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Despite being an award-winning, vocally-revolutionary, super-talented, nationally-beloved acappella group, the Bellas have a tendency to be completely out of sync when it comes to anything and everything outside of music and performing.
The biggest issue, considering they all live in the same house, happens to be food.
Jessica, Ashley, Cynthia Rose, and Chloe are the only ones who consistently go out — albeit to separate supermarkets — to shop for actual ingredients and make home cooked meals. Stacie usually goes to some hipster organic store or the farmer’s market on her own, picking up healthy food that none of the other Bellas touch. Flo has aunts and uncles nearby who constantly visit to drop off meals, so she only stops by convenience stores for hygiene-related necessities. No one knows where Lilly gets her food or what she eats, but she keeps nothing in the Bella’s kitchen or cupboards. Fat Amy just steals everyone’s leftovers.
And Beca is the worst offender when it comes to eating habits. Just like her sleep schedule, it’s erratic, unstable, and incredibly unhealthy. When she’s caught up on a mix or a last-minute term paper, she forgets about sleep and meals entirely. When she’s fighting with Jesse or ranting about her shitty professors, she stress eats pizza rolls and hot pockets and waffles and falls into a miniature coma on the couch for the next eighteen hours. Fat Amy claims she’s never seen Beca eat a vegetable, and Emily usually counters that with, “I saw a piece of lettuce in her sandwich, like, once.” But it’s general knowledge among the Bellas that if Beca were ever to live alone, she probably won’t survive long without supervision.
It’s just after midterms week and Chloe opens the fridge to see empty drawers and expired yogurt. “Girls!” she announces to the packed living room the next morning. “We’re going shopping!”
Everyone cheers.
“Grocery shopping!”
The cheers dissolve to groans.
“Got me hyped for nothing, Beale,” Stacie says, settling back into the couch with her magazine.
“Hey, no. Guys, we have, like, zero food left in the house. Midterms are over, our schedules are back to a normal amount of crazy, and we need to get this one —” she gestures to Beca, currently shoveling unheated Chipotle leftovers from Thursday into her mouth, “— some real food.”
“This is real food,” Beca retorts around a mouthful of beans.
Chloe ignores her. “All right, on the bus in fifteen or you’re being left behind!”
Fat Amy waves a dismissive hand. “All right, just pick me up some chips and queso. And maybe some microwave taquitos.” She eyes Beca’s unappetizing leftovers. “I dunno, any ready-to-go Mexican food will do.”
“Oh, no, no.” The ginger says with a mischievous smile. “This shopping trip is strictly GIYONAA.”
Seven heads shoot up from their relaxed positions.
“Oh, you dared to invoke that rule.” Stacie narrows her eyes.
In response, Chloe looks at her bare wrist as if checking a watch. “Fourteen minutes.”
The Bellas scramble to their rooms to change and grab wallets, and within ten minutes, they were all loaded up on the bus. They make a quick stop at Barden to pick up Emily, even though she insisted that she didn’t need anything in particular.
“It’s a Bella bonding experience,” is Chloe’s excuse.
Once they're at the supermarket, they split off into pairs, a tactic Beca and Chloe had adopted over the years to keep everyone, especially Fat Amy, in check and accounted for. Jessica and Ashley, of course, go off together. The others drift off in pairs naturally without any form of assignment or agreement. Already deep in conversation with Cynthia Rose about the dynamics of mixing hip hop with classical music, Beca simply follows her and keeps up the discussion while she pushes a cart into the store.
Beca watches as Cynthia Rose roams all over the produce section, picking out copious amounts of vegetables and putting it all in their cart. “You hosting a food festival?” she deadpans, not looking forward to carrying all of this into the Bella house and into the fridge.
“Stuff it, Mitchell. Some people in this house actually cook and eat like human beings,” Cynthia Rose shoots back, dropping a huge bag of potatoes in the cart. “The hell have you bought, huh? This whole damn trip was for you to pick up some real people food.”
“Hot pockets are real people food!” Beca exclaims, turning several heads.
“No they’re not, Becs,” Chloe chides as she passes them. Fat Amy shakes her head slowly behind Chloe and mouths I feel you, which does little to make Beca feel better. “Make sure you pick up at least some fresh food.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters.
She grabs a singular onion and puts it in the cart. Cynthia Rose looks like she wants to say something, but she closes her mouth and chooses to ignore it. They follow Chloe and Fat Amy to the frozen foods aisle, where Beca comes to life and just thrives. She piles in frozen dinners and pizza rolls on top of Cynthia Rose’s fresh greens and healthy fruit, collecting judgmental looks left and right.
They meet up with Jessica and Ashley in the snack aisle.
“Outta the way,” Beca warns, steering the cart right in between them and pulling up short in front of the Hostess snacks.
“You’re not getting HoHos!” Chloe calls.
“Oh, yes the hell I am!”
There’s only one box left at the very back of the top shelf, and Beca already knows how this is going to end up. She steps onto the lowest shelf, pushing aside several cereal boxes with her foot, and extends her arm as far as it can go. Her hands meet nothing but air.
“Fuck,” she hisses. “Hey, can one of you guys —”
“You know the rules, DJ Mitch,” Fat Amy says, dropping an armload of chips into her cart. “GIYONAA.”
“I’m already here. And that rule was literally made to target me,” Beca grunts, standing on tiptoes and smushing herself against the shelves and blindly slapping her hand along the top shelf. She can almost feel how far the box is from her fingertips, and the thought infuriates her more than anything. “Literally no one else has this problem.”
