A/N This is just a random idea based on the 'Unplugged' episode of Modern Family (which is 2x05). Please let me know if you're interested in me posting the second part XD
Emma brought the fork slowly to her mouth and looked around the table as the delicious taste of lasagne exploded on her tongue, a taste that she had become more than used to during her marriage.
As she looked around, the silence weighed heavily upon her and she tried to clear her throat covertly, though it yielded no results and she dramatically rolled her eyes. Looking over to her wife, she waited a few moments to see if the brunette would realise that she was being stared at, but the woman just continued to press buttons on her phone.
Finally, the blonde decided that she wanted attention far too much to remain silent, so she cleared her throat more loudly and said, "Regina."
The mayor looked up from the device in her hand, on which she had been replying to messages from her secretary, with raised eyebrows as her immersion was broken and she replied, "yes?"
Emma just motioned towards the rest of the people at the table and Regina turned her attention to their children.
The twenty-six-year-old Henry was shovelling food into his mouth with his eyes glued to his iPad, while his fourteen-year-old twin sisters, Dawn and Tamsin, were each texting with one hand as they took small bites of their dinner at the same time.
Looking back to her wife, Regina realised that the saviour was the only one who hadn't brought a device to the table, taking a deep breath, she said, "I was dealing with a rescheduling issue…"
"Can't you do that after you've asked me about my day?" Emma pouted.
Regina tilted her head with a smirk forming on her face. The pout almost certainly meant that her wife was in a rather childish mood, hence the sudden need for attention. It wasn't as if this wasn't how the family spent at least a few of their dinners a week. It just so happened that on that day, Emma hadn't had any new messages to her phone.
Taking a deep breath, she pressed the lock button on her phone and asked, "how was your day?"
"Uneventful…" the sheriff shrugged, causing the former Evil Queen to roll her eyes while shaking her head.
Before she could try to make a quip about just how ridiculous she was being, her phone let out a small beep and her eyes shot to it.
Emma watched her carefully, her emerald eyes daring the woman to do what she knew she was about to do.
Regina sighed and reached forward to pick up the device to answer the message, but before she could even read the first word, a white cloud engulfed her phone and she stared at the empty space where it had been, before looking back up at the blonde with narrowed eyes.
"What happened?!" came from the other end of the table, along with synchronised sounds of outrage from the two brunette twins. "I was replying to an e-mail from my publisher, ma!"
"Well if you had been at all aware of your surroundings, you would have heard me say this same thing to your mom…you can reply to messages after dinner so that you can pay your family the attention that they deserve," Emma smirked while crossing her arms.
Henry, Tamsin and Dawn each looked at her in disbelief for a moment, before they each turned their gazes to their brunette mother, all of them silently asking her to tell the saviour that she shouldn't have done that.
For a moment, Regina considered that she could just poof all of their devices back to her, but then she remembered an argument that she and Emma had when the twins were younger. Emma had gone against a punishment that she had issued and given Tamsin a cookie after she had drawn on the wall and they had agreed that they would always present a united front. Unfortunately, that meant that she would have to go along with whatever plan she could tell the other woman was concocting.
"Your mother is right; we should all pay attention to each other during family time…" she sighed.
"Hypocrite," Tamsin mumbled, almost inaudibly, crossing her arms as she fell back against the chair.
"What was that?" Regina asked warningly, which instantly had the teen swallowing hard.
"Nothing," she replied instantly.
"She called you a hypocrite," Dawn supplied before their mother could just drop it.
Tamsin rolled her eyes and threw her arm out quickly to hit her sister.
But the other brunette could retaliate, Emma held up her hand to stop the impending fight and said, "can we please focus on the real issue here?"
"Well we don't have any screens to look at and we have nothing to talk about," Henry replied, "so what are you actually planning, ma?"
Emma sighed and looked between each person, who all looked pissed off to have their devices taken away from them and she realised that perhaps her little joke was actually a real issue in their family. It wasn't as if they weren't capable of communicating with one another and they certainly had meals when none of them even attempted to look at their devices. But now that she thought about it, she realised that these types of meals were becoming few and far between, especially since Tamsin and Dawn had hit their teens.
