Chapter Text
Ruby and Jade Pike get their first cell phones when they turn twelve years old.
It’s mostly a (long-awaited) birthday gift from their parents, but if Hayden and Jackie are pressed on the matter, they’ll admit the phones are also a “sorry we uprooted your lives at a difficult age to move to Ottawa” bribe.
It’s not that the girls haven’t had any ways to communicate before this. They’d been wearing smart watches connected to Jackie’s phone for a while now. But cell phones were different. Cell phones had less monitoring and more freedom.
Cell phones were also a sign of maturity and trust, Jackie explained to them as they drove to the pre-season barbecue at the Hollander-Rozanov residence, and they were expected to behave and set good examples.
Hayden and Jackie were nervous about the party. Not all of the faces would be new to the Pike family, but this was the first function where Hayden was there as a teammate and not a player who happened to be best friends with Shane Hollander.
Luckily, the Centaurs had a reputation for being one of the more welcoming teams in the league.
They walked into the backyard to a round of well-natured chirps at Hayden’s expense. Wyatt Hayes put a bottle of beer in Hayden’s hands. Cassie Bood immediately came to steal Jackie away to settle an argument.
And that’s how the four Pike kids were left unattended within five minutes of entering their Uncles’ house.
***
Ruby and Jade opened their birthday presents on Thursday, during a dinner with the combined Pike-Hollander-Rozanov household. The new house was big and filled practically to the brim with boxes in every room.
The adults, incorrectly, thought the combination of pre-bed tablet time for the younger two and brand new phones to set up for the twins was a guarantee of time without little ears listening.
They failed to take into account the many hiding spots amongst the box labyrinth of the lower level.
Which is how all four Pike kids overheard their Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya announce they had officially started the adoption process.
They were crouched behind a veritable wall of boxes containing most of the family room when they heard Shane say, “We finally submitted all the paperwork earlier this week.”
Jade locked eyes with Ruby as soon as they heard Jackie cry, “A baby!”
Arthur visibly brightened when Shane said, “Or an older kid, we haven’t completely decided yet.”
Ruby had to slap her hand over Amber’s mouth when Ilya said, “Yes, we are thinking maybe older. Would be nice for them to be close in age to their cousins, I think.”
When Hayden had finally overcome his shock to ask questions and share his excitement, his kids weren’t around to hear it. They were running upstairs on silent, socked feet to Amber’s half-furnished bedroom.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Jade turned to her siblings and said with a deadly seriousness, “Okay, official Pike Kid meeting starting right now.”
“We’re going to be cousins!” Amber cheered
“And we are absolutely not supposed to know that,” Ruby said. “We cannot blow this secret. Dad already blew the last one.”
“What was the last one?”
“That Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya got married and kiss inside our house sometimes,” Arthur explained. “You were a baby so you don’t remember.”
Ruby scoffed, “Arthur, you were like four, you don’t remember that either.”
“Yes I do!”
“Hey!” Jade said, trying to get the train back on the tracks. “We need a plan.”
“What for?” Arthur asked.
Ruby and Jade locked eyes again. They’d been working hard on their twin telepathy recently. They had a brief conversation, mind-to-mind, before Ruby said, “We need a plan to make sure Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya are actually ready to be parents.”
Jade picked up her thread seamlessly, “Yeah, we like having them babysit because they let us get away with anything we want. But Mom and Dad never do, which is why they’re parents and not Uncles.”
“I think Mom would be an Aunt,” Arthur said, though he wasn’t sure.
“Not the point,” said Ruby.
“The point is they seriously need our help. And now,” Jade held up her new phone, “We have a new tactic.”
“You’re doing too much twin stuff,” Amber whined. “Say it normal.”
Arthur rolled his eyes, “Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya need us to teach them how to be parents. Except we don’t know they’re going to be parents, and we’re not allowed to tell them we know that. And also Ruby and Jade have phones now so we have more tools.”
Amber stuck her tongue out at him, “Just tell me what you need me to do, okay?”
***
Their mission starts as soon as their parents are whisked away by other adults at the party. The Centaurs as a team are not any bigger than the Voyageurs had been, but they tend to bring their whole families to parties, and groups of people are spilling off the deck and around the backyard. There are kids running everywhere, which provides excellent cover for the Pike kids.
Amber strikes first. Thankfully, she has an easy mark, because while she is willing to go along with any schemes to help her uncles, she also really wants to go play with Anya and the Boyle kids.
Holmberg is locked into a very serious discussion about Western Conference hockey gossip with two players Amber doesn’t recognize when she crawls behind his chair. He’s leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and really, he’s making her job too easy.
