like, both Lance and Keith now knew how to explain it. Keith's chest was in knots and he struggled to breathe with the thought that his own child – who would insist on cuddling with him at bedtime while being read his bedtime story – doesn't recognize and trust him anymore. Lance's body was shaking and he felt incredibly weak over the horrible outcome that one simple haircut created.