Chapter Text
1. Don't get involved in your teammate's problems.
"If you think I give a flying fuck about you, you've got another thing coming, jackass!"
Those were the words that greeted Babe as he entered the locker room on his first day of training camp. He figured it boded well for the beginning of his professional career.
"I honestly could not care less about you, you insufferable prick! I'm here for the team, not for you."
There were two dark-haired men in the middle of the room who were dangerously close to stepping on the team logo and had apparently lost all semblance of personal space in favor of getting their faces within inches of each other, presumably to better express their mutual hatred. Based on their stiff postures and clenched fists they probably wouldn't be sticking solely to words for very long. It had been a while since Babe had actually seen teammates try to fight each other, and never before the preseason had even gotten underway.
The Toccoa Airborne was shaping up to be an interesting team.
"That's Liebgott and Webster," Bill said in a low, conspiratorial voice. "They're the resident soap opera." He nudged Babe with his bag to get him moving in the direction of their stalls. Bill had, upon discovering that Babe was both from Philly and a fellow defenseman, formally announced that Babe was to be "his rookie" and that he had better prepare himself to be "fucking mentored." Given that they were also living together in a house owned by the team, Babe had been getting a lot of fucking mentoring already and training camp hadn't even begun yet.
"At least you can turn off a soap opera," a guy muttered darkly as they passed him.
Bill cackled and slapped him on the back.
"Hang in there, Skinny. Hey, you should be glad that the band's getting back together, you might be on the top line again!"
The guy, Skinny, looked poised to respond before he was cut off by one of the fighting pair yelling, "Why don't you just fuck off back to California already?"
"The team is in fucking Manchester now!"
Skinny gave them a pained look. "I think I'll take the second line with Dike again, if it's all the same to you."
"No!"
With swiftness that Babe found rather admirable at that time of morning Skinny was suddenly surrounded by three men giving him stern looks. Babe gave Bill a sidelong glance; with a smirk, Bill leaned in and explained, "Muck, Malarkey and Penkala. They're usually the third line. And they're the most superstitious guys on the team – well, after the goalies, anyway."
"Take it back," the redheaded one was demanding. When Skinny looked fit to protest he asserted more firmly, "You take that back right now or we are going to sit on you and make you take it back."
From the looks on their faces, they were utterly serious. With a world-weary sigh and a roll of his eyes, Skinny muttered, "Whatever, fine, I take it back."
"Now jump over the logo," the shorter one said, pointing to the floor in the middle of the room where the parachute and stylized A of the Airborne's logo lied.
Skinny balked and made a face, but his complaints were cut off by a new arrival saying, "You should do it, Skinny."
Carwood Lipton stood behind them, a hint of a smile on his face. Babe flinched and stood a little bit taller, holding tighter to the strap of his bag. He hadn't seen the team's coach since he met with the team to sign his contract last month; in the rush to move to Georgia and settle into the house he shared with Bill and their teammate Joe Toye, a forward, he hadn't really had a lot of time to meet with management – and admittedly, he wasn't really eager to. While Lipton had come off as extremely personable in their initial meeting, the general manager had...left something to be desired.
At any rate, Babe wanted to make the best impression possible on his new coach. The ECHL wasn't the walk-on league that it used to be, and with the team's NHL affiliation with the Thrashers, there was a real potential for upward movement if Babe played his cards right. Seeing as Babe had gone undrafted and had just aged out of major juniors, he was going to use all of the good hands he could get.
As if he had noticed him tense, Lipton glanced over at Babe and he nodded to him, his smile increasing a fraction before he looked back at Skinny and his scowl and said, "Think of it as helping team morale."
Skinny stayed still for a moment, closed his eyes and sighed deeply. When he opened them he grumbled, "Fine," and stalked to the middle of the room, executing a perfect long jump over the logo. There was a smattering of applause as he made his way back to his stall, grumbling to himself all the while.
When he made it back Lipton patted him on the shoulder and thanked him. Skinny seemed to perk up a little at that, at least.
Bill started nudging Babe towards their stalls at the back of the room again, saying, "C'mon, kid. Lip's gonna want us all seated and accounted for before his first pep talk of the season."
