Work Text:
The house rules started with Betsy. After one too many incidents where she’d walked into the kitchen and found Lisa and Carla kissing, she stuck up an A4 piece of paper on the fridge, reading:
House rules:
No kissing in the kitchen.
They’d laughed it off, but somehow the rule was enforced, mainly by Betsy furiously tapping the sign whenever Carla stepped within a foot of Lisa.
“I wasn’t going to kiss her,” Carla protests. “I was just trying to get to the cupboard.”
“Ok, that’s allowed then,” Betsy concedes.
Carla ushers Lisa to move out of the way, but not before the detective chances a quick kiss, just to annoy Betsy.
“I saw that!”
“Sorry,” Lisa shrugs. “I can’t help it.”
“Try harder.”
“Nope,” Lisa replies cheerfully, pressing a kiss to Betsy’s cheek and ruffling her hair as she leaves the kitchen.
There are no new rules until Lisa goes on a night out with her work colleagues. Carla comes downstairs the following morning to a half-eaten kebab festering on the kitchen table, emitting odours of garlic, grease and cheap meat which linger for days. And so the next rule is born:
No kebabs in the house.
The new rules come quicker after that.
After a meal Lisa spent ages cooking sits uneaten because she describes something a little too graphically for Carla and Betsy’s liking, Carla adds:
No talking about crime scenes at the dinner table.
When Carla, oblivious to Lisa’s flirting, kills the mood by recounting a tale from the factory, Lisa adds:
No talking about Sally in bed.
Following a particularly fiery argument which festered for days without being properly resolved, they all agree to add:
No going to sleep on an argument.
The list of rules then becomes a slightly passive-aggressive outlet for any disagreements - until they agree to reign it in.
No coming home late without calling first.
No ignoring texts.
No throwing pens at employees.
“Care to explain that one?” Lisa asks Carla, pointing to the latest addition, hastily scrawled in Betsy’s handwriting.
“She threw a pen at me,” Betsy chimes in. “It was really violent. You should arrest her.”
“She was being annoying,” Carla shrugs.
“Fair enough.”
Of course, sometimes Betsy is the target.
No stealing from the factory.
“It was a packet of biscuits, hardly the crime of the century,” Betsy says in her defense.
“Biscuits that were for everyone,” Carla argues back, pointing her fork at Betsy over the dinner table.
“I was hungry!”
“You ate the whole packet! In less than 10 minutes!”
Lisa stands up and quickly adds another rule to the list:
No fighting at the table.
A few days later Betsy adds one that leaves Lisa horrified:
Be quiet.
“What does that mean?” Lisa asks, reading over Betsy’s shoulder as she writes it.
“You know what it means,” Betsy says simply, pointedly avoiding eye contact with her mother.
“What does it say?” Carla squints to read it from the other room.
“Be quiet,” Lisa calls back to her.
“Be quiet? You’re one to talk? You stomp about the house, slam doors, shout every sentence,” Carla argues with a pointed look at Betsy.
“I meant at night.”
“At night? When do we - oh,” Lisa says slowly, the penny dropping.
“Oh,” Carla agrees, sharing a guilty look with Lisa. It’s possible they might have gotten a little bit carried away last night.
“Bets, I’m so sorry,” Lisa begins, wishing the ground would swallow her up. Betsy makes a hasty exit, mumbling something about needing to get to college early. As soon as she’s out the door, Carla bursts out laughing. “It’s not funny Carla! She’s probably traumatised,” Lisa scolds.
Sometimes Lisa writes rules for Betsy, which are usually ignored.
No skipping college.
No stealing of the emergency lagers.
No using ‘I got shot’ as an excuse to not clean up after yourself.
Mostly, the rules are silly.
No talking before coffee.
No going in the garden when Sally and Tim are in the hot tub.
No accepting invitations to use the aforementioned hot tub.
After a few too many glasses of wine, Carla and Lisa get a bit too soppy and use the remaining space at the bottom of the sheet of paper for one last rule.
We must say ‘I love you’ at least once a day.
This prompts gagging and eye rolls from Betsy the following morning. “Do you always have to get so drippy when you drink wine?” she asks, pointing at the rule which Lisa had, admittedly, completely forgotten she’d written.
“Sorry,” Lisa shrugs.
“I’m crossing it off,” Betsy says, looking around for a pen.
“No you’re not,” Lisa replies, wrapping her arms around Betsy. “And it applies to you too, by the way.”
“No thanks,” Betsy grumbles, trying to extract herself from her mum’s embrace.
“Ah ah, I'm not letting you go until you say it,” Lisa laughs, keeping a firm grip on Betsy.
“I love you,” Betsy mumbles finally.
“I love you too,” Lisa replies happily, pressing a kiss to the side of her daughter’s head as she releases her from her grasp.
It’s a few days later that Lisa finds a very grumpy Carla in the kitchen, sulking over her cup of coffee.
“You ok?” Lisa asks
“You forget yesterday,” Carla says simply, nodding towards the list of rules.
“Ah,” Lisa says, catching on. “Can I just say it twice today to make up for it?”
“Sure,” Carla replies, a small smile creeping onto her face.
“I love you,” Lisa whispers as she leans down and presses a kiss to Carla’s lips. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”