;; Caveat Lector ;; I hated it when they killed off Nathan. Bringing him back just also gives me an excuse to reunite Spixie (Spinelli / Maxie, they've been together the entire duration in my universe, fyi). So, this is me, doing that. And as I've said four times prior, each OC is connected to a Port Charles resident of import. And given that this one was a total fucking surprise to me, the inspiration to actually do something with this in the future literally just hit... I'll tell you guys outright that Delila = Lila. The baby that Sam lost. But in my version of events, Sonny is not her father. Jason would've been. Also, given my shaky relationship with Sam and my love for Jason, Jason is probably gonna be the parent featured more prominently here.
If anyone has any questions or anything, please.. By all means, hit me up with them. I live to rant and rave about this shit. There's just so many missed opportunities with this show, I swear to God... And I might not stop with these five. I might find a way to fix the fucked up way they've handled Peter August (since yaknow, I'm giving myself the gift of Spixie and JoLu in order to pair off Dante and Nathan at my own personal whim)...
"Mommy!"
"What is it, lil bit?" Delila paused and knelt down to her daughter's level, brushing blonde strands out of her face. "We have got to find somewhere around here to get you guys hair cut." she mused. Della shook her head no and then remembered what she'd been about to tell her mommy. Pointing to the black door across the hall from their own.
"The cop that came to talk to us today about strangers bein dangerous lives across the hall."
"Oh he does, huh?" Delila smiled, giving a soft laugh. All afternoon long, Della and her twin brother Dallas had gone on and on about a man who stopped by the elementary school to talk to their class.
If Delila didn't know any better, she'd almost think her little girl had a crush on the man.
Della pouted a little. "And if you woulda just looked over, mommy, you woulda seen him!"
Delila smiled. "Aw, well, maybe next time."
From the doorway, Dallas spoke up. "Della, don't start tryin to fix Mommy up, you know what happened last time."
Della's hand settled on her hip and she stuck out her tongue. "I wasn't, Dallas. I just wanted Mommy to see how pretty he was."
"Okay you two, no fighting." Delila gave a gentle scolding to the two and she stood up, digging around in her pockets for the keys to their apartment. Promptly raising her hand to her forehead and grumbling when she realized that she'd not only managed to leave her keys down in the Laramie she drove, she'd probably just had an epic fail and locked them inside the truck.
,, okay, don't get cranky. Don't panic. This is not a tragedy, D." she thought to herself as she dug around in the pockets of her leather jacket. Grumbling and kicking at the bottom of the door just a little when she realized that yes, she had actually left her keys down in the truck. And yes, she'd locked the damn doors. This wasn't Idaho, after all.
They lived in a city with an actual crime rate now.
But Delila felt safer than she had in a very, very long time.
"Mommy, no. You didn't." Dallas put away his Gameboy long enough to gaze up at his mother, bright blue eyes sparkling with laughter. "I told you to make sure ya had 'em!"
"And I thought I grabbed them. Maybe if I hadn't been trying to keep little hands out of the jelly donuts, son." Delila gave her son a teasing and playful look as she said it, making him mutter an apology. "It's alright, champ. C'mon. We'll just walk down to the garage. Then you two can see where Mommy works, hm?"
"Yay!" Della clapped her hands together happily. Dallas smiled and pumped his fist and before Delila could say anything else, he had his WWE backpack slung over his shoulder again and he was about to race down the stairs and into the lobby of the building.
"Get back up here, son. I gotta zip your jacket, kid." Delila called out firmly. Dallas walked back up the stairs, stopping in front of his mom. Delila bent and tugged the zipper up on a secondhand Teenage Mutant Turtles puffer jacket and then she turned to Della and zipped up the deep red and bright aqua colored puffer jacket Della wore. And wrinkled her nose as she licked her thumb and tried to wipe at a chocolate smear on the corner of Della's mouth.
"We better get going." Delila told her kids as she took one of their hands in each of hers and the trio began to walk down the stairs.
Jason was just getting ready to call it a day and it had been a long one. "Hey, Ashford, put the code in to lock the place up, will ya?" Jason called out as he peeked out from the office just off the waiting room.
Sean had been just about to do that when he spotted one of their new hires racing towards the building, a kid on each side of her. A sheepish but frazzled look on her face that had him chuckling. "Hey Jase?"
"Yeah?"
"We got company, man."
"Is it a customer?"
Sean opened the door, letting Delila Rossi and the two small children with her into the shop and out of the chilly evening air.
"What's up, D?"
"I uh.." Delila raised a hand, dragging it through her hair as she laughed. "I locked my keys in the truck. Now I can't get into my truck or the apartment."
"Damn, girl." Sean chuckled.
Jason wandered out, a Bud Light in hand. "Everything okay, Rossi?"
"Momma locked us out of our house, sir!" the little boy spoke up. The little girl added in a quieter tone, "She would not have if you woulda kept your crummy fingers outta the donuts, dingus."
"Okay you two. It's no one's fault, okay?" Delila told her children gently. Glancing at her boss, Jason Morgan as she shuffled worn combat boots against the concrete shop flooring. "Think you guys can take a few minutes to come help me get in my truck? If you can't it's fine. I can break the window, no problem."
"Last time you did it, Momma, you cut your hand!"
"Sweetie, it'll be fine. Mommy will wrap a shirt around her hand this time."
"But it'll hurt, mommy." Della clung to her mom's leg.
Jason chuckled and rubbed his chin. Smiling a little. "Yeah. Lead me to it, Delila."