“That’s not true, Flo’s shorter than you,” Stacie points out, joining the audience. She had partnered with Lilly, and the only objects rolling around in their basket is a singular cup of instant noodles and a 36-pack of AAA batteries.
“Okay, but Flo has gymnastics on her side.”
“And you have the anger of a thousand bees inside of you.”
“Maybe this is a sign,” Chloe says, smiling somewhat triumphantly and infuriating Beca further. “The universe is telling you to eat healthier by keeping junk food out of your reach.”
“Yeah, well the universe can fuck right off.” Beca snarls as she reaches up again to slap at empty air. Dare she climb one shelf higher?
“Hey guys,” Emily peers in their aisle and waves a relatively full basket in their direction. Flo follows close behind with her own basket, smiling with understanding when she sees Beca climbing the shelf.
“Oh, nice. That’s the way to do it,” she says, nodding appreciatively. “Usually when it’s that far back, I take a running start and use the second shelf to propel even higher.”
“See,” Beca says, her tone conclusive. “Gymnastics. Not the same.”
“Are you trying to get that box?” Emily asks innocently, not quite managing to hide a smile at her captain’s ridiculous position. “Here —”
The Bellas scream in unison as Emily reaches over Beca to grab the box from the shelf. Terrified, Emily jerks backwards and almost drops her basket.
“That’s not how this goes, Legacy,” Cynthia Rose warns, shaking her head slowly.
“Our shopping policy is GIYONAA,” Jessica explains, but it only confuses Emily further.
“The G…I? What now?”
“The ‘Get It Yourself Or Not At All’ rule,” Beca clarified with a huff. “Encourages forced bonding time.”
“If you don’t pick it up yourself, you don’t get to buy it.” Ashley elaborates further.
Emily laughs, clearly unsure whether they’re joking or not. “What? That’s a stupid rule.”
“Well you know what else is stupid?” Fat Amy starts, before Chole rests a placating hand on her shoulder.
“Come on, Emily. Don’t listen them, just help me.” Beca says, trying not to beg.
But Emily looks torn. She looks from the Bellas, who all have their arms crossed and are giving her the don’t you dare do it glare. Then she looks to Beca, who hops down from the shelf to mimic the same pose as if to say it’s either me or them. She looks up at the shelf, at the very last box of HoHos lying sadly on its side.
Beca breaks first and groans. “Guys, this is ridiculous. We’re blocking the whole damn aisle for this.”
“Correction: you’re blocking the whole damn aisle for this,” Cynthia Rose amends. “Just give it up and grab some other diabetes cake so we can get out of —”
“Oh!” Emily cuts in, face brightening. “What if I use a loophole?” she asks the Bellas.
“No, bringing down the whole shelf doesn’t count,” Amy says. “That’s what got us kicked out of Walmart last year.”
“That…wasn’t what I had in mind, no.” Emily assures, walking over to Beca and lowering her voice so only she can hear. “Okay, this is gonna be weird,” she starts. “But you trust me, right?”
“No,” Beca automatically responds. “Not when you use that kind of t — Jesus Christ!”
Emily drops abruptly into a squat, throws her arms around the tiny girl’s thighs, and lifts her clean off the ground. Beca’s curse turns into a scream and straight back to curses as she’s lifted three feet into the air, but Emily carries her easily over the the shelf.
“Can you reach it?” she asks, unperturbed by the profanities streaming from Beca’s mouth. “Do you need me to lift you higher?”
“No!” is Beca’s frantic reply. “God no!”
“Okay cool! Then grab it!”
Holy crap, she’s high up. The top shelf is at shoulder-level now, so the HoHo box is easily within reach. But she’s too afraid to let go of the death grip she has on Emily’s shoulder, and her other hand has a similar death grip on the edge of the shelf to stabilize herself.
“Don’t worry, I got you,” Emily calls, and Beca glances down at her blinding smile. “Trust me.”
And she so desperately wants to trust this freakishly tall girl, especially since she has her lifted three feet off the ground, but Beca’s seen enough of Emily’s clumsy and uncoordinated side at Bella’s dance rehearsals. If she can trip on thin air, she can definitely drop a panicking human being. But she’s come this far and this high. The last thing Beca wants to do is give up and return home without her goddamn HoHos.
After a deep breath, she releases her grip on the shelf, reaches out quickly to grab the box, and pulls it close against her chest. “Okay, okay okay okay I have it I have it I’m good pleasepleaseputmedown right now.”
Beaming, Emily lowers her gently, making sure she’s upright and stable before letting go.
Beca starts laughing hysterically as soon as her feet are back on the ground, clutching the box in one hand and the growing stitches on her side in the other. The Bellas just stare and exchange uncertain glances, while Emily looks incredibly proud of herself. She picks up her basket and shrugs one shoulder at them as Beca leans against the shelves she had just been climbing on, wiping at her eyes.
“What the fuck, Legacy,” she wheezes, “you’re fucking ridiculous.”
“Hey, I didn’t touch it. So it’s fair game, right?”
“You’re both ridiculous,” Cynthia Rose mutters. With the show being over, the Bellas start to disperse and head towards the registers, mumbling about how Beca’s diet is probably contributing to her lack of height. Ignoring all of them, Beca throws the box of HoHos into her cart, still chuckling to herself.
“Thanks, Emily,” she says, still half-chuckling, and her sincere tone makes Emily blush. “I owe you one.”
“No problem. Maybe you can do me a favor and help me find that earring I dropped under my bed,” the freshman teases, and giggles when Beca shoves lightly at her shoulder.
“K, don’t push it, kiddo.”