The blonde opened her mouth as she desperately tried to think of something that would help this situation. She knew that she could easily ban devices at the table, but that would just make them want to get away from dinner as quickly as possible.
Looking over to Regina, who was looking at her just as expectantly as the other Swan-Mills family members, and an idea sparked in the saviour's mind.
"How about a bet?"
That seemed to get the attention of everyone at the table and Regina bit the inside of her cheek as she desperately tried to remind herself that they had to be united, no matter if her wife was being an idiot.
"What can of bet?" Henry asked cautiously after he had exchanged a look with his sisters, instantly seeing that they were just as interested as he was.
"For the next week, none of us are allowed to us any electronics and the last person to cave will win," Emma said triumphantly.
"Win what?" Tamsin asked.
Emma's shoulders slumped when she realised that she hadn't fully thought this through. There was definitely not any one thing that everyone would want so she blew out a breath and said, "you get to choose."
Regina looked at her warningly as their children considered and the blonde just shook her head as if to say that she had complete control over the situation.
"I want mom's Mercedes," Henry said almost immediately.
The oldest brunette in the room widened her eyes and looked over to her wife, trying desperately to put all of her feelings into her eyes.
Emma nodded to her, but still turned back to Henry a moment later and said, "deal."
"Emma," Regina hissed.
The sheriff just shook her head again and then looked over to the twins questioningly.
"I want a new MacBook," Dawn said instantly.
"And Tamsin?"
"I want to be able to go on a date with Alex."
"Deal."
Regina was about to open her mouth to shut this down, but Henry interrupted her when he asked, "and what do you guys get?"
"We get three meals a week where no technology is allowed," Emma replied with a grin at the thought.
Tamsin, Dawn and Henry quickly exchanged looks, obviously trying to decide whether it would be worth it. However, it didn't take long for the Swan-Mills children to all nod their agreement since they all wanted the chance to win.
"So what are the rules?" Henry pressed, "I need my laptop to write…"
"You used to write everything by hand," Emma shot back.
"We need the internet to do our homework," Dawn added.
"The library has encyclopaedias and Belle is basically better than the internet for research," the saviour replied and then she looked over to her wife for her input.
Regina sighed and said, "both of us have to use technology for work."
"We can both do work by hand, just have your secretary print things off for you."
The brunette woman took a deep breath and said, "can we speak in the kitchen for a moment?"
Emma nodded and dutifully followed the older woman out of the room and into the kitchen, where none of their children would be able to hear them.
"What the hell are you doing?" Regina hissed once she believed they were safely out of earshot.
"Don't you think that we have far too much technology in our house? When's the last time we all had a conversation without at least one person looking at a screen all the way through?"
Regina blew out a breath as she desperately tried to think of the last time, "the twins birthday," she said after a few seconds.
"That was five months ago," Emma deadpanned.
The brunette frowned for a second and then sighed, "fine, we can try your little bet, but there are three problems…"
"What?"
"Dawn already has last year's MacBook, Tamsin is not going on a date and I am not giving Henry my car!"
"Don't worry, Gina," Emma said soothingly as she stepped closer to the older woman and placed her hands on each of her arms, "it won't be a problem."
"How do you figure?"
"Well Dawn's request was for a new laptop, so obviously she isn't going to last long without technology. Henry hates writing by hand since he realised that it's so much faster to type. And Tamsin isn't going to be able to go long without texting someone."
"And you can go a week without technology?" Regina asked sceptically.
"I can totally go a week…and you grew up in the Enchanted Forest, so even if I lose, you can win this for us!"
The brunette bit the inside of her cheek and just nodded her agreement, choosing not to bring up the fact that it had been three decades since she'd had to live without technology.
"I suppose this would be a good idea..."
"It's a genius idea," Emma corrected, to which Regina rolled her eyes to steal a peck from her wife's lips.
"You're an idiot…we need to go and set out the rules," she laughed.
The blonde nodded and motioned for both of them to walk back into the dining room.
As soon as they did, they caught the attention of the four Swan-Mills children who all looked at them expectantly.
"We're going to have a technology ban for a week," Regina announced, "no laptops, iPads, gaming devices or anything that would give you access to the internet. If you need to talk to someone, you will need to call them on the landline. And your mother can only use her cell phone to answer emergency calls from the station."