"What was all that about?" Babe asked under his breath as they reached their respective stalls. Considering that they would probably be doing a lot of talking and off-ice testing today, they didn't make any moves to change yet.
"Which part of it, Malarkey's line or the soap opera?"
In the middle of the room Webster and Liebgott had progressed to hissing in each other's faces, bodies pressed close enough to be touching from chest to knees. Babe couldn't hear what they were arguing about now, but from the look on the face of Talbert, Lipton's assistant coach who was currently and uncomfortably trying to separate the two, it was probably in Babe's favor not to hear them.
"Both, I guess."
"It's all the same thing anyway," said a man on Bill's right side. He leaned around Bill and stuck out a hand. "I'm Walter Gordon, but the guys all call me Smokey. I'll be in the defense corps with you. You're Heffron, right?"
"Yeah," Babe said, taking his hand, "Edward, but everyone calls me Babe."
"Huh. Well, it's better than Gonorrhea here, that's for sure." He elbowed Bill in the side and then cut off his protests by continuing blithely, "The answer to your question all ties back into the woefully sordid tale of Webster and Liebgott."
"Smokey thinks he's some sort of writer in his spare time," Bill grumbled. The smile Smokey gave him in reply was smug and beatific.
"As I was saying, it all started about two years ago. Webster centered the top line with Skinny and Liebgott as his wingers. They were easily one of the best lines in the division, and then, out of nowhere, Webster gets traded for Norman Dike."
He and Bill both made a point of crossing themselves.
Babe raised an eyebrow. "I take it he wasn't popular?"
Smokey shuddered exaggeratedly and shook his head. "That horror story is for another day. Suffice it to say, we're all very glad he's gone, and we don't want anything to ever bring him back. Ever. Which is why Malarkey's guys wanted Skinny to jump over the logo, it's their own weird version of knocking on wood."
"I was just surprised that Lipton went along with it," Babe said.
Bill and Smokey exchanged a glance before Bill's lips curled into a smile. "Let's just say that Lip more than all of us doesn't want to ever see Norman Dike again. They weren't exactly friendly."
Considering that Babe had heard about the team's somewhat controversial choice to hire a separate general manager this season and therefore knew that the position had previously been occupied by their coach, Lipton, he had more than a few questions about why Lipton would have traded for a guy he disliked so much. But given all of the media speculation about what some saw as Lipton's "demotion" from head coach and general manager to simply head coach and the team's already obvious affection for their coach, he didn't see it as a good idea to bring it up right then.
"So what happened that made Liebgott so mad?" Babe asked instead. "Did Webster ask for a trade and Liebgott was pissed off that he got a crappy center?"
"Nobody knows why Webster was traded," Smokey said, "And pretty much everybody hated having Dike on the team. But that's not what made Lieb so angry. You see, that whole..." He waved a hand in Webster and Liebgott's direction. "...thing that they're doing? The arguing and the close-talking and all of that? They always did that. If they looked like they were happy with each other then something was probably seriously wrong. But somehow they also considered themselves best friends, because they were pretty much inseparable."
"Best friends who wanted to rip each other's faces off," Bill added helpfully.
Smokey nodded. "Yes, exactly. And Lieb didn't play as well without Web as his center, no matter whose line he was on. And that kind of sucked for him, because with Web and Skinny, he'd kind of been getting back into his old form."
He lowered his voice and leaned across Bill so that only the three of them could hear what he said. Babe was getting a feeling he knew who the team gossips were here.
"Don't bring it up or Lieb will probably try to punch your face in, but he used to be in the AHL, that's where he first got signed professionally. And he was good, too, good enough that he even made it to the show once or twice. Everyone thought he had a good chance of really breaking into the NHL for good, and then he just...slumped. Like, the slump to end all slumps."
"The kind of slump where you get sent down to the ECHL?" Babe asked with dawning realization.
Smokey nodded grimly. "Exactly. And the only time he's played like AHL-level Joe Liebgott since then was when he was on Webster's line. When Webster got traded to the Reign two years ago – well, the old Reign, the new Monarchs, whoever the hell they are anymore – anyways, when Web got traded, Lieb went back to being average-Lieb, which, you know, is pretty good for the rest of us, but not as good as we all know he is."
