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Jack had never been nervous about classroom day once in his life. It didn't matter that he was responsible for twenty-two five-and-six-year-olds; of whom seven repeatedly decided to have temper tantrums before nine in the morning and another regularly attempted The Great Escape through the coat cubbies. Although that last one was fully on Jack; after all he'd told her that she'd never make it out without him noticing.
Still, none of it rattled him anymore. He'd had worse mornings in far worse places.
What managed to rattle him though, apparently, was watching his gorgeous husband try to unsuccessfully put on a name tag shaped like a stethoscope. Robby's hands were shaking way too hard for what he was going to do real soon.
"You've handled countless traumas," Jack spoke up, leaning against the door frame, his arms crossed in front of his chest. "You've told people their kid didn't make it… or that they would never walk again. Yet you wanna tell me these rascals are what gets you working up a nervous sweat?"
"Traumas don't ask me follow-up questions I don't know the answer to," Robby muttered right back at him, continuously fighting with the sticker that simply wouldn't stop holding on to his fingers instead of the fabric of his scrubs.
"Traumas don't ask why the sky is blue in the middle of me trying to explain what a stethoscope does."
"They're five, Mike. Worst case: Mateo starts crying because he's not the first to hold it."
"That's… far less comforting than you think."
Instead of an answer, Jack merely huffed out a soft little laugh and crossed the space between them to fix the name tag himself now. His hand smoothed it down against Robby's chest with more patience than he showed literally anyone outside of this building.
"You're going to do great. You're good with people who are scared and confused and don't know what's happening to them. That's like your whole thing and practically most of their life-experience."
"That's different."
"How so?"
Surprisingly, Robby didn't seem to have a good enough answer for that, and Jack was used to taking the small victories whenever he could get them. Robby's mind was something they both struggled with most days of the week, and when it stopped fighting back out loud, Jack knew to let it rest. Let it process on its own.
This time the reason for it was a bunch of kids rushing into the room and sitting cross-legged on the reading rug in the middle of the play area. When Jack waved him over, he could see Robby's eyes had glossed over a little, his hands gripping the stethoscope around his neck like a life raft that had visibly lost all its air.
So, in order to make this a little easier on everyone, Jack clapped his hands.
"Alright, this right here is Dr. Robby," Jack introduced his husband with a smile, pulling almost all pairs of eyes onto himself. "He's not the kind of doctor you go to for a cold or your regular check-up with Mom and Dad. He's the king you go to when something's really, really wrong. Like you got hurt real bad. We all remember when Dennis fell over riding the bike and broke his leg?"
The whole rug nodded profusely until Victoria blurted out, "Denny had to go to the hospital! He got a cast on his leg, but now it's all good." Her face showed the pride of remembering the word for cast, desperately looking out for some praise on that front.
"Exactly," Jack confirmed with a nod toward her and saw how Robby's shoulders dropped at least a tiny amount.
"He is in charge of a whooooole team that fixes people when there is an emergency happening. Just like with Dennis's leg. He can fix almost everything! Now. He's going to show you some tools, so hands where I can see 'em, folks."
That got a whole ripple of wide eyes across the rug, who all turned to look at Robby, their hands excitedly patting their thighs. It was a practiced motion, showing they were both paying attention and ready to grab stuff the moment it got within reach of their grubby paws.
Robby started slow and, lo-and-behold, it turned out that twenty kindergartners were, in fact, delighted by a stethoscope. So much that they turned out too busy staring and playing to ask questions about the color of the sky.
Robby let three of them listen to his heartbeat — Jack had to force himself not to snort when his husband asked Mateo to be the first to hold it — until little Mel asked to listen to Jack's heartbeat too. Could sound different after all.
Jack crouched on the rug, facing a slightly undignified angle which caused his prosthetic ankle to pop audibly. To the collective, gleeful horror of every kid within earshot. It wasn't the first time Jack's leg had made noise around them, but it was the first time that the situation called for a professional opinion.
Or at least the kids thought so.
"Mr. Jack! Your leg is angry again!"
"Yeah, buddy. You know it does that sometimes when it's not too happy with what I'm doing. Just like a scooter makes funny noises when it's being pulled places it doesn't want to go."
Trinity, sitting in the back, raised her hand so hard and quickly, she nearly toppled sideways in the process of doing so. Instead of waiting to be asked to speak, though, she started blurting out:
"Dr. Robby? Why don't you just make Mr. Jack a new leg?"
Jack blinked, brows raised and looked from Trinity over to Robby, gauging his husband's reaction. Unfortunately, the poor man looked like he had been caught entirely off-guard in that specific way only five-year-olds manage; when you're not used to their out-of-pocket nonsense.
"That's- uh… that's a very good question. It's actually a lot more complicated than-"
"My lizard's tail grew back when it fell off," Frank interrupted Robby, and Jack wasn't sure if the flat, absolute confidence of someone spitting straight facts was meant to undermine Robby or help him out.
"Legs are not the same as tails," Trinity shot back instantly, her voice full of venom. Still pissed off about when Frank told the others that showing off her little kitten plushy during Show and Tell was 'for babies'.
"Okay, okay-"
Robby held up both hands now, trying to make the kids stop and look at him; to Jack's absolute delight. At least until he saw the shift in Robby's face. How it softened in that way it did when Robby needed to lie down some very terrible news to terrified families in the middle of the night.
The large man, who had been kneeling in front of the kids, shifted to sit just as cross-legged as the little ones did.
"Well, some lizards can regrow their tails; that part is true. But not all lizards can. So they're not all built the same way, and we aren't either. Once we, as humans, lose a part of our body, it doesn't grow back on its own. Well… I guess apart from our teeth, but those don't grow back, they just grow out-"
"So… Mr. Jack's leg is just gone now? Forever and always?" Trinity asked, her voice a lot more solemn and disappointed now that she had the professional.
"That part of it, yeah, but… that's what the new leg is for." Jack watched Robby's head turn towards him, and their gazes met. "It's not the same as growing one back, but it does a lot of the same jobs. Helps him walk and stand and run and even makes a spooky pop sound, just to scare kids, right?"
That earned a room-wide giggle, and Jack's eyes softened in fondness at how Robby had finally found his footing with the kids.
"Does it hurt?" Mateo asked, his attention zeroed in on the doctor in their midst.
"It used to," Jack jumped in with quite a bit of honesty in his voice, before Robby even had the chance of answering. "Not so much anymore now, though. And Dr. Robby is the doctor who takes care of people while that kind of hurt is happening. It's a big part of his job. Not just fixing things, but making the parts that hurt just a little less scary."
When he'd spoken, the kids' heads had whipped around to look at him, but in that moment, Jack was watching only one face; the one that looked back at him with profound fondness.
Once they returned to more comfortable ground concerning conversation topics, like letting the kids 'diagnose' a stuffed dinosaur and listening to nine variations of the question 'have you ever seen blood', Robby was fully in his element.
He was patient and kind and so warm; nothing compared to the man with the shaking hands from about an hour ago.
Afterwards, once the room had cleared for lunch — which the kids promptly invited Robby to eat with them in case someone was choking on a pea like the week prior — it was just the two of them left in the room for a moment.
Thus, Jack heard Robby exhale so deeply it almost sounded like it was the first real breath he'd taken all that day.
"See?" Jack quickly chimed in. "Told you, you'd do a great job."
"I barely made it through the part where your leg doesn't magically grow back."
"You did, though. Made it through."
Jack felt Robby's gaze on him again, and when he looked over, he could see something soft and almost bordering on disbelieving in his eyes. As if… he was still catching up to how that was the thing that tripped him up.
"Yeah…" he said. "I did, didn't I?"
It took only a single sidestep without any ankle-pop for Jack to reach up and tip Robby's chin down towards him, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. Brief and unhurried to increase the chance of no one spotting them.
When he pulled back, he could see the familiar pink on the tips of Robby's ears.
"What was that for?"
"For not walking out during the leg thing." Jack turned with a smile, picking up another toy from the floor, as if his heart wasn't doing something very stupid and very juvenile in his chest. "And for being good at this. Better than you thought you'd be."
Robby opened his mouth, most likely to argue or dismiss the compliment he'd just received, but got cut off by a distinct rustle from the far side of the room.
Jack's head turned before the sound could disappear into the general silence.
"Dana."
The jackets hanging by the cubbies stopped moving.
"I can see your shoe."
A short pause… then, muffled from somewhere behind the array of tiny raincoats: "… No, you can't?"
"I could offer to hold him back while you flee, baby girl?" Robby offered, grinning now as all the nerves from earlier had clearly disappeared for good.
"For real life?!" The excitement in Dana's voice was palpable, and Jack's stern look over at his silly husband only let the latter's grin grow even wider.
"No, not for real life." Jack shattered the young escapee's dreams with a snort and simply leveled a look at the gaps between Dennis's and Trinity's coats, where he could see bright green eyes peek through. "Lunch and naptime first, then you can plan your great escape on a full stomach and a rested brain."
There was some grumbling and then some shuffling, and eventually a small, blonde little five-year-old emerged from behind the coats, holding her slippers in her hands. Judging by the look she gave them, she clearly blamed them for getting caught.
As cute as that was, though, she had nothing on Robby, who watched the whole thing with open delight, glancing sideways at Jack now, as if he was reevaluating something. "You do this every day?"
"Every single day," Jack confirmed as he walked towards the door, herding Dana along with a gentle hand on her back. "Welcome to my Pitt, Doc."