Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 60: Valuable

It's not exactly ideal to have to jump straight back into a hectic filming schedule the day after they fly back from Colorado – or two days after, for Shayne, given he has one last Goldbergs day to get a couple fixed shots before they break for Summer on the Monday. The holiday helps, though: they start from a more relaxed base, more able to compartmentalise the work and the personal and to handle everything that starts being thrown at them to do for work.

Monday and Tuesday are devoted sketch days: they get through a couple of big EBEs and a fake commercial about TikTok eboys that has Courtney dressing up as a dude, a slightly more naïve and much less sexualised internet persona than Brianna Boho. Later in the week is devoted to Games videos, though, and it runs a little quicker.

They had been offered a partnership with a new game-creation platform around their past Summer and Winter Games competitions, for one video, and they take it with pleasure, Matt and Sarah dressing up in their ref outfits to stand in the background while Damien, Ian, Courtney and Shayne take the four computers.

They do the games in order: a kind-of shooter to represent their first summer games at the beach house first. There's less environment to play on this one, given they'd mostly just done the games standing out on the public beach, but it's still a nice setting the company has created for them. It doesn't escape either Courtney or Shayne that the time on the beach was the first time they ever really talked, and they didn't even talk much directly to each other. But it was Shayne's first existence in the Smosh world, and they were just acquaintances back then but now they were engaged. A lot had changed.

Camp is second, and the company has remade the whole facility they stayed and filmed at. The four of them spend more time running around the setup than actually filming the bit where they play the game, although neither Matt nor Sarah mind, both leaning over their computers to watch as they explore the virtual campground. Winter and Wild West are much the same – the environments are amazing, the games are okay, and they waste probably a little too much time running around.

Apocalypse is their final, because they have every reason to skip over We Blew It, although Matt acknowledges its existence for the sake of preventing any comments asking where it was. The game is a little less directly connected to what they'd actually done, effectively being a CoD-style prop hunt, but they happily jump into it. They play a practice round where Ian and Courtney are decimated as the props within a few minutes, letting Shayne and Damien take the first round as props for the actual video.

"Why am I so LARGE," Ian complains, at the start of his and Courtney's round as props, cycling between a dumpster, a fridge and a bathtub before trying to wedge himself on top of a staircase, barely hidden. Damien discovers and shoots him quickly, while Courtney stays silent, her own small prop helping her jump between pretty decent hiding spaces.

She feels Shayne looking at her over her shoulder a few minutes into the round, eyes looking over to confirm his glance over to her screen before he has a chance to look back at his own.

"Don't look at my screen, Shayne, you asshole!" she calls out, admonishing him, and he laughs in response as he runs across the map to stand his character right in front of where she is. "Don't fucking cheat!"

"I- I don't-" he starts, dissolving into laughter instead of actually forming a coherent sentence. Truthfully, he hadn't really intended to look over at her and cheat, it just kind of happened, so he waves his mouse around to aim his gun anywhere but at her.

"Shayne what is she, tell me!" Damien enthuses, from across the room.

"I'm not- I'm not gonna tell, out of resp-" he responds.

"Shayne, we're a TEAM, who are you loyal to?" Damien pushes again, cutting him off, and it causes both Shayne and Courtney to laugh and make faces at the screen.