One thing still didn't make sense.
"But why's he so mad at Webster? He couldn't control being traded."
Smokey's face lit up, so he obviously thought it was a good story. Bill, for his part, was just shaking his head.
"It's not the trade that pissed him off – well, the trade pissed him off too, because just about everything does. But what really got him mad was that Webster's contract was up at the end of the season he was traded to the Reign, and he chose to re-sign with them for last year instead of coming back to the Airborne. I've never seen Joe so mad before."
"But why would he do that?"
Smokey shrugged. "Beats me. Nobody knows. But this year he signed with Toccoa again, and now Lieb wants nothing to do with him."
"Which means we all have to listen to them bitch at each other for the rest of the season," Bill said, "Because even if Lip hasn't said it yet, we all know that he's gonna put Web back on a line with Lieb and Skinny. They were our best playoff line the year before the trade and we haven't gone that far in the postseason since that year. So now Lip's gonna want to put the line back together and hope things work out."
Lipton had now approached the two in question and, along with an increasingly distressed looking Talbert, was speaking to them in a low voice. Most of the locker room seemed to be enjoying the spectacle as one of the two appeared ready to disengage and walk away, right before the scrappier looking one hissed some comment that had him spinning around and getting right back in the other man's face, shouting, "It's none of your goddamn business!"
"You being on my team is my fucking business!"
"You can't claim the entire team, Joe!"
"You just fucking watch me!"
Glancing from the scene in front of them and back to Bill and Smokey, Babe said carefully, "You know, I just don't see that going so well for them."
Smokey smiled ruefully.
"You'd be surprised," he said. "For as much as they can't stand each other, Web and Lieb make sweet, sweet hockey love together."
Just as he was speaking one of the pair grabbed the other by the shoulders, causing Lipton and Talbert as well as two guys Babe didn't recognize to rush forward in an attempt to separate them before things could get violent.
Babe looked back at his fellow defensemen with a skeptical eye. "Should we, like...go over there and help them or something?"
Smokey scoffed and Bill was already shaking his head and waving his hands around dismissively. "Oh no. No, no, no. Rule number one of hockey, rookie. You never, under any circumstances, get involved in your teammate's personal problems. If it doesn't directly affect you and they aren't actually punching each other, you let them work it out by themselves. If the coaching staff wants to step in, that's their choice, but I for one am not a fan of Liebgott trying to punch me in the throat for getting in his way. I ain't paid enough for that and you certainly aren't."
Now Babe was even more skeptical. "That's really your first rule of hockey? Let your teammates fight each other so you don't have to get involved?"
"Only if they aren't affecting you or hurting anybody," Smokey corrected primly.
Bill nodded. "It might not be the most important rule but it's the first one I'm giving you. Pay attention, rookie. You stick with me and I'll teach you a whole bunch of rules about being a hockey player."
"You do realize that I've been a hockey player pretty much all my life, right?"
Bill patted his shoulder a little roughly and shook his head. "Not like this, you haven't."
Webster and Liebgott's scuffling and the scrum around them trying to separate them resulted in no less than two people stepping foot on the logo; a collective gasp went around the room and Malarkey's line looked ready to have a three-person conniption fit.
The group in the middle of the room froze in place, afraid that moving would somehow make things worse. Finally, Lipton's harried voice rose from the scrum to cut the silence that had fallen across the room.
"Alright, everybody back up. It's going to take more than one jump over the logo to fix this."
As he watched them all follow along quietly, the twenty-minute screaming match abruptly forgotten in the favor of rampant hockey superstition, Babe had to concede that Bill was right. He had definitely never played hockey like this before.
A new figure entered the room as the logo-jumping began, a man hauling a large equipment bag in one hand and a set of goalie sticks in the other. He was pale, his hair such a dark black that it looked blue when it caught the light. When his dark, liquid eyes scanned across the room, Babe felt pinned in his seat, and then inordinately disappointed that the man's gaze didn't stay on him.
When he had sufficiently taken in the scene, the man asked in a low, deep southern drawl, "Do I even want to know what I just walked into?"
Babe couldn't help but stare pathetically, enraptured and stupidly smitten. No, this was definitely entirely new territory for him.
He couldn't wait to get started.