When Taylor Met Yahtzee
A/N: I had the strangest idea ever the other day. This is an AU crossover between Moments Like These and Yahtzee. I don't want to give too much away. Basic plotline Lindsay never died in Moments Like These. Spoilers for Moments Like These and Yahtzee. Flack and Stella are still married like in Moments and they have the twin boys Eric and Hunter. Taylor is still dating Eric. Enjoy!
Sixteen year old Taylor Lindsay Messer was not in a good mood. Her teachers were giving her crap, her friends were being distant and she was really missing her mother. It wasn't that she was lacking in mother figures in her life. She had her aunts Stella and Peyton but they couldn't compare to Lindsay. She hated that her father had started dating again. There had been a few women that Danny had really liked but nothing seemed to stick. Danny figured that it had something to do with that no woman wanted to deal with the changes that came with raising a teenage girl. Or that the women he tried to date did not live up to the uber high expectations set by the most perfect woman in his life. He had to face it, Lindsay spoiled him to the core.
The door to their apartment slammed and then the door to Taylor's room. Slamming doors was a mortal sin in the eyes of Danny. He didn't care how pissed off you were you did not slam doors. He walked up to Taylor's room and knocked softly on the door.
"I don't want to talk about it Dad!" Taylor yelled through the door. "Go away!"
"No I can't do that. You slammed two doors," Danny answered calmly. "Don't shut me out Taylor. You're all I've got, kid."
He heard her come to the door and she opened the door, letting her father in. She went back to her desk, fiddling with a flier sitting on top of her history book. Next week was the Mother/Daughter Tea. All of Taylor's friends were looking forward to it. His sister-in-law was planning on attending with Taylor.
"What happened today?" Danny asked softly.
"Sasha Baron, the social chair refused to sell me a ticket to the tea next week. I was going to take Aunt Irene, cause Aunt Irene never gets to go to mother/daughter stuff because all she has is Junior."
"Why did Sasha refuse to sell you a ticket?" Danny asked, trying to get to the root of the problem.
"She and I have been in the same school for years and knows that Mom is dead. She had overheard me talking to Meg about taking Aunt Irene. She then proceeded to tell me that it was a 'Mother-Daughter' Tea and not a 'Neice-Aunt' Tea."
Danny cringed. Taylor may be the spitting image and temperment of his late wife, but you piss her off enough her underlying, loudmouthed, don't fuck with me, New York bred, Italian temper would flare. Danny wondered how many phone calls he was going to have to make.
"Please tell me you were sweet and polite," Danny begged.
"I got right in her face and said, 'Even if my mother was alive, we wouldn't come to anything planned by the back-stabbing, heartbreaking bitch, oh I mean, you. You and your waspy little friends have a wonderful time. My aunt and I will be making homemade cannolis and and sharing a glass of imported Italian wine.'"
"You had to call her a wasp," Danny sighed.
"That was after she called me a guinea rat, Dad," Taylor defended.
"What's the damage?"
"Two weeks detention for the use of racial slurs and another week for a bitch slap," Taylor said. "She had it coming Dad. You would have done the same thing."
Danny sighed and nodded. He thought back to the day he stood up to the Irish mob and got his face smashed in for it. Sometimes it seemed like the Messers had too big a mouth for their own good.
"Your mother would make me ground you," Danny said. "Montana would take away practically everything you own until you have earned the right to get them back. Your X-Box, laptop, cell phone..."
"Dad I don't have an X-Box," Taylor said.
"I did, once."
"What did you do Dad?" Taylor asked, truly interested in what her father had done to piss her mother off that much.
"Bet against her in the Super Bowl one year and then refused to pay up."
"Dumbass," Taylor quipped.
"That's what Flack said. Then I came home and found my entertainment center torn to hell and my X-Box 360 and all my games gone. At first I thought I had been robbed, but if it had been a robbery everything, not just the X-Box would have been missing."
"When did Mom give it back?" Taylor asked.
"Umm, about the time she went on bed rest when she was pregnant with you. She was so bored she drug it out and hooked it up. Beat my high score on Guitar Hero and Halo."
"Ouch. You know I'm feeling better. Maybe Aunt Irene and I can go to the musem or something else instead of the tea."
"She'd like that. So I don't get a heavenly beat down you are restricted to your room for the remainder of the day."
Taylor smiled and hugged her father. Danny left the room and Taylor settled back down on her bed. She nestled into her pillows with the book she had been reading for school. Moments later she was asleep.
