Burning up ☞︎ A Jesse st. James Fan Fic

Journey to Regionals

We all sit in Mr. Shues apartment.

"No one wants any pizza?" Mr. Shue asks. I take a plate and put a couple of slices on my plate. Everyone starts giving me weird looks. I shrug.

"What? I stress eat!" I yell, holding my arms out as if daring some to come at me!

"All right, well, uh, let's get started. Thank you for coming to the first annual new directions regionals set list nominations party." Mr. Shue announces.

"What's the point, Mr. Shue? Coach Sylvester's one of the judges. She's gonna crush us." Artie says depressed. I lean my head on his chair and silently stuff my face with pizza.

"Artie, you don't know that." Mr. Shue stresses.

"Yes with do." I say, my mouth partly full.

"She told us at Cheerios practice." Santana finishes for me as she starts looking at the pizza.

"Yeah, she said, 'I'm going to crush glee club.'" Brit adds.

"A whole freaking year. All that hard word for nothing." Noah complains. We hear sniffing and turn our heads as Tina starts to cry.

"I'm sorry. I just really love you guys. You know how many Facebook friends I had before I joined glee club? Two. My parents. Rachel was right. Being apart of something special- it made me special. I just can't believe it's going to be over in a week." Tina continues to cry harder.

"Wait. Who says it's going to be over?" Finn questions. I roll my eyes as tears start threatening to pour over.

"Please. Do you think Puck and Santana are going to even acknowledge my existence once we're not in glee club together anymore?" Mercedes saddened by the thought.

"She has a point." Noah says quietly. I shoot him daggers as the tears continue to fall.

"Mr. Schuester? Do you think instead of nominating songs, we can just... all do around the room and talk about things that we lived about glee club this year?" Rachel asks as she starts to cry as well.

We all sit in glee club the next day and gaze upon the board as Mr. Shue writes the word journey on it.

"Mr. Shue. Finn and I have something we want to say to you." Rachel says.

"Me first. Have a seat. Nine months ago, there were six of you in here; and we sucked. I mean, we really sucked. Bad. One day, all of you are going to be gone and all of this, all of us will be nothing but a hazy memory. It will take you a second to remember everyone's name. Someone will have to remind you of the songs we sung, the solos you got it didn't get. Life only really has one beginning and one end, and the rest is just a whole lot of middle; and I love you guys too much to let you not make the most of it. Now, I was going to quit once, but you guys brought me back with 'don't stop believing'. It was a nine, but we are going to make it a ten." Mr. Shue finishes his speech. I wipe a few stray tears and smile.

"We're doing 'don't stop believing' at regionals?" Rachel asks smiling.

"And then some. We are doing a journey medley. Because who cares what happens when we get there when the getting there has been so much fun?" I look at Kurt and Mercedes as we hug.

"Rachel? You had something you wanted to say?" Mr. Shue focuses his attention. Rachel laughs.

"Just that we're all really glad you didn't become an accountant." Making us all laugh.

"Regionals, here we come." Mr. Shue says with hope.

We all walk into the building when my phone buzzes. I look down to see it's Jesse. I look around till our eyes meet and I answer the call. He smiles.