Henry, Tamsin and Dawn all nodded their understanding and Regina looked over to Emma to see if she agreed with the rules and she actually grinned slightly when she saw just how excited the other woman looked at what was about to happen.
"And if we lose if we go online before next week?" Henry asked, "even if it's for something important?"
"You can e-mail your publisher to tell him you'll be off the grid for a week," Emma replied.
"And you think that he'll just accept that?"
"He's used to dealing with writers, he'll just assume that it's part of your process."
Henry sighed and just nodded, looking over to his sisters for their input.
"So we're supposed to do our homework by hand?" Dawn asked.
"It won't kill you for one week," Emma said, which caused her daughter to sigh heavily.
Finally, they looked at Tamsin who just shrugged and said, "I can go a week if it means I can go out with Alex."
"Then it's settled," Emma grinned before she walked over to her chair and fell into it happily as she brought up her fork and proceeded to finish her dinner.
-The next day-
Tamsin tapped her finger against the countertop and looked up at her mother on the other side of it.
"Does it always take this long to fry eggs?" she asked.
Regina looked up from the pan and quirked an eyebrow at the girl, "you'll probably find that things take a lot longer when you're not spending your time staring at your phone."
The twin propped her head up on her closed fist and continued to watch her mother, "what am I supposed to do with all this spare time?"
"Oh I don't know, read, write, perhaps some actual human interaction…"
"How is texting not human interaction? It's not like it's something you can do without an actual person on the other side of the line," Tamsin practically pouted.
"No one is actually stopping you dear, go ahead and get your phone," Regina smirked while she began placing breakfast portions onto each plate next to her.
Tamsin just shook her head and huffed, while two blondes entered the kitchen.
Dawn jumped onto the stool next to her sister and Emma walked around the counter so that she was standing behind Regina. The brunette smiled as she felt her wife's hands circled her waist and she tilted her head to allow the younger woman to place a kiss on her cheek.
"Morning beautiful," Emma said as she refused to release her hold on the mayor.
"Are they always this gross?" Tamsin asked, looking over to her identical copy.
Dawn nodded and reached over to grab her and her twin's breakfast, "yep," she replied and placed a plate in front of Tamsin.
Emma laughed at the disgust on both of their faces and she took a step away so that she was standing next to her wife.
"Can one of you go and get your brother for breakfast?" Regina laughed.
Dawn sighed as her sister bit into her toast, making it clear that she wasn't planning to go. She fell off the stool in search of Henry and sighed again once she got no reply when she knocked at his bedroom door.
"Henry?" she tried again, this time cracking the door open to see that he wasn't in his bed. For a moment, she considered just going down and telling her mothers that he must have gone out, but then her eyes were drawn over to the notepad and pen that seemed to have been thrown to the ground. Opening the door more fully, she looked over to his desk and smirked slightly when she saw a certain device missing from his desk.
As fast as she could she lunged forward and grabbed the notebook. Then she made it back to the kitchen and went straight out into the backyard before anyone could question what she was doing. The brunette teen was almost instantly climbing the ladder up to the treehouse. As soon as she reached the last rung, her ears were met with the sound of fingers hitting keys and her smirk deepened.
When she pulled herself fully into the treehouse, she saw Henry tapping furiously at his laptop with music flowed through his earphones.
It took him a full ten seconds to realise he wasn't alone as his gaze slowly drifted away from the screen and his fingers stilled and he looked at his little sister blankly.
Dawn grinned at him triumphantly and he yanked the earphones out, "how did you find me?"
"Mom sent me to get you for breakfast and I know you like to write up here," she replied, "but you forgot this…"
Henry sighed at the notebook in her hand and closed the lid of his laptop.
"Please don't tell anyone," he almost begged, "I tried using it, but it was crap. I need my laptop to write."
"You write in the books by hand," the younger Swan-Mills argued.
"With a magical pen that writes for me. Plus, it would be a waste of time to write everything hand and then type it up nest week, please don't tell."
"I want the new MacBook, so no," she chuckled as she made to go back to the ladder.
"Dawn, wait," he said desperately.
"What?" she asked.