And for the thousandth time since he'd hired her on at the garage, he found himself thinking that if his daughter with Sam had survived, Delila was the closest to what he imagined his daughter would've become.
Listening to the three of them and their back and forth had him feeling a lot less disconnected and out of it. And definitely a lot less alone.
Probably the hardest thing about his divorce from Sam was that he'd just gotten so used to her. He'd gotten settled and happy, forgetting the one rule he knew all too well because over the years, Murphy's Law had irrevocably fucked him, time and time again.
After he got the doors to Delila's black extended cab Laramie open for her, Delila thanked him and spoke up, offering to him and Sean that she had a perfectly good frozen lasagna upstairs if they wanted to come up and grab a bite.
Sean and Jason declined and Jason set off for the quiet of his apartment.
And just like countless other nights, he found himself imagining yet again.. What if he and Sam had never lost Lila? Because losing her was where they began falling apart. Nothing that happened after the fact helped matters any, but if he had to pinpoint a particular point in time that he knew he and Sam weren't going to make it, it would have to be the morning a nurse came into Sam's room and told her Lila hadn't made it through the night.
She'd shut down. Jason, of course, had been a lot more open with his grief, much to his own particular surprise. He'd been angry. Upset. For a long time, he tried to tell himself maybe it was better Lila was gone. At least she didn't have to live in such a shit world. Then he'd feel that anger surging. Blaming himself, blaming any number of things for the loss.
Delila working at Extreme Autos had just kind of brought all of this to the forefront for the man. And this is what made him pick up the phone and dial the number to the therapist that Monica put him in contact with years back at long last.
His mother had been right. The grief and everything he'd been through since was eating him the fuck alive. He needed to work through it and handle it.
The door to the apartment across the hall was ajar. Nathan glanced across the hall just in time to see the twins from the class he'd spoken to on behalf of PCPD earlier in the day. The sound of Supernatural's theme song filtered out into the hallway along with the smell of grilled cheese and tomato soup.
He chuckled to himself.
Nina had been on his case all week to introduce himself to the neighbor, especially since she discovered that said neighbor was a single mother of two. Nina claimed that maybe knowing a police officer lived across the hall would put the woman's mind at ease.
Nina's matchmaking attempts, as usual, were not well disguised. And when Britt joined in with her, seconding the idea, he knew he'd never know peace until he did as they both asked.
He told himself the entire short walk across the hall that he was just doing it because then he could tell them both he had and that they could now drop the matter. But deep down, he knew.. Curiosity was the driving force.
Because he'd seen the twins mother around town and she was definitely a knockout. A little more rough around the edges than his type had been previously, but.. As Nina and Britt both liked to point out whenever they got the chance, his determined type always seemed to bring him ample trouble or ultimately lead to heartbreak.
He knocked on the door and after a few seconds, it was opened completely. The raven haired beauty gazing up at him with a grilled cheese in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other. "Yeah? We weren't disturbing you, were we?" she asked in a rush before turning to face the blond twins sitting on the couch, absorbed in the show on television, "Turn it down a little, please?"
"Sorry!" they chorused, arguing over the remote briefly before the little girl with crooked pigtails finally grabbed it and moved to sit on the back of the couch, aiming the remote at the little tv set.
Nathan chuckled, nodding to the twins. "Those two are somethin else. They're in a class I talked to at the elementary school earlier."
Delila smiled softly, nodding. The smile made bright blue eyes brighter somehow. "You just don't know, sir." Delila joked, stepping out of the doorway a little. "Do you wanna come in?"
"I just wanted to come by and let you know that if you need anything, I'm right across the hall."
"Noted. And if you need anything, all you have to do is ask." Delila answered. Feeling just a shade safer that if push came to shove and her rotten no-good ex boyfriend did come to town to stir up shit as she feared he might this time, at least she had a member of PCPD living quite literally, seconds away from her door.
Not that she couldn't handle it, of course. She was like a lioness when it came to her babies. She always had been. If not for the two of them, she might not even be alive right now. They'd changed her life for the better. She literally owed her life to them and she loved them with everything she possessed.
Nathan eyed the tv set in the room behind her. Chuckling. "Is that show any good?"
Delila shrugged. "Kind of? If you leave the room to pee or anything, you miss important stuff though. I hate when shows are like that. The kids seem to like it. I think Della likes it because she wants to marry Dean Winchester and Dallas seems impressed by the monsters on it."
"Sounds interesting. Anyway, I'll let you three go back to watching tv. I just wanted to walk over and introduce myself."
"You kind of haven't though." Delila teased gently.
"Shit. Sorry, my name's Nathan West. It's been a long day."
"My name is Delila Rossi. And likewise."
"Mommy locked us out earlier, sir!"
"It's your fault, Dallas, sheesh. You just had to have the stinkin donut."
"Kids, huh?" Delila gave a sheepish little smile as she shrugged. And Nathan chuckled, smiling at her. "You two don't be a handful for Mom, okay?"
"Yes sir." The two blond twins chorused, plastering on their best obedient smiles.
Della leaned in and whispered to her brother, "I think he likes Momma."
"Della, you gotta stop." Dallas grumbled, rolling his eyes at his sister's observation. It wasn't that he didn't like the police officer across the hall. It wasn't that he didn't want his mommy to meet somebody and be happy so they could finally have a father who actually liked being around them for once. Dallas was just wary. He didn't really trust anyone or think they were good enough for his mom. He was probably way too protective of his mom and his sister.
"Do not. I think he likes her and I'm glad. Because he's one of the good guys." Della gave a dreamy little sigh.
"Our daddy isnