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The bright stage lights, the agonisingly long clapping, the screaming, the usually comforting weight of his bassoon on his shoulders dragging down all the wrong muscles, the chest strap pulling on his shirt in all the wrong places. It's too much. He knows he's already mentally checked out, the hour and fifteen minutes of an exhausting set of pieces that were all learned in under a week. And the brass! Someone clearly forgot to install sound shields because even through his earplugs he could feel the high notes of the trumpets reverberating around in his skull for at least the second half of the concert. The one thing that eased all this was glancing at his husband next to him in the semi-circle of chairs and stands that house the french horns, saxophones, bassoons and oboes.
Ilya had noticed Shane's discomfort and when he caught his husband looking at him, he brought the hand with his wedding ring up to his left ear and gave a little tap with a questioning look, asking if it was too much. Shane nodded his head and shrugged his shoulders subconsiously. Ilya noticed the wince that came with the action, putting together the pieces that the weight of the bassoon was too much. He carefully snuck his hand down and grabbed the bassoon near bottom to help support some of the wieght. The look of relief on Shane's face told him all he needed to know.
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Shane was stood backstage. One of the last members of the concert band still there, because unlike the others, who all cleaned their instruments when they got home, he took the time to do it beforehand. This little bit of routine soothed the ache behind his eyes as his brain took comfort in this little slice of routine. It wasn't usually like this. He could usually handle concerts just fine, but the pile of things slightly wrong had been mounting since the morning. He slept through his alarm and woke up an hour later than he was meant to, meaning that he had to miss his usual morning practice out of his routine because he still had a job to go to.
The children in his lessons today were louder and more disinterested than usual because the schools he taught at were nearing half term and so everyone was a bit restless, himself included. After he got back from his second school of the day, he had to sit through the arduous process of making more reeds for two hours. His first one broke when he accidently filed it too thin, so he was overly cautious on the second one, which meant he was constantly putting it on his bassoon, playing it for a minute, taking it off, filing it down slightly, then repeating the process. It annoyed him greatly.
He then had to make dinner, which would've been fine on it's own but the bell pepper he was planning to use had gone slightly rotten, so he had to throw it away and rush out to get a new one so that dinner would be ready when Ilya got home. His only break in things that had gone wrong today was his and Ilya's pre-concert shower. The water was just the right temperature and the arms of his boyfriend were warm and strong and held him tightly. Then he had to get dressed. He was slightly too damp so his black shirt clung to him in the wrong places but he powered through because the concert venue was further away than usual so him and Ilya had to get a move on.
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Ilya is stood in the doorway, patiently waiting for his husband to finishing packing away his instrument. He loved looking at Shane in concert blacks (and the addition of his chest strap to hold his bassoon accentuated his already fantastic chest that Ilya was waaayyyy to obssesed with than was probably normal). Finally, Shane was done and slung his case onto his shoulders and grabbed Ilya's hand and began to walk with him to their car. Ilya noticed his husband still had his earplugs in and was squinting his eyes way too much in the bright hallway lights. Ilya reached into his bag with his free hand and grabbed the sunglasses he always keeps in there for this exact occassion. He stops Shane with a gentle tap on his hand and grabs his face to turn him around to face him. Shane is still looking at the floor and squinting, so Ilya uses the grip on his chin to tilt his face up slightly and slip the sunglasses behind his ears and over his nose. He doesn't talk to Shane nor expect Shane to initiate conversation, as he knows in moments like these that his husband gets very annoyed by the amplified of his own voice in his head with te ear plugs in.
When they're in the car, Ilya takes the drivers seat, even though Shane usually preferes to drive. He turns the radio on but keeps it just above silent so that there's background noise but not too much. The car ride home is silent and uneventful. Once they pull into the driveway of their shared house (Ilya still can't believe that they live together), and notices that Shane is so far inside his own head that he hasn't even registered that the car has stopped because they're home. He quietly gets out of the car and walks around to the passenger side. He opens the door and gently taps Shane's shoulder to ask for contact. Shane doesn't respond but he doesn't look in pain or offended by it either, so Ilya takes it as a cue to go and open the front door to the house and goes back to pick Shane up bridal style to carry him into the house.
