Protégé

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Summary: Jimmie’s finally taken too much.

AUTHOR: Catw00man
EMAIL: catw00man@cryptoffic.com
RATING: PG-13
CHARACTER: Jeff Gordon, Jeff POV
PROMPT: Taming the Muse #37 (#12 for me) - Devotee
COMPLETED: April 7, 2007
WORD COUNT: 1,212
DISCLAIMER: I own NOTHING and am affiliated with NO ONE mentioned here. Not the drivers, not the teams, no one. This is all fiction and fun. In other words...NOT REAL, NOT REAL, NOT REAL. ;-)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This takes place directly after the Martinsville race April 1, 2007 where Jimmie blatantly blocked the ever living hell out of Jeff and cost him the win. Damn CoT cars. All I can say is what goes around, comes around. I’m thinking there’s gonna be a sequel to this. Y’all let me know what you think!
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Martinsville Speedway, April 1st, 2007

Its official…I’ve created a monster.  And I only have myself to blame.

But that fact does nothing to quench the rage burning inside me.

I climb out of the car and give them all the stock answers.  We were close.  We almost won.  I just couldn’t move him without wrecking him.  It’s another win for Hendrick.  But none of those rehearsed statements even come close to touching how I really feel. 

Am I supposed to be happy?  Seriously, am I suppose to be thrilled that my fucking arrogant protégé has three wins in six races while I’ve got my second runner up finish…to him?  Oh sure, I’ve got the damn points lead, but we all know at this point that means less than nothing.  He’ll have 30 points for the Chase already so you might as well give the lead to him.

The monster.

It’s all I can do to keep from pushing past the reporters as I head back to the motorcoach lot.  I can’t lose it.  Not yet.  I just need to get out of sight because there’s no way in hell I’ll be making an appearance in Victory Lane.  Not this time, and from the way I’m feeling right now maybe never again.

He used me.  He fucking used me!

And I’ve been letting him do it as long as I’ve known him.  Fucking Jimmie.  How could he do this to me?  To me?  The one who gave him the whole fucking world!  But maybe I’ve misread him all along.  Maybe that’s all I’ve ever been is someone to make his world into a dream.  Maybe I was just a means to an end.

Can I help it that I was so devoted to the lanky prick?

I pull my hat off and run my fingers through my hair as make my way out of the track and to my home away from home, mindlessly signing autographs along the way.  I swear he must have put some kind of spell on me the day we met, something to control me and make me his slave because that’s exactly what I feel like.

They call me “Fourtime,” my friends and the media.  But it’s not really the honor that they think it is.  Sure I have four championships, something anyone in the garage would kill for.  But there’s only one reason that name has stuck.  It’s because it’s been so damn long since I’ve won.  It’s because I’ve been on an endless “Drive for Five” that may never end.  And I think I’ve only now figured out why.

Jimmie likes to tell the public that I was his idol, his hero.  He likes to say I found him and saw something in him no one else ever did, and you know, I always believed his story.  But now…now I really have to wonder if any of it was ever true at all. 

It sounds good, driving for your hero, being teammates and best of friends.  I always just assumed it was true.  But what he just did to me today.  What he’s done to me so many times as of late.  Those aren’t the actions of someone with stars in their eyes.  Hell, those aren’t even the actions of a fellow competitor.  You don’t cut down across the hood of your teammate half a dozen times.  You don’t block the whole damn track to a fellow racer the way he did today…not unless you want to be put in the wall. 

There’s not a single other car on the track that would have let him do to them what he did to me…and he knew it.  He knew I wouldn’t make a move until it was too late so I wouldn’t be like Vickers and wreck Rick’s cars.  But right now I wish more than anything I did.  I wish I hadn’t let him use our friendship, our team status, our past relationship against me.  It was dirty.  So fucking dirty and I now know why I haven’t completed the “Drive for Five.”

It’s not because I was single and partying too much.  It wasn’t because of a bad crew chief or bad team.  Brooke, Ray, Robbie, Ricky, not a single one could be tied to my failures.  There’s only one reason they haven’t called me Champ in over five years.

It’s because I was devoted…to him.

My race team didn’t come first anymore.  My focus wasn’t on where I finished or what the set up was.  My attention was on making him great.  My entire world revolved around my protégé and my “new” team.  Dear god how have I been so blind?

He’s taken everything and I didn’t even see it. 

I brought him in, got him a ride with Rick and even pitched for his sponsor, assuring Lowe’s that they would have a winner with him.  I gave him my team, part of my crew and all my championship cars, reskinning them in blue and silver so he would have only the best for his rookie year.  I gave him my advice, my attention and when he finally pushed for it I even gave him myself in a way I never had with another man.  Nothing was too good for Jimmie.  Hell, it was even my friends that introduced him to his wife…after he was tired of me of course.

Hell, the mother fucker even took my setup to win his third damn race!

My fist flies and I don’t even know whose motorcoach I hit, I’m just glad no one seems to have seen.  I cradle my right hand in my left and ignore the slight throbbing in my knuckles as a storm down the row of coaches to the maroon one I call home.  I start to head inside once I reach it, but then I pause when I see a familiar pair of sandals at the doorstep. 

I smile as my eyes linger over the shoes, his sneaky little way of letting me know that he’s invaded my coach and is waiting just inside.  He’s had a shit-tastic race of his own, but he better than anyone had to know how angry I would be.  He knows Jimmie as well as I do, if not better, and he knows how it feels to be fighting his ever growing shadow.

But it’s more than that.  He understands what I want and what I need.  He understands how to be a teammate and he’s always treated me like a champion…not someone in his way.  Maybe I’m conceited, full of myself, or demanding too much.  But damn it to hell I’ve earned my spot in this sport and sometimes it’s nice to be treated like it.

Maybe this time things will go right and I can be with someone with out losing myself.  Maybe I can lean on someone, help them along, and share everything without forgetting who I am.  And maybe I need to stop standing here thinking about it.  I reach for the door and pull it open, smile crossing my face as he stands to meet me.

“You should have wrecked him,” he tells me simply.

This day is about to get a whole lot better.
 

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Catw00man - catw00man@cryptoffic.com