Breaking the news Danny didn’t want to be mad at Tarquin. He didn’t like it. He wasn’t holding a grudge to be petty - he really wanted everything to be nice and normal again. He hated feeling like this. But that didn’t make the feeling stop. In fact, it made it worse. What if he couldn’t stop feeling like this? What if Tarquin couldn’t make him feel better? He generally wasn’t very good at it. Why had he married someone who sucked so much at knowing how he worked and at looking after him? Was he just being ridiculous? Maybe it was his fault. He was the one being needy. Maybe if he tried harder, he could just… feel better without making it Tarq’s responsibility. His husband had apologised numerous times. And he accepted that he was sorry… It just didn’t stop him feeling rubbish somehow. But what was going to? What else did he need? Why was he expecting Tarq to know what he wanted when he wasn’t even sure he knew himself?
He was sitting in his home office, staring into space and ignoring his work when the charm that indicated an incoming floo call activated, jolting him from his thoughts. He hurried down the stairs, seeing his husband’s face in the fire looking decidedly troubled, and a pang of guilt shot through him at the thought that he was probably the reason for that expression.
“Hello. What’s up?” he asked.
“It’s the virus… They - MACUSA - they’re placing the school under quarantine.”
“Oh,” Danny blinked, not taking in the significance of this. Not registering the implication of Tarquin calling to tell him this rather than telling him when he got home. “When are they going to do that?”
Tarquin took a deep breath, watching his husband not understand, and hating the fact that he was, for the second time in twenty four hours, about to do something that was going to visibly hurt him.
“They already did.” And before Danny could say anything else, it all started tumbling out. “I can’t come home. And I want to - I want to so badly because I want to make up for last night and because… because I’m supposed to be with you. I just… I want to come home. You know that right?”
“I know,” Danny nodded, and it was true again. His husband was so obviously upset, so panicked at the idea of them being apart. And suddenly it was his job to be the rational one, the one that reassured, even though he hated being alone more than anything, he was the one telling Tarquin, “It’ll be ok,” because he wanted to look after him and make him feel better, “How long are they going to keep you for?”
“We don’t know. But...”
“A while?”
“Yeah.”
“Until the government solves a national crisis?”
“Pretty much.”
“Right,” he nodded, ready to joke about how that was bound to be any day now, when slightly more of the reality of the situation hit him. “That means…. You’re not…. Christmas?” he couldn’t quite bear to put all the necessary words together into a single sentence. And him being the brave one crumpled slightly.
“Probably not.”
“They can’t do that!” Danny huffed indignantly.
“There’s uh.. Something else,” Tarquin confessed, deciding that distraction was possibly the best tactic regarding the fact that Christmas was cancelled. “Not bad news,” he added, seeing the look on Danny’s face. “I was feeling… rather upset. About not being able to come home.”
“Did you blow up the school?” Danny asked, torn between sounding concerned that his husband may have done something so dreadful that he’d lost his job, and impressed at the depth of feeling he had inspired.
“No. Maybe that would have been better. No one burst into flames,” he said pointedly, recalling their conversation from the previous evening.
“You didn’t!”
“I very much did,” Tarquin admitted, looking so embarrassed that Danny was convinced he was telling the truth.
“No way. What song?”
“I don’t even know… The one that goes ‘Wish I could hold you now, I really wanna say I’m sorry,’” he recited.
“No… Don’t recognise it without the tune. You’ll have to sing it,” Danny smiled.
“You know exactly which song I’m talking about.”
“Those aren’t quite the words though. Did you make any other changes.”
“I don’t know. I mean, your name came up, which I’m assuming it doesn’t in the original.”
And of course Danny wanted to know in which line, and all about the rest of it, and he was forced to give a blow by blow retelling of the whole performance. But his husband was laughing. Smiling. Teasing him mercilessly. And so he supposed it was all alright again. Apart from the fact that he couldn’t go back to him.