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Hank had noticed the slight tension between his two paramedics over the barbershop quartet competition, but he wasn’t too worried about it. Roy, usually so easygoing, had been downright snobbish over their progress as singers, and John had maintained for weeks that their quartet—actually a quintet--would be magnificent—that they would win some sort of international award before they were done, or some such silliness. He was fairly sure John had been making that up, but Hank had long since stopped trying to figure out when John was serious and when he wasn’t about such things.
Hank knew by now that when John got a wild hair, it was usually his way of dealing with the difficulties of the job, whether bad runs or boredom, and if it helped stave off the paramedic’s insomnia or his broodier preoccupations, Hank was all for it.
Besides, this one had been pure fun. Hank had loved wearing the mustache. And sure, Roy might be right that their singing hadn’t been up to his standards, but spending weeks working together belting out music, with Johnny enthusiastically cheering them all on, had felt great. They’d needed something like that.
Hank had seen how Johnny’s eyes—hell, his whole being—had lit up as he’d coaxed songs out of them all, as he’d seen them all enjoying the whole process. Hank knew that for himself singing made worries drop from him—he knew that from the shower or from his drive in to the station some mornings. Singing with other people was even better—that he knew from his church choir, which was otherwise a bit of a disorganized mess, and don’t get him started on the church politics involved, but they let him stand in back and sometimes pick the hymns and it meant he attended the guitar service at his Episcopal church, and that was sorta hippie-ish with the least uptight sermons, and that suited Hank just fine.
In fact, Hank wondered if maybe people could use singing as therapy. He’d been researching what he could do to support his men after some of the more disturbing experienced they’d had, bad injuries, times when they hadn’t been able to save people.
So in spite of Roy being a wet wash rag about it all, Hank had quietly supported John’s enthusiasm and let himself be infected by it. He noticed it said something about John as a leader, that he could throw himself completely into the endeavor and bring them all with him, even to the point of frequently giving instructions and guiding, without ever seeming to boss them--well, excepted in occasional snide or dismissive ways with Chet, but that was part of how Johnny and Chet communicated. John had led them all to a delicious anticipation, not only of the full performance, but of each practice. It’d been good for all of them to have this as something to look forward to.
When at the picnic itself it had all looked like it was going to fall flat—when there’d been real looks of dismay on one of the Chief’s wives not that different from Roy’s alarmed and pained expressions at their practices—he’d seen the worried realization cross John’s sharp features, saw keen determination there, saw a quick consultation with one of the judges, and then they had simply followed Johnny’s lead when he returned to them and made some slight adjustments to their performance. His and Mike’s mustaches had already started to melt off their faces, and Chet and Marco eagerly agreed to the dance moves Johnny added, and Hank hadn’t seen Chief McConnike laugh so hard, ever. The kids had been laughing too, and the other quartets, and everyone, and they’d all needed that.
A little later he’d learned how Johnny had changed what they’d competed for, so that they won the trophy for best comedy act, but Hank had already known they’d been successful in a more important way. He’d watched indulgently as families had come up to talk with them—his own dear wife wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and fondly replacing his mustache, Chet’s brothers and sister surrounding him, and Marco’s large family looking so proud and happy. Upon hearing from Marco that Johnny was their ringleader, so to speak, Marco’s mom had taken John’s hands speaking in warm grateful Spanish, Johnny suddenly shy at the attention, and then she’d embraced him with such warmth and he clearly had not known what to do with that. After a few moments he’d relaxed into it, and Hank was pleased to see that quiet smile on John’s face.
The next day, Hank made sure to acknowledge what John had done as they both sat at the day room table with a hand on his back and a simple “Good work, John.”
Johnny scoffed. “Aw, you don’t have to say that. We didn’t really win.”
“That’s not what’s important here. We needed this—something purely joyful, something to be bad at where it doesn’t really matter how bad we are. I haven’t seen Mike have this much fun before. Or Marco—getting to see him and his mom laughing like that would have been worth two months of practice.”
John still looked sheepish, so Cap pressed his point further. “I worry about all of you. The stresses of what we do—it’s why I put up with the pranks, I know after what we go through you need an outlet.”
Johnny had a sudden sharp quirk to his lips. “’Put up with’?” he countered.
“Oh all right. Participate in ‘em, too. The point is, we needed this, and your enthusiasm for it was infectious—without that we wouldn’t have done it. And it was better than the pranking for bringing us together.”
Chet had wandered in and was getting himself a cup of coffee by this point.
“Better?” Chet butt in. “Wasn’t it more like we all pranked ourselves, in front of everyone?”
“I think everyone there needed to laugh at us like that. We’d be cruel for not letting them have that.”
“Cap, you knew we’d never get that far, as much as Roy did.”
“Oh, no, I don’t know as much about all this as Roy—you can tell that from my own singing. But—OK, you’re right, I know enough to know we were probably going to be pretty…not up to par. But that’s not what was important. This church choir I’m in—it’s got everybody, old folks who can’t hear, kids whose parents don’t have sitters, anybody who wants in, and we stumble through it all. And sometimes we’re off key and I can see Dan wince. He’s our director, and he’s a damn site better than the judgmental stuck up fellow we had before—Dan knows how to let us have fun.”
Hank paused and then said again, with emphasis, “Johnny, what I’m saying is, you did us good.”
“I dunno, Cap. I think you had a lot to do with it too. If we didn’t feel comfortable with you and with each other—and you are a big part of that—we couldn’t have come up with what we did on the fly there once we hit that one note wrong so many ways at once. We’re comfortable in our own skins around you, and so—we could be silly in public, together.”
Hank nodded his acceptance of John’s words, and it made him feel warm inside.
Yes, it had all been quite the success all around, Hank thought as later he placed the trophy on top of the TV in their day room, humming a tune to himself, probably off-key, not that he cared.