Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 16: Unclaimed Red Marker

"Helloooo!" Olivia calls out the opening to the sketch, the others all making some kind of noise in response. "Today we're doing this super fun thing, which Courtney is definitely not going to just win because she's the only one of us that can draw-"

"Hey, I can draw, I just didn't know Pokemon last time!" Keith interrupts her.

"Okay, well, we're drawing characters from memory again, but this time it's like, Disney-Pixar animated movie characters because we do actually all know those!"

"Oh, I don't watch movies," Noah buts in, straight-faced.

"That's a complete lie," Courtney calls him out, before they slide seamlessly into the first round of their competition, with Olivia as judge. She reads out the character – Buzz Lightyear – and they all rush to drawing. Damien and Keith fight over a blue marker, and Shayne makes a show out of leaning over Courtney's shoulder to look at what she's doing.

"I know you know what Buzz Lightyear looks like, idiot," she tells him, pushing back against him to get him off her shoulder. He laughs and relents, but they stay pressed together. If they're revealing in all of two or three minutes, why hide now?

"Okay, Damien and Keith lose for fighting over a colour that they didn't even need," Olivia tells them as soon as the buzzer goes off and she holds up the printout handed to her from off-camera. "Noah... pretty close, I guess?" she continues, as he holds up an angular but colour-correct estimate of the toy.

"Look, Shayne kept distracting me, but what I did get done is clearly right," Courtney defends as she holds up her own drawing, an accurate torso and head with one arm and no legs. For his part, Shayne has gotten close but with way too many green stripes and pink instead of purple.

"Don't blame me because you're slow, baby," he teases. It's not part of their plan, it's a genuine slip up – but hey, why not? None of the squad point it out, and she merely laughs and jabs him in the side as Olivia continues on with her judging duties.

"Okay, I think I gotta give it to Noah!" Olivia decides, and Courtney reaches down to give Shayne's thigh a quick squeeze under the table while she figures the shot chosen will be of Noah up the other end of the table, acknowledging that his slip-up is okay.

"Okay, next one, I'm judging!" Shayne enthuses, making an excessively big deal out of grabbing the cards from in front of Olivia and flipping the top one over, pressing it against his chest as he side-eyes the rest of them, before quickly peering at it.

"Mrs Incredible/Elastigirl – go!" he calls, and the others all lunge for the red pen. Round two is their planned round – Courtney has to actually do well enough for Shayne to pick her, but she lets the others fight over red as she grabs the black marker closest to her and quickly throws down an outline of the superhero in question. She grabs the second unclaimed red marker fifteen seconds into the round, looking straight at the cameras as she does so, before she starts using it to fill in the details. Shayne nudges a yellow her way a little while later, as he peers over the other direction to Keith's drawing-in-progress and makes a joke about the time running down, as if to distract them.

"Time's up!" he calls twenty seconds later after a signal from behind the cameras, and he reaches over Courtney, pressing closer to her in the process, to take the print-out correct version of the character while Damien and Olivia try to pry the pen out of Keith's hands to stop him from drawing after the time limit.

"Okay, so this is Mrs Incredible – Noah?" he asks, starting up the other end of the table as he settles back against the couch.

"Well, I took artistic liberty, because you see, Mrs Incredible's superpower isn't brute force or strength like Mr Incredible, it's stretching, which is creative, so she definitely would approve of my choices-" he holds up an admittedly almost-accurate version, albeit in lime green.