Ilya toed off his own shoes at the door, careful not to jostle Shane, before moving through the house to set his husband down on the sofa in the living room. He made sure that all the light were dimmed and he took Shane's shoes off and undid his bowtie and top button of his shirt. Ilya then left the house to grab his bari, Shane's bassoon, and both their bags out of the car, cut the engine off, not caring about his lack of shoes. He locked the front door and set the instruments and bags down in their practice room before going upstairs and changing into comfortable clothes so that Shane wouldn't be annoyed by the noise of his shirt wrinkling, then grabbed Shane's favourite Hoodie and pair of joggers. He made his way quickly down the stairs and back into the living room, noting Shane still hadn't moved. He made quick work of unbuttoning his husband's shirt and replacing it with the Hoodie. He made slightly slower work of removing the concert trousers and dressing Shane in the joggers, thoguh by this point, Shane was starting to become more aware of his surroundings as the sticky shirt was replaced with the soft Hoodie, so he helped slightly by standing up by himself.
He caressed Shane's neck and slide his hands upwards to Shane's ears, giving him plently of warning and time to stop him. Ilya gently removed the earplugs and placed them in the small case he had dug out of his husband's trouser pocket. He knew that even though it might not be too helpful right now, Shane needed to not have his own voice amplified in his head when he began to talk otherwise he would stay inside himself until they were removed. The sunglasses also came off because if Shane layed down, the arms would dig into behind his ears and slip about on his nose to places he didn't want them to be.
Once Shane was changed, Ilya sat them both down and settled next to Shane. He snuck his hand behind his husband's shoulders and gave it a squeeze, asking Shane if he wanted contact and pressure or not to be touched. His husband responded with a small nod of his head and allowed himself to be pulled on top of his husband, allowing for Ilya to place Shane's head on his chest, just above his heart because he knows that Shane likes to listen to his heart beat whe he was having a shutdown. Ilya enclosed Shane with his arms and wrapped his legs around his husband's and began to slowly card his fingers through Shane's hair with just the right amount of pressure and lay patiently, waiting for Shane to come out of it by himself.
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Throughout the car ride home, Shane felt like his back was going to burst open and sprout wings just so he could fly away from everything that had happened today. He felt like he was going to explode and he wanted to scream but his voice wouldn't let him. He didn't register when they got home, or how he ended up in their living room with Ilya removing his shirt and asking him to stand to remove his trousers. He did register the addition of his favourite Hoodie and joggers, easing the pending explosion. He felt Ilya slide his hands up his neck, it was a nice sensation, grounding. As the earplugs were removed, a mixture of sound and silence flooded his head. He could hear the electric hum of the lights, but he was no longer drowning in the sound of his own breathing. As the sunglasses were removed, he braced for the flood of light but was pleasantly surprised when he realised that Ilya had dimmed the lights. This actually provded more relief because he hadn't even noticed that he had been straining his eyes to be able to see in the darkness.
Shane's head was still reeling as he felt his husband's hand squeezing his shoulder. He felt himself nod more than he actively thought about providing the consent and mindlessly allowed himself to be manipulated on top of his husband's chest. He relished in the sound of his husband's heartbeat and the pressure of the arms and legs surrounding him. When Ilya's hands began applying gentle pressure through his hair, Shane started to feel the explosion he's been holding in crawl it's way from his stomach, into his lungs, then up through his throat, feeling slimy and cold but burning his mouth at the same time. His husband placed a sweet kiss on his forehead and Shane just broke inside. That horrible, slimy noise dragged itself out of Shane's mouth, straining the muscles in his face that already hurt from the tight pressure required for playing his beloved bassoon. He was vaguely aware that he was shaking as the slime finally reached his ears. It didn't even sound like himself.
For all of this, Ilya just let Shane shake and scream and cry, before he slowly began to turn his husband around to lying on his stomach so that Ilya could move his hands from his hair to underneath the Hoodie and ran his hands up and down Shane's back, applying pressure where he could feel the tension in his beloved's shoulders.
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Shane slowly calmed down as his husband removed all the tension for his back and shoulder, also removing the urge for wings to rip his back open to shreds and fly himself away. He was becoming more aware of himslef and his body and surroundings. Soon after he stopped sobbing, the urge to speak settled in his throat. He cleared his throat and let his mouth form all the words required to whisper to his husband about everything that had gone slightly wrong that day and piled up higher than the peak of Everest.
Ilya stayed silent through his beloved's explaination. When Shane was done, he placed a gentle kiss on his mouth and stilling his hand to settle on Shane's waist, still applying the gentle, grounding pressure he knew Shane needed. Finally, he spoke.
"Is ok now, yes?" He tucked Shane's head into the crease of his neck, Shane's favourite place to be (well, other than between Ilya's legs). "Little раздражение are gone now. You are with your husband now."
"Mmphh." Replied Shane, clearly exhausted.
"We go take shower now?"
"Mmpphh... yeah..."
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SHOWER SCENE COMING LATER BECAUSE IT'S LATE AND I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEAS YET!!!!!