Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 114: Kid-Friendly

Courtney misses their Monday morning planning meeting for her final wedding dress fitting. The dress fits perfectly – she hadn't attempted any kind of wedding-related exercises, she'd just stayed with her usual things, so there wasn't much of an assumption there would be any changes needed the week of – and she manages not to cry over it, this time, instead trying to push herself into the mental headspace for work.

Shayne is in the meeting, although he leans back in his chair and listens quietly for most of the time, letting everyone else run through ideas and sketches. Smosh had – probably against their better judgment – scheduled an intense sketch shooting week for the following week. The week that both he and Courtney would be on their honeymoon and very much not available for filming. So, the sketches had little to do with him.

"So, with Games, we have a few shoots this week," Kevin starts, after they've finished talking the main channel, sometime into their meeting. "We're doing a mystery top hat shoot tomorrow morning – Shayne, Damien, Courtney, Ian and Kimmy are confirmed for that shoot, but we could do with a sixth player."

"What's the game?" Shayne asks, pulling out his phone and typing out a text as he does.

"Gang beasts – just some indie button mash fighting thing with these brightly coloured blob-people, for anyone that doesn't know," Kevin answers, Shayne nodding.

"So... Chris and Julie and the kids are in town this week for obvious reasons," Shayne muses, eyes quickly flicking down when he feels his phone vibrate against his hand, "and Chris has just confirmed that Nathan has already been asking if he gets to film anything this time, so..."

"Ooh, like, even from a business sense, that kid pulls in the views," Ian comments his approval, "we should probably pay him. Or, well, pay his parents. Legitimately might get HR to look up the laws around paying minors."

"Would we come up with a new Damien and Shayne show to add him into?" Damien queries the details.

"I was thinking... could our sixth mystery top hat player be Nathan?" Shayne offers, instead, "something like Gang Beasts is going to be fine for him, and the hat stuff is silly fun anyway."

"Oh, yeah, that sounds great, yeah, you can talk to him and Chris to make sure but for now we'll pencil him in as the sixth player?" Kevin offers, Shayne nodding in response and zoning out again for a moment as he types out the request to Chris.

"Nathan is on board! I have no idea how it'd work, but Rosie heard me talking to him about it and wants to know if she can do something too..." Chris' text comes back, only a few minutes later, Shayne wracking his brain for how that could work for a moment until he is disrupted by someone stepping into the room, instinctively turning to watch Courtney enter.

"Hey, Court! How was the final fitting?" Kimmy greets her, excitedly.

"It was good!" Courtney replies, grabbing the one free chair across the table from Shayne, beside Kimmy.

"I guess we can't ask anything else since Shayne's here, huh?" Ian muses. Shayne, for his part, shrugs.

"Yeah, and also I'm trying to be in work mode not wedding mode," Courtney confirms, before gesturing for them to get back to their meeting.

"Oh, actually-" Shayne speaks up, "Chris confirmed Nathan is on board to join the mystery top hat, so that's all good, but we also now have a jealous Rosie that'd like to join in something. Not sure how that'd work though, she's likely to get a little shy in front of the cameras..."

"Okay, I mean..." Kevin trails off, glancing down to his notes in front of him, "a lot of the other stuff on this week is not super kid friendly-"

"I'm filming a just like me playing Sims 4 thing this week, right?" Courtney speaks up, "I think that was-"