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When he’d been asked to buy groceries for the team, Khun hadn’t envisioned that an overexcited (but very cute) boy and an alligator with non-existent self control would be tagging along for the ride. Such an idiom, however, was unfortunately meant to be understood literally in their situation, as The Great Rak in his compressed form was standing in a shopping cart, ordering poor Bam to hurry and wheel him to the bananas, lest the yellow fruit be sold out. Khun tried to call them back, but he quickly gave up as it seemed outside of battle, his orders went ignored.
“Meet me in the dairy section!” he yelled halfheartedly, sighing as he watched the figures of the alligator standing proudly, facing forward with his arms crossed and Bam pushing him towards the fruit section.
Khun did not normally have to go to such trouble to procure groceries of all things, but he’d come to expect trouble and dalliances with the other two over the years. If he took half an hour by himself, he was guaranteed to have to spend thrice the time to do it with them. Even though they had never gone grocery shopping together before, and he should probably give them a chance and whatnot, lessons learnt from past experiences did not tip the scale in their favour.
As usual, his predictions were spot-on. The two had arrived in the dairy section much faster than he’d anticipated. When they met up with Khun, he’d been reaching for milk and nearly dropped the carton at the sight. The two of them were armed with what were probably all the bananas in the store, Rak blissfully swimming in a sea of them while Bam struggled to bundle up all the bananas that couldn’t fit into the cart in his arms. Khun felt his fingers automatically reach to clutch his temple as a headache made itself prominent.
“You don’t need this many bananas,” he said in a strangled tone that barely concealed his rage.
Rak, as expected, was not deterred in the slightest.
“You wouldn’t know anything, Blue Turtle! Listen to your great leader!”
Khun did not have the patience.
“Bam, could you please put these back where you got them from?”
The irregular cocked his head to the side in puzzlement. “Oh, okay.”
Khun yanked a fussy Rak who was grumbling under his breath out of the cart. The grumbling seemed to grow louder as Bam wheeled his beloved bananas further and further away.
Bam soon returned with an empty cart. Khun sighed in relief and filled the cart with two cartons of milk.
They were walking down the frozen foods aisle when the next disaster struck. Rak had grabbed a frozen Hawaiian pizza off the shelves of the freezer, to which Khun took one look at and promptly said no.
“Firstly,” he began, “We don’t have a microwave. This is a microwave pizza. How do you expect us to be able to cook it?”
“Flamethrower Turtle could cook it,” Rak replied stubbornly, refusing to budge.
“Do you want to eat burnt pizza? Secondly, even if you did, do you really want to eat pineapple pizza?” Khun retorted, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He did not approve of pineapple on pizza. The readers could argue, but he was firmly on the opposition.
It seemed like Khun was winning, but that was until Bam spoke up.
“Um! I’ve never had Hawaiian pizza before! Could we please try it?”
It was unfair. Khun was defenseless, as all beings were, against Bam’s puppy eyes.
“Bam, trust me, you don’t want—” Khun made a move to resist, but his huge golden eyes were just so big and he was too adorable and—
“Fine,” he sighed, defeated. Bam cheered in joy. Rak was looking at him as if he was the answer to all his problems.
“Black Turtle,” he said solemnly, with one hand on the irregular’s shoulder and the other on his chest, “You have tamed the Blue Turtle.”
Bam was completely oblivious and shrugged his shoulders in confusion. For the millionth time that day, Khun sighed. He was pretty sure almost everyone knew he had a crush on Bam and was so whipped he’d do anything for him, but Bam himself somehow couldn’t come to the same conclusion. It made for a very difficult situation, as Khun himself couldn’t bring himself to confess but it seemed like Bam would never realise on his own.
Additionally, Bam suggested they get frozen peas, and Khun, still too distracted to comprehend what he had just said, tossed the peas into the cart without a second thought.
“I’m hap-pea you agree with my decision,” Bam said, face completely serious. “I ap-pea-tiate that very much.”
