"Charles."
Charles had been heading in the direction of the stairs but stopped in the kitchen doorway.
"Yes, Erik?"
Erik had the door of the fridge open. He turned his head from it's contents to Charles, who's eyebrows were raised and body was still half turned to the staircase.
"What's all this?"
Charles walked into the kitchen and to Erik, who moved to the side. All of the previous contents of the fridge had been jammed into one shelf or were on the counter beside the fridge and all the other shelves were crammed with bowls upon bowls of brightly coloured … stuff. Erik couldn't tell if it was liquid or solid. It looked almost spongy. Some of the bowls had yellow stuff in it and some had white. Or caramel or red-pink or purple-pink.
"Oh God, not you too, Erik," Charles groaned, then sighed, rubbing a hand against his forehead as if to soothe a headache.
"What? Not-me-too what?" he watched Charles, the hand on his head, alert and defensive.
Charles just gave him an exasperated look.
"How can you not know what it is?" Charles looked almost offended and if Erik didn't known better than to think it, he would have found it adorable.
"Know what?" He didn't understand. He just wanted to know why most of the fridge food was on the counter getting warm whilst this … stuff took up all the space. It didn't even look like food.
"It's Angel Delight!"
"What?"
"Angel Delight!" Charles was beaming as he pulled a drawer open and took out a spoon. "The kids didn't know what it was either, so I made them some. They must have liked it. I used to have it at Oxford all the time, you can only get it in Britain. But it's great, try some!"
Charles grabbed the closest bowl out of the fridge and stuck the spoon into it, lifting the white splodge out of the bowl and towards Erik's mouth. Erik leaned out of the way instantly, eyeing the spoon with obvious distaste and dubiousness.
"No thank you, Charles."
"Don't you like vanilla? That's okay, they've made all of them, I think. There's strawberry, too and raspberry, banana and butterscotch. I like butterscotch best, try the butterscotch."
Erik watched the way that Charles licked the vanilla 'Angel Delight' from the spoon with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm and shifted a little. Charles got a bowl of the butterscotch and dug in, again raising the spoon for Erik, eyebrows raised, clearly excited to be sharing Erik's first Angel Delight experience with him.
"No thank you, Charles." he repeated simply.
Charles' face dropped and he looked to the spoon, as if to find out what he'd done wrong.
"But it's delicious." He mumbled, confused and earnest, before enjoying the treat himself, then another spoonful, then another, clearly not bothered any more. Erik watched him, how Charles' tongue would slip out and clean the spoon and how he would make happy little noises and Erik tried not to think about it, tried to keep it down, somewhere that Charles wouldn't find it but then-
"Are you sure? Not even a little bit? For a friend?" Charles was holding up another spoon, butterscotch. "If you don't like butterscotch there's-"
"One spoon," Erik said, unable to squash the tugging at his lips and the amusement that tainted his voice. Charles' whole face lit up, smiling and bright. He lifted the spoon to Erik's mouth, careful not to get any on his face. And Erik had to admit, it was good.