Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 18: Knows Me Best

They rush into a rapid shooting schedule only a couple of weeks later, because they're all heading off on their Try Not To Laugh Live Tour soon so they'll be out of the office for a while and everything needs to be ready to go before they leave. Their tour schedule isn't technically that long, but it ends up bleeding into the almost three-week break they take over Christmas/New Year, so they need to sort out a fair bit of content beforehand.

They film two Eat It or Yeet It episodes back-to-back on the Monday morning of their first shoot-heavy week, and when Olivia and Ian end up literally locking themselves in bathrooms throwing up after the second shoot, Courtney is incredibly glad for her role on the show. She makes such a comment partway through the second video, too, as Shayne spits out a weird drink concoction that she knows includes a whole lot of fish sauce.

"Hey, what's our stance on kissing on camera?" Shayne asks her, in response.

"I don't know, but right now, absolutely not," she replies with some force, making a show of jumping away from him and over to the other side of the table, although she's laughing as she does.

"What is your stance on kissing on camera? Because I mean, the cheek kisses and whatever are pretty regular for you guys around the office," Damien asks them after the cameras cut, and they shrug.

"Did I ever tell you Shayne's first stupid idea for going public?" Courtney gives a non-answer by changing the topic, as the group of them hangs around in the studio for a moment before the other participants are finished with their throwing up and they can move into shooting their next video.

"No?" Sarah pushes, intrigued.

"I was beating his ass at Smash Bros on Switch and he tried to get a round up on me – like, seriously, it was 4-0 in the final round – by trying to stay button mashing behind his back while he kissed me. It didn't work, I still won, but we figured that'd be a fun way to go public on games, just like, start making out in the middle of competing," she explains, shaking her head. "Ideally in a big group game like the mystery croc stuff, and no one would say anything about it at all, just really fuck with everyone."

"Careful, I'll tell 'em what your reply suggestion was," he teases her, as the others laugh, but she merely grins.

"My reply suggestion was he should get me on try not to laugh by saying something dirty. But, actually, I think I'm going to be better at not laughing at you now, because I'm way more used to seeing you shirtless," she answers, turning back to Shayne as she finishes, and it earns them a bit of teasing as they all head back to get ready for the next (slightly delayed, because of the vomiting) shoot.

"Well, we do have try not to laughs to film tomorrow and Wednesday, so..." Sarah trails off.

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"I genuinely don't know how I'm going to handle try not to laugh now," Shayne admits, when they're lying in bed later that evening.

"Really? You're so good at coming up with bits, I'm sure you can come up with something. It's not like I'm exactly good at not laughing when you make any joke whatsoever..." she trails off, and he grins.

"I know, and it's definitely easier than it was while we were hiding things but it's like... I don't know. Maybe I'm just overthinking it and I'll be fine when we actually do it."

"I'm just hoping I can come up with enough bits for, what, we're shooting three episodes in two days, right?" she confirms.

"Yeah, three this week. Few more before we leave too, I think," he replies, "the Rhett and Link one should be easy, they've got so much damn content that just playing off their stuff is bound to be good."