Rak cackled in glee, while Khun slowly turned his head towards the poker-faced boy.
“Bam,” he said softly, “No.”
As they made their way through the bustling aisles of the store, Khun noticed Rak disappearing more often and returning with the cart mysteriously filled with more and more bananas. I’ll just return it later, he thought. He didn’t want to have to go through all that again. At least Rak hadn’t tried to get into the cart this time, though he could sense his displeasure. He was too large to be allowed into the store in his normal size, so he had to settle for shuffling around around people who kept knocking into him as they didn’t see him due to his small form. Every time it happened, and it happened very frequently, Khun would openly snicker at him, causing Rak to throw a fit, and Bam to frown at Khun and tell him that it wasn’t nice to laugh.
They made a stop at the canned goods section. Rak seemed to be slightly comforted by the fact that Khun hadn’t made him return the heap of bananas sitting in the cart, and to Khun’s immense relief, he was behaving quietly. Bam, however, was overly enthusiastic at the shelf of canned food in front of them.
“It says it’s baked beans, Khun! Is it beans that you’re supposed to bake? Why do they say it’s baked?” Oh, right. Bam had probably never seen anything of the sort in his life before.
“No, it’s been cooked already. It’s stored in cans so it can be kept for a longer period of time.”
Bam looked starstruck. Khun chuckled, amused that Bam was amazed by baked beans of all things.“It’s already cooked?” he gasped, clutching the can to his chest in wonder. “This too?” he flipped the can over to read the label, “Corned beef too?” Khun laughed and nodded.
“Can we?” Bam near-shouted and latched onto Khun’s arm in excitement.
“S-Sure,” Khun flushed, then shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was too preoccupied to question whether the pun Bam had casually thrown into his question was intentional. “That’s why we’re here. Canned food can last longer, which is advantageous as we don’t know when will be the next time we’ll get to stock up on food.” He tried hard to ignore Rak’s knowing grin.
Whether or not Bam had an effect on the number of cans bought would remain unknown, but what you needed to know was that Khun moved onto the other item on their list with way more cans of food than what was necessary.
On the way, they passed by a shelf of pet collars. Khun delighted in picking one out much to Rak’s horror. When Bam made to admonish him sternly, he winked at him playfully. Bam was oddly silent after that. The collar laid among the bananas, a blight upon Rak’s joy. Khun thoroughly enjoyed every glare Rak sent its way. Revenge was indeed sweet.
They went back to the fruits next, and to Rak’s further dismay, he watched as Khun fished all the bananas out of the cart. Instead, just to spite him, he grabbed a bunch of grapes and hightailed it out of there before Rak could restock. They also stopped to obtain marshmallows, as Bam had never had a s’more before, and since they had already accepted that Ehwa would be in charge of providing heat for food, they were set on changing that fact. Lastly, the three of them unspokenly agreed to buy mochi ice cream. It was just too good to pass up. They went to the counter to pay for their items, and Khun was glad that they had made it through the trip with no major damage done.
When they had returned, Rak immediately went up to his room, still sullen that Khun had denied him his bananas. Bam, bless his sweetness, stayed to help Khun unpack the groceries. They quickly finished shelving everything and Khun was about to leave when Bam spoke up.
“Khun! Wait!” He said, looking at the ground, refusing to meet Khun’s eyes. He was fumbling with his fingers and it was a while before he spoke up again. He snapped his eyes up to meet Khun’s, face blazing red.
“I-I’ve b-bean p-peeling like this for a while now. I’m udderly in love with you! I know this might sound cheesy and I hope I’m not meatstaken, but I think we’d be grape together. The s’more I get to know you, the s’more I love you! I love you very mochi!” He hid his tomato-red face in his hands.
After Khun had gotten over the initial shock, he smiled affectionately at him, making the already blushing boy go even redder, if that was possible.
“Bam,” he said gently, “Did you just confess to me with food puns?”
“Uh. Yes?”
“Then,” Khun gave his answer, not believing himself what he was about to say next, “Don’t go bacon my heart.”