When Taylor woke up she was standing in a bright white room. She looked around and didn't see anyone or anything for that matter. She began to wander the vast whiteness and stumbled upon a leather-bound book. Farther along she found a set of two highback chairs. Sitting in one chair was a woman with soft brown curls and deep chocolate brown eyes.
"Mom?" Taylor whispered. It wasn't uncommon for Taylor to dream about her mother. She had done it more and more as she got older.
"Hey baby," Lindsay said. "It seems like you have been missing me more and more lately. How can I help?"
"Can you take back seven years and not die?" Taylor said, sarcasically.
"Open the book, Taylor."
"What's in it?"
"So many questions. Just open the book Taylor."
Taylor opened the book and just like Benny the Book in Ella Enchanted it came to life. In the pages were a set of five children. They were all playing and throwing things at each other. There was a little blonde boy with a baseball bat, a little blonde girl holding a smaller brown haired girl by the hand, there was another boy with brown curls and glasses chasing after the boy with the bat and chasing them all was a little girl in a Mets cap, wearing a dirty and tattered Yankees jersey. They all looked so familiar that Taylor could have sworn they were family. Lindsay seemed to know what her daughter was thinking.
"Those are your brothers and sisters," Lindsay said. "Or they would have been had I not died."
"Brothers and sisters?" Taylor gasped. "But you and Daddy said you couldn't..."
"We had a little medicinal help. The little boy with the bat is your brother Daniel Jay, but we all call him DJ. The two girls joined at the hip are Isabella or Bella and Miracle. The boy with the glasses is Evan and last but not least is Parker Jane or PJ."
"Are they..."
"Quints. Yes, they are. Apperntly the hormones and fertility meds worked too well. Listen Taylor, when you wake up your life is going to be very different. The world that you know will become a distant memory to only you. You will be the oldest of six, part teenager, part surrogate mom, part nanny, part girlfriend. In a week you'll return to this room and decide which life you want more. Your mother, me, alive with brothers and sisters or just you and Danny, two Messers against the world. Whichever you choose will not be the wrong choice but what is right for you."
"How could I possibly choose Mom?" Taylor argued.
"You'll see. Remember the old saying, 'Be careful what you wish for.'"
Taylor woke with a start. She heard a pounding on the floor of her attic bedroom. The sound could only mean that her solitude time was over and it was time to start sibling wrangling. Taylor looked down at her watch sighing. She was supposed to meet Eric and Hunter at the movies in a hour, well that was to be decided if DJ, Evan and PJ were ready for Little League on time, if Bella was ready for ballet and if Miracle's piano teacher was on time. There were days when she wished she was still an only child but then when her six year old siblings all made her pictures to put on her wall that said she was the greatest sister ever she would take it all back.
Taylor came bounding down the stairs and caught a flying wiffle ball before it took out a vase and or broke her nose. It was a normal reaction to be able to catch anything in the Messer house these days. She also got very good at ducking and the across the room dive to save Nanna's 100 year old vase.
"DJ! What did Mom say about playing baseball in the house?" Taylor called.
"Ummm, not to?" five year old DJ replied.
"Then why did I just catch a wiffleball?" Taylor said, staring her little brother down.
"Umm, I-I-Evan made me do it!" DJ said proudly.
"Yeah, sure. Nice try though. Come on get your stuff. We're going to be late."
The doorbell rang moments later and Mrs. O'Malley, Miracle's piano teacher entered the house. "Anyone here?" the older woman called.
"Living room!" Taylor called back.
Taylor was putting the finishing touches on Bella's bun and sorting through the boys' and PJ's baseball stuff. Soon everyone was in their coats and Taylor was out the door. Their first stop was Mara's Dance School. Bella greeted her friends before waving goodbye to her cool older sister. Bella loved Taylor. Taylor would take Bella shopping with her or let her tag along on big girl trips to the city. It made Bella feel like she wasn't just the tag-along little sister.
After dropping Bella off at dance with instructions that she was to go home with Courtney, she, PJ and the boys jumped on the train to get to the park. It was just their luck that their train stalled out and got stuck in the tunnel. Taylor looked at her watch and knew she wasn't going to be able to meet Eric and the others on time.
"Damn it," she muttered.
"I'm telling Mommy!" DJ exclaimed.
"You do and I'll bust you for playing baseball in the house," Taylor said back.
"You wouldn't! Would you Taye?"