"…I really want mom's car…and she hasn't even used it since you and Tamsin were born. You already have a MacBook…"
"And you already have a car," Dawn shot back.
"Not a Mercedes," he retorted.
The younger sibling was about to retort, but she was cut off when a purple smoke engulfed the laptop, leaving a post-it note in its place.
Henry's shoulders sagged and he picked up the note to show to Dawn.
'It's time for breakfast'.
Dawn smirked at him and he huffed as he motioned for her to move over to the ladder
A minute later, they each walked into the kitchen and Henry walked over to the counter to pick up his laptop.
"You couldn't even get through the morning," Emma tutted as her oldest child sat onto a stool with a huff.
The man didn't even attempt to reply and reached over to grab his breakfast, which he promptly started to shove into his mouth.
"How did you know?" Dawn asked, falling back onto her stool.
"You were holding a notebook and you looked very excited," Regina replied, smirking as Henry lifted up the lid of his laptop to continue typing. "Plus, you haven't been up to the treehouse in about two years. The pieces were not very hard to put together."
"I told you that you didn't need to worry about your car," Emma laughed.
"You guys suck," Henry mumbled, looking specifically at his amused sisters, "but at least I get to go on the internet."
Tamsin looked longingly at the browser he was scrolling through, but she quickly looked away and over to Emma.
"Can we go to school now?"
Regina quirked an eyebrow and said, "I don't believe you've ever been so insistent to leave the house."
"I need to go and make sure that my friends know I'm still alive. I haven't replied to messages in like twelve hours, they're going to be worried about me!"
"Okay," Emma laughed, "go and grab you and your sister's bags."
Tamsin nodded and did what she was told and her blonde mother motioned for Dawn to finish her food.
A few minutes later, Tamsin re-appeared at the door holding two backpacks, just as her sister finished chewing her last bite of toast.
Both twins waved to their brunette mother and Emma leaned over to kiss Regina.
"I'll see you later, babe," she said and waved to Henry, who just frowned at her.
-Two days later-
A knock at the door caught Regina's attention and she looked up from the thousandth piece of paper that she had looked over that day.
"Come in," she called.
The door knob turned and the mayor smiled at her secretary who was holding a large pile of papers in her hands.
"These are your e-mails from the last hour," Racheal explained while she walked over to place them on the desk.
Regina nodded and sighed at the same time. She had been honestly surprised when her secretary had agreed to a new method of doing things for a few days. In order for her to stay in the competition, her secretary had to print out every important message, so that she could handwrite a reply and then Racheal had to go back and physically reply to the message. Racheal actually hadn't really questioned the weirdness of it and Regina had to wonder whether the Swan-Mills family had passed the point of appearing strange to the rest of the town. Plus, when she considered it, the whole bet did seem like something that the saviour would want to do and as her wife, she was duty bound to go along with her little schemes. Of course, she assumed that it helped that she offered Racheal an extra vacation week for putting up with the ridiculousness of it all.
The secretary exchanged her pile of papers for the stack next to Regina, which was what she would be retyping for the next half an hour and she asked, "is this really worth it?"
"Well…if Dawn wins, then I just have to get her a new computer which really isn't a huge issue…but if Tamsin wins then I will be forced to allow her to go on a date. That isn't a precedent I would like to set…" Regina sighed as she reached up to take her glasses off by way of giving her eyes a brief break.
"And you don't think that Emma can win?"
"I can see it in her eyes that she misses Netflix." Regina chuckled.
Racheal laughed too and said, "well I hope you win."
"Let's hope that we win soon so that you can go back to doing your real job," Regina sighed.
"Out of curiosity, how is Emma getting her work done?" Racheal asked, just before she was about to turn on her heels to go back to her desk.
"I can only assume that she is playing trash bin ball, I hear that she's close to beating her father's record."
Racheal laughed again and this time actually left the room.
Regina watched her go for a moment, before she picked up her glasses and placed them back onto her nose, "five more days," she muttered and picked up the pen that she had used more in two days than she had in three months.
-Later that day-
"I got a B!"
Regina blinked at the shouting and looked across the table to Henry, who merely shrugged to tell her that he had no idea either. The pair of them had been sat in silence (with Regina being slightly envious at the sound of his typing) as they both worked at the dining room table. But the sound of shrieking throughout the house was more than enough to bring them out of their concentration.