Amber slips her arm through the back of the chair and pulls his phone out of his back pocket. It had nearly fallen out on its own, and Amber has a moment of wishing this job had been a little harder. Still, she makes a clean getaway, stuffing the phone into her sweatshirt pocket and making her way back inside to the living room where Jade is waiting for her.
“You got it?” Jade asks before the door even closes behind her.
Amber pulls it out of her pocket and hands it over. “He didn’t even know I was there!”
“Good job.” Jade takes the phone and slides it open, no passcode, and sends herself a text before quickly deleting it. She hands the phone back to Amber and pulls out her own to add Holmberg’s number as a contact. “Okay, now give it back to him and you can go play.”
Amber skips back over to the circle of hockey players, walks right in front of Holmberg and holds his phone out to him. “This is yours!” She says with a grin.
Holmberg blinks at her, and says, “You’re one of the Pike kids.”
Amber nods. “Can you take your phone? I want to go play hide and seek with Anya and the other kids.”
“Oh, sure. Thanks?” He pauses for a moment, turning the phone over in his hands. “Wait, where did you get this?” But Amber has already joined in the game on the grass.
***
They let Arthur handle Luca Haas, because everyone, even the Pike kids, know Haas is basically incapable of being mean off the ice.
Luca is sitting on one of the outdoor couches with Troy when Arthur appears at his elbow. It’s one of Hayden’s least favorite tricks, but it makes Luca (and Troy) jump nearly out of their skin when they notice he’s there.
“Can I see your phone?” Arthur asks, without preamble. Ruby instructed him to make the encounter as unsettling as possible. Arthur’s relieved that means he can skip all the polite small talk Jackie has been working on teaching him.
“Mine?” Luca asks, looking around as if Arthur isn’t staring directly at him.
Arthur nods. Luca hands over his phone. Arthur nods again, this time in thanks, then spins on his heel and walks away to where Ruby is waiting for him, out of sight behind the grill.
“Nice work,” Ruby says, tapping the screen to keep it lit while she sends herself a text and then deletes it off the phone. “How’d you get him to unlock it?”
Arthur shrugs, “I just waited until he already had it opened and then asked for it. He just handed it over.”
Ruby grins and gives it back to him. Arthur promptly turns around and marches back to the couch with Luca and Troy.
“I brought it back,” he announces, unnecessarily.
“Thank you?” Luca says, taking the phone from his hands.
Troy tracks them both with his eyes. “You’re Pike’s kid, aren’t you?”
“Yup.”
As Arthur turns to walk away and find something to drink he hears Troy say, “Sure, that might as well happen.”
***
Ruby sets her eyes on Young once she sees Arthur hand back Haas’ phone. He’s been moving around the party with a high-energy grin Ruby is sure she can match. She tails him for a while, watching him drink a full beer (definitely not his first) and about half of another one. He leans against the railing, eyes scanning for a new conversation to join in, and that’s when Ruby strikes.
“Can I have a sip of that?” She asks, smiling.
Young looks around for an adult. He doesn’t find one. He realizes, with a dawning horror, he might be the adult in this conversation. This plays out clearly on his face and Ruby plans to exploit it.
“Of my beer?”
“Yeah! Please?”
“No! I’ve already sipped out of it, that’s like, gross.” Young makes a face.
Ruby scrunches her eyebrows like she’s thinking really hard, “That’s your only problem? You can go get another one. There’s like, a million in the cooler.”
“Yeah, sharing drinks is how you get mono…Wait how old are you? Also who are you?”
“I’m Ruby.”
“Okay, Ruby,” Young says slowly, clearly trying to think through the haze of beer and late afternoon sunshine. “Why do you want a sip of my beer?”
Ruby shrugs, “Just curious what it tastes like. My dad doesn’t let me have it and you seemed cool, so I thought I would ask.”
“Who’s your dad?”
“Hayden Pike.” There’s no point in denying it.
“Oh my god!” Young yells, “You’re like a little kid. I can’t give you beer!”
“I’m twelve!” Ruby argues, because, really, she and Jade are like the oldest kids at this party. “But fine,” she continues. “If you’re going to have that little chill, can I see your phone instead?”
Young grumbles, “I can be chill. I just don’t want Cap to murder me for giving you beer.” But he pulls out his phone, opens it, and hands it over.
Ruby takes it, surprised that worked. She thinks this operation should have been harder. She starts sending herself a text message, trying to type as quickly as she can.
Luck is firmly on the side of the Pike kids today, because as she sends the text, Bood walks over and says, “Why is Cap going to murder you?”
“He’s not! I didn’t give Pike’s kid beer so he and Hollzy have no reason to be mad at me.”
Bood laughs. The text goes through, Ruby quickly deletes it.
Bood says, “We’re going to circle back to you debating giving a kid a beer in a minute, but first we’re going to tell Pike that you’re more scared of Roz in a situation concerning his kids.”