DJ batted his bright blue eyes at his sister. There were times when the eye thing would work but today was not one of those days. Taylor was annoyed, tired and stressed out from school. Nothing that day seemed to be going right for her that day. Her teachers were on her case, she got called out of class twice to deal with a Miracle problem and then she found her history report.
Taylor had her own laptop in her room but the family had a shared printer. Her parents would print off their lab reports at home. That morning she and Lindsay both had reports to print. Neither had been paying attention and took the other's report. Taylor didn't notice it until she went to hand it in. She read the title and realized that it wasn't her paper.
Now with the subway getting stuck, Taylor's day was turning into a rotten one. She wanted so badly to hang out with Eric and Hunter. Eric more than Hunter but it was looking like it wasn't going to happen now. With all the technology in the world you still can't get a signal while on the subway.
They were about a half hour late for baseball by the time the train got going again. By the time they got to the park they were almost an hour late. Taylor got a glare from the coach which Taylor shrugged off. Because they were late, practice was half over and Taylor couldn't leave. She took a seat on the bleachers and watched her brothers and sister participate in the drills. She got a laugh a few times when DJ tripped over his own feet and landed on his face. It wasn't his fault, somewhere in his genetic make-up the coordination and balance got trampled. The poor kid could walk ten feet without tripping, falling or anything else. Taylor always carried a first-aid kit in her bag whenever DJ was around.
She was reading White Oleander for the fifteenth time when her phone rang. She looked down at the caller ID, smiling.
"Eric hey," she said.
"Taye, where are you?" he asked. "We're waiting for you."
"Train got stuck and we ended up being an hour late for baseball," Taylor explained. "Go without me."
"I really wanted to hang out with you today," Eric whined.
"I did too. But you know the schedule. Mom and Dad both have nine to nine today. I have to play nanny."
"Why haven't your parents gotten a full time nanny for the quints so you can be a normal teenager for once in your life?"
"Eric Flack don't make me smack you!" Taylor exclaimed. "You know very well that Danny and Lindsay Messer would never hire anyone that they don't know personally. I'm happy to help take care of my brothers and sisters."
"You deserve to have a life too, Taye."
"I have a life and it's a great one."
As she said that DJ caught his first fly ball, with his face. "Eric I'm going to have to call you back. I think we're going to be making a stop at the ER, again."
"Fly ball to the face?" Eric guessed. "PJ or Evan this time?"
"The Walking Disaster. Talk to you later."
Last year at the company picnic Bella took a softball to the face by Hawkes. It had broken her nose. Taylor, the other four Messer kids, and the Bonasera-Flack family took up residence at the Messer house until Bella and the parents returned from the ER. Taylor knew first hand what a broken nose looked like. Taylor ran down to the field and with the coach checked over DJ.
"My face hurts, Taye," little DJ cried. "It hurts really bad."
"You silly boy!" Taylor teased, trying to keep her brother calm. "That's because you're not supposed to catch the ball with your nose."
"I'd say take him to the ER for facial X-Rays just to make sure," the coach told Taylor. "I don't think anything's broken, but you never know with this kid."
"Preaching to the choir," Taylor sighed. Little DJ held his arms up to Taylor, he looked so pathetic that Taylor couldn't help but carry the little guy. "Evan! PJ! Come on, we're going!"
Taylor walked with all three to the curb where she hailed a cab. She loaded Evan and PJ, then got herself and DJ inside. "Mercy ER please," she told the driver.
Dj's small sobs melted into Taylor shirt. Taylor had lost count of the amount of times she has been to the ER with her brothers and sisters. Most of the time it was because of their health. Being so premature as they were all five were subject to many illnesses and other developmental issues. Somehow the older four were spared but little Miracle seemed to have more issues than the others.
She could feel the stares of the people in the ER as she held her little brother. It never ceased to amaze her how ignorant and judgemental people could be about teenagers with little kids. She hated how people automatically assumed that at least one of her siblings was really hers. There was one day at the park Taylor lit into one lady.
"Messer?" the triage nurse called.
Taylor told Evan and PJ to stay where they were while she and DJ went to see the nurse. She promised the other two a very large bribe if they were good and stayed in their seats in the waiting room. She carried DJ into the triage room and sat him on her lap while the nurse looked him over.
"What seems to be the problem?" the nurse asked.
"DJ caught the pop-fly with his face," Taylor said. "He's done it before. We just want to make sure nothing's broken."
"Does your son have any other illnesses or conditions that we should be aware of?" she asked.
