[ the bump of their shoulders gets charles to glance over at him and smile a bit — because, yeah, alright, maybe he couldn't have foreseen this. doesn't mean he likes feeling all useless, though.

anyway! ]

Oi, don't knock the bees! Like I said, you never know. What if there's, I dunno, a crazy wizard who locks us in a mansion and his only weakness is a bee allergy and I can set them on him to escape?

[ somehow, he manages to make this sound, like, at least fifty percent convincing. it's a whole superpower. ]