Somebody To Love - Fantasy Prequel {Glee}

xxxviii. funeral

Season Two. Episode Twenty One. Funeral

RUBY CARTER WASN'T EXACTLY SURE WHY SHE WAS LOOKING AT A SMUG JESSE ST JAMES. Although to be fair he always had a smug look about him, her main question was; 'Why the hell was he stood in her choir room, AGAIN?!' Because the last time the image of Jesse standing side by side with Mr Schue; everything that followed was anything but smooth sailing. So apologies if Ruby was a bit apprehensive about the situation.

"New Directions! I wold like to introduce to you, our new show choir  consultant. Jesse St James."

Silence rang through the choir room along side Rachel's enthusiastic applause. Ohhh so he was serious when he pitched the idea at Breadstix. "You weren't joking then?"  Ruby asked, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Why would I joke about something like this, Princess?"

"Oi! You don't get to call her that St James! Got it?!"  Puck snapped.

Jesse held his hands up in surrender as Finn decided he should be talking now. "I don't trust this guy. How do we know he's not just going to trick us into doing something stupid, so his alma mater wins?"

"I don't think I need to do much tricking, to get you to do something stupid, Finn."  Ruby's hand immediately flew out to catch Finn's arm, sliding her hand down to stroke her thumb against the back of his hand. Please do not react Finn, I'm begging you.

"Guys! Jesse is just a consultant. I still make all the calls. Now I have all the confidence in the world in you guys. I just think we could use all the help we can get. Because..."   Mr Schue turned to the whiteboard, "This is it. We've been working so hard for two years for this moment and that moment is finally here. Now I was talking to Jesse and he agreed that we should continue with our successful trend of doing original songs for the competition. I was thinking of doing one group number and one duet."

"Rachel and I should sing a duet!"  Finn blurted out quickly, "We killed it last year at Regionals with Faithfully."

"Yeah, killed us. We lost."

"We lost."  Ruby and Quinn said in sync, causing Finn to sulk in between the two of them.

"I agree that Rachel should sing lead but Finn, I think it's best if you sit this one out. Fact is, most of the other guys in here are better singers and Mike Chang, who can't even sing, can at least dance. You kind of sing and dance like a zombie who has to poop."

"You see what I'm talking about! This guy's a jerk!"  Finn started shouting and Ruby's grip on his hand got tighter. Praying this didn't snowball into a fight just like it did at prom. Thankfully; Finn slumped back into his seat and squeezed her hand back in appreciation as Mr Schue spoke to Jesse and tried to contain the sniggers from the rest of the glee club.

"Jesse, maybe you could -- uhh be a little bit gentler with you advice." 

"Gentle? I'm sorry. I didn't realise we were training for the 'good try' ribbon at Nationals. I thought we were in it to win the whole damn thing. And there's only one way we can do that. The Vocal Adrenaline strategy is simple -- identify your best performer and build the entire performance around them."