supercut (Kaylor one-shot collection)

she's cheer captain (and i am on the bleachers)

"Sorry," Taylor sighs. She wants to ask Cara about girl crushes (Cara is somewhat of an expert on those), but she gets distracted when Hendersonville High School's prom king and queen enter the cafeteria. Taylor tries to look solely at the way Karlie's cheerleading uniform fits around her slender body, and not at her hand, which is intertwined with her boyfriend's. When they accidentally lock eyes, Karlie smiles. Taylor quickly drops her gaze, blushing furiously.

Cara's face suddenly clears up in recognition. "Oh!"

"O-oh?" Taylor stammers. Was it really that obvious?

"You have a crush on Josh Kushner!"

"Oh." Relief washes over Taylor. "Yeah! You got me."

"Don't worry, your secret's safe with me," Cara says. "Karlie would be furious if she found out, wouldn't she?"

"I doubt she would care," Taylor mumbles, still looking at Karlie and Josh. "Why would she? She's cheer captain and I'm...well...me."

"Dude, any guy would be lucky to date you. You're twice as awesome as any of those smelly testosterone-driven zitfaces that walk around here." Cara gives her a sympathetic look. "It sucks, though. Does she talk about him a lot?"

"All the time."

"Aw. That must be hard to listen to."

"Yeah," Taylor says. She's surprised at how easily she's selling this lie, but she doesn't mind it at all. This is definitely preferable to telling Cara the truth. If her feelings for Karlie are more than just a casual, very platonic girl crush, then she'd rather not share it with anyone yet.

---

It's not hard at all to pretend to have a crush on your crush's boyfriend if your crush's boyfriend and your crush are basically inseparable. Even during football games when they are on the bleachers with the rest of the band, Taylor can be blissfully unsubtle about her obsession. She watches every move Karlie makes and Cara smiles knowingly under the assumption Taylor is looking at Josh, who's on the football team.

Taylor has always had a weird fascination with cheerleaders. How in sync they are, how graceful they move, how they are able to dance without tripping over their own feet—it's just amazing. And Karlie is the best one of them all. She towers over the other girls both in the literal and figurative sense. Taylor watches her breathlessly. She's sitting close enough to see how the thin layer of sweat on Karlie's muscular legs glimmers in the sunlight. She should really focus on the clarinet she's supposed to play, but, oh hell, Karlie's legs are endlessly more interesting.

And then, when the cheerleaders take a break between routines, Karlie spots Taylor in the crowd and gives her a bright smile. Taylor's stomach makes a weird jump. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Ed nudges her. "We're starting."

Right. Clarinet. Music.Taylor quickly prepares herself for the next song and starts to play with trembling fingers.

Damn it, Karlie Kloss.

---

The next time Taylor sees Karlie is during their weekly tutoring session. They are doing Spanish verb tenses and Karlie is becoming more aggravated by the second. "It doesn't make sense," she mutters under her breath, her eyes skimming over the verbs that Taylor just wrote down. "I don't think I'm ever gonna remember this."

"Do you want to take a break?"

"No, I just want to understand it!" Karlie's tone is frantic.

"Look, it's easy, you just—" Taylor quickly swallows the rest of the sentence when she realizes that saying things like it's easy might be counterproductive. "Uh, I mean—"