A moment later, one of the twins appeared at the doorway, closely followed by her sister and mother.
Regina looked over to her amused wife before looking back to Dawn as she replied, "what?"
"I had a huge science paper this week and the book I got from the library must have been really outdated. My take on mitosis was incorrect in so many ways! Did you know that the term protoplasm is wrong? It's called a cytoplasm!"
Regina nodded slowly and said, "well that will teach you to check the date of the sources you use."
Dawn's mouth fell open slightly and she said, "this wouldn't have happened if I used the internet! I have never gotten a B in my life!"
"Which is why I think that you'll survive, dear."
"You're unbelievable," she groaned, before she clicked her fingers, causing her laptop to appear in her hands.
"Is this you giving up?" Emma asked with a smirk.
"I would rather wait for a new computer than fail school," the brunette mumbled as she began walking away while logging into her e-mails.
Tamsin smiled broadly and watched her go, before she looked between her mothers.
"I need some soap and a marker for an art project," she announced.
Regina frowned and Emma just shrugged.
"There's markers in my study and there should be new soap in your bathroom," the mayor replied.
Tamsin nodded and walked away in search of her desired items.
"Don't you think that you should be looking into that? When does she do her homework?" Henry asked after a moment.
"She does have more time on her hands," Regina replied with a frown as she tried to figure out what she could possibly need those items for.
"Okay," the male brunette smirked, "do you want me to get takeout from Granny's for dinner?"
"That would be great," Emma said as she reached into her pocket to hand him some money, "just get the usuals."
Henry nodded and closed the lid of his laptop before going off in search of his car keys.
"And you thought that we wouldn't win," the saviour chuckled after a moment as she fell into the chair next to her wife. "It's been two days and two of them have already given up."
"And you were sure that Tamsin would be the first to give up," Regina sighed, "plus, this is a ridiculous way of doing my work. I'm probably going to need to give Racheal more than one extra vacation week."
"You can give up if you want to, Gina, this is my thing…"
Regina sighed at the pout and reached across the table to interlace her fingers with the blonde's and she shook her head.
"As idiotic and disruptive as this is, it is a good idea. As long as we win it's a good idea…we definitely need to have more time together as a family with nothing getting in the way."
"You know, we can call this whole thing off and just make it a rule that they can't have their phones at the table," Emma suggested.
"They would just resent us and try to get away from dinner as soon as humanly possible…at least this way, we're proving some kind of point…"
The blonde nodded but after a moment she quirked an eyebrow and asked, "is there a reason that you seem to have had a change of heart?"
"Well…I honestly didn't think that Tamsin would last this long…I just wanted to prove to them how much they rely on technology…"
"Okay…so what's the problem?" the brunette asked.
"The new season of Orange is the New Black is on Netflix tomorrow…I don't have work tomorrow…"
"No, Swan," Regina said instantly, "you have to resist until Tamsin loses…"
"Technically only one of us has to outlast her."
"Emma," Regina said warningly, "I haven't been going along with this just so you can abandon your own idea. You can watch it in a few days."
"So what am I supposed to do tomorrow?" the blonde pouted.
"You can read…maybe do some paperwork."
"Day off," Emma quickly shot back.
"You can come to my office and help me with the extra work load that is completely your fault."
The saviour took in a deep breath and nodded, "I guess I could…are you sure that Racheal isn't going to want to hurt me?"
"She seems fine with the extra work-load, but it certainly isn't the most efficient way to do things…next time you do something like this, please make sure that you exclude work."
"Why do you think there will be a next time?"
"Well, I never thought that there would be a this time, so I'm just covering my bases," Regina chuckled as she brought her hand back and began collecting together the papers strewn across the table.
"Noted," Emma laughed and reached across to help the other woman, "but hopefully we won't need to do it again. I think the threat of it would be enough to make them stop at least for dinner, Henry hasn't brought his iPad to the table even though he already lost. Just one more kid and then it will all go back to normal."
"I never thought that I would say this about one of my children, but I sincerely hope that she gives up soon," Regina sighed.
A/N Please let me know what you thought XD