Ruby hands back the phone. “Thank you!” She says in her sweetest voice. “Well, thank you for letting me use your phone camera to fix my hair. I don’t want a beer though, I don’t know why you offered me one.” It’s never too early to lay the groundwork for not getting in trouble. Besides, she thinks, who are the adults going to believe: her or a drunk rookie?
(It’s a dead tie. Wyatt organized an official poll when the story got back to Hayden that Young offered his daughter a beer and Young insisted Ruby asked for a sip. The Pike parents decide it’s not worth the argument and let Ruby get away with it.)
***
“Jade, you cannot blow this for us,” Ruby says, a few hours later. The sun has fully set, and some of the players with little kids are starting to pack up to leave. “We need LaPointe. You have to get his phone.”
“I know,” Jade says. “But he’s been sitting next to Uncle Shane all night! I haven’t had a good opening.”
“It’s too bad we can’t ask Uncle Shane to just give us his phone number.”
“Ruby, you’re a genius.”
It takes Ruby all of three seconds to understand Jade’s plan. “Oh my god, that could work. Okay, let me get my phone out and ready for it.”
Shane and LaPointe are sitting inside. Someone put on Moana a little while ago for the kids. Shane had walked inside for a breather and found LaPointe and Haas sitting on the floor with Boyle’s youngest, Milo, Susie and Amber. He’d chirped the rookies for living up to their reputation as children, and then gotten sucked into the movie himself.
Now, the movie is over. The actual children have either wandered away or been scooped up by their parents. The girls wait for Haas to go to the bathroom and then they move in to interrupt a conversation about Buffalo’s power play.
Ruby, phone open, plants herself behind the couch, leaning over the back, just slightly out of Shane’s peripheral vision.
Jade walks around the front and goes, “Uncle Shane! We need your help!”
Shane immediately turns to focus his attention on her. “What’s up, Jade?”
She waves her phone, “Do you know Uncle Ilya’s phone number? I thought I saved it on Thursday, but I must have deleted it accidentally and Dad won’t give it to me and I can’t find Uncle Ilya.”
Shane rattles off the number without hesitation, then says, “Ilya’s talking to Wyatt in the kitchen.”
Before he can realize he said the number way too fast for anyone to write it down, Jade says, “You have it memorized?!”
Shane nods slowly, like he isn’t sure why that’s impressive.
Ruby pipes up from behind him, “Do you know Dad’s phone number?” Shane nods and recites it.
Jade asks, “Wait this is fun. What about Mom’s?”
Shane knows that one too. The girls start running through the names of players they know; some are harder than others but he gets them all.
LaPointe joins in easily, supplying names to the girls’ descriptions of players they don’t know as well. “Tall with the funny mustache” Abbott, second line defensemen. “Wearing that weird green hat” Gaines, backup goalie. “Kept calling Uncle Ilya ‘bro’” Dykstra.
When the only players left are the rookies, Jade doesn’t even have to prompt him. He says, “Hollzy, you gotta do me and the boys.”
Shane nods, he’s been taking this game very seriously. Jade knew he would. He gets out Haas and Young without issue. Then he pauses on the last two digits of Holmberg’s number, but LaPointe confirms he’s right on his own phone. And then there’s one player left.
“I know it, just give me a minute.” Shane says, gaze drifting to the ceiling like the answer is written up there. Jade gnaws on the inside of her cheek, worried this plan isn’t going to work. “Okay, it’s…”
He gets a number out. Ruby makes eye contact and nods, she got the whole number.
LaPointe is grinning, “Man, that was impressive. I think we got the whole team! How do you have space for all that in your head? I swear, I barely remember my own phone number sometimes. Especially when I’m trying to give it to a girl in a bar.”
Shane looks at Jade, like she knows what to say to that. Jadę swoops in to give Shane a quick hug and says, “Thank you!” before she and Ruby head back outside to raid the last of the dessert table.
***
They spend all day on Sunday crafting their first message. Arthur and Amber are helping, all of them piled on the bed in Amber’s room again. Amber doesn’t care to be involved in the day-to-day part of the plan, but she’s on board for Pike Kid Meetings to be debriefed. Jade and Arthur are nearly positive they figured out how to use an email address and get Arthur involved via his tablet.
Ruby sends the text right as Hayden calls up the stairs that dinner is ready.
***
Pike Kids Are Smarter Than You
5:47 pm
Ruby added Jade and Arthur to the chat
Jade added Holmberg, Haas, Young and LaPointe to the chat
Ruby
We need to talk about Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya.
They are NOT ready to have a kid. So we need to make sure they’re ready by the time the baby arrives.
Jade
Also literally all of you need better phone security, this was way too easy.