Work Text:
The scrub nurses glanced at each other nervously as they got everything right. Each team was lined up perfectly behind their respective doctor with the peculiarities where they should have been to the best of their abilities. Doctor Austin preferred to have his tools to his right side and Doctor Cain to his left, Austin kept his lights within grabbing distance and had them moved frequently while Cain set them in the very beginning of the surgery and then left them there unless something went very wrong and they had to change it halfway through.
Those were things that they could actually make sure were different for their respective doctors and kept the same. The problem came with the one thing that couldn’t be tailored to the surgeon, the music. The OR only had one speaker system and it wasn’t able to accommodate them both. Cain was very non-traditional in the music that he liked, usually leaning towards hip hop or other top 100 hits from their local radio recently. Austin was the exact opposite of him as he was in literally every other way and preferred to listen to music that was classical in nature or defaulting to rainforest noises.
“Set it to the third playlist down, would you, Nurse Moore?” Austin asked. His phone had been laying on the tray outside of the sterile field where it would remain alongside their pagers for if they needed to be contacted while they were in surgery.
Jessica gave him a tense smile behind her mask, happy that it was only her eyes that had to tilt up and her mouth could quirk down into a grimace. She picked up the device and connected it to the speaker system in the OR so that the music could play. Another one of the nurses glanced at her with a worried expression as they prepared for the hours long argument that the two doctors would have over their pick in music while they were working together.
The entire staff was so disappointed when it came up that there was a patient that required both of their attentions at once. How often did something get a tumor after they had gotten a heart transplant less than a month prior? Still, they were healthcare workers first and foremost and people that hated their coworkers second.
Jessica scrolled to the third playlist like Austin had asked her to and then set the phone back down while the classical music began to tinkle through the speakers. She watched the newest charge nurse, she had taken a step back after her accident, go through the check in before the surgeries began in full. Each one of the staff in the room was walking around and speaking quietly to each other, like they were expecting the carefully crafted peace around them to explode in a matter of seconds.
One song rolled into two, then into the third and fourth. When it got to the fifth song in the playlist, the entire beat and rhythm changed into something entirely different. Cain stopped the work that he had been doing, his hands perfectly steady as he turned to look over at Austin instead. “What is this?”
“Old Town Road by Lil Nas X. I have it on rather good authority that it’s one of your favorites,” Austin replied like it was nothing. He finished dissecting the tumor that had been closing around the brand new heart on the patient before him and handed it over to one of the other nurses.
“And what authority would that be?” Cain asked, tone amused instead of upset as they had all suspected it would be.
“I snuck into your Spotify Wrapped when it came out last year. I knew that you wouldn’t have seen it because you think that you’re above such things. But you’re not. And I’m using it to manipulate you so that you’ll let me pick the wine tonight when Mina comes over with her partner for dinner,” Austin replied as if none of the rest of them were there.
Cain laughed, “Not a chance in Hell. The music will get you some other benefits though, my love.”
The nurses around them chose not to hear the interaction or comment on it. The OR had turned into a neutral field that involved no arguing or shouting or hostility and they were all grateful for that. None of them were going to break through that silence to inquire as to when their bosses had managed to work out their issues enough to fall in love with each other.