Not wanting to cause a scene, Taylor listed off each of DJ's various allergies and past injuries. "DJ has mild asthma, allergies to all antibiotics stemmed from penecillian and he is allergic to idodine. He was treated as a baby for clubfoot, inner ear infections and he broke his arm last spring."
The nurse wrote all of what Taylor was telling her into the chart. "I also have his doctor on speed dail if the ER doctor would like to speak to him."
Sheldon Hawkes was the Messer's personal doctor. He had a small practice out of his office at the lab and his only patients were the Messer kids. Hawkes gave the kids their shots, check-ups for school and was called on numerous occasions to diagnose everything from chicken pox to strep throat.
"That would be good," the nurse said, getting Hawkes' personal cell phone number from Taylor.
The nurse left the two of them in the triage room and went to give DJ's chart to the doctor. She looked out the window to check on PJ and Evan, only to find her uber awesome boyfriend Eric Flack sitting with them. She smiled at him in her silent thank you.
Three hours later, all that was wrong with DJ was a new black eye and a swollen face. Eric helped Taylor get the kids home. Danny and Lindsay were waiting for them when they arrived back at the brownstone. Lindsay took the sleepy DJ from Taylor and nodded to her that she and Eric could retreat upstairs for a break. It had been a long day for Taylor and she knew that the moment her head touched her warm, soft pillow she would be out.
Taylor and Eric went up to her room and left her door open, per Danny's and his parents rules. Taylor dropped her bag on her desk, her coat on the chair and plopped very un-ladylike onto her bed.
"Remind me again that I love my family," Taylor said sleepily. "Cause today they really suck."
"You love your crazy, big, loving family and they only drive you crazy because they love and admire you so much. Not everyone gets a sister ten years older than they are. You have to admit Taye, Bella looks up to you like you are the freaking queen of the world. And as much as PJ wants to be one of the boys she wants to be just like you," Eric said, lying down next to Taylor.
It didn't take long for Taylor to fall dead asleep. Lindsay wandered up the four flights of stairs to the attic bedroom that Taylor had morphed into her own personal hide-away. She poked her head in the door and found her first born and best friend in the world. Danny and Lindsay did feel bad about using Taylor all the time as their personal nanny. They had been saving for several months so that they could send Taylor to family in Italy for the summer. They decided that she deserves a break from her brothers and sisters. Eric had left awhile ago, after Taylor had fallen asleep and he had eaten his weight in Danny's secret stash of Lucky Charms.
Lindsay sat down on the side of Taylor's bed and rubbed her back like she used to when Taylor was a little girl. Taylor whined and pulled away reaching for her pillow and swatting away her mother's hand. "Bella I don't want to play anymore."
"Taye, it's Mom. I need to talk to you," Lindsay said.
Taylor rolled over and looked up at her mother. "Mom can this wait? It's been a really long day."
"Taye, I know your dad and I have asked a lot of you these last few years and we want to make it up to you. How would you like to spend the summer in Italy with your great aunt Esme and great uncle Dante?"
Taylor shot up and looked at her mother as if she had three heads. "Are you kidding me? You mean I can spend the summer in Italy?!"
"Only if you want to," Lindsay said.
"Hell yes!" Taylor exclaimed. "Oh my God!" She threw her arms around her mother's neck. Taylor thought back to what felt like days ago when it was just her and her dad, living on their own. Danny and Taylor against the world. But somehow even with the craziness of being the oldest of six and being the nanny at times she preferred this life with her mom still alive and a part of her life.
A few days later as Taylor slept she went back to the big white room. This time she found two red leather chairs sitting in the middle of the room. Her angelic mother appeared and the two of them sat down in the seats.
"I want to stay here with DJ, Bella, Evan, PJ and Mira," Taylor said. "I like this life. You're alive and I get to spend time with you and Daddy. I don't think I could handle going back to just Daddy."
"Are yo sure?" Angel Lindsay asked.
"Yes Mom. I'm sure. This is what I want."
Lindsay snapped her fingers and Taylor woke up to the shoutings of DJ and Bella.
"MOMMY!" the shrill voice of Bella screamed. "DJ PUT A RUBBER SPIDER IN MY FROOT LOOPS!"
"I DID NOT!" DJ protested.
Taylor sighed and sat up. They were crazy. They were shrill. They were five. They were all hers.
"MOMMY! MAKE DJ LEAVE ME ALONE!" Bella screamed.
"T-Minus two months, three weeks, seventeen days, ten hours, twenty-seven minutes and forty-five seconds till my plane leaves for Italy," Taylor muttered as she left her room to save her little brother from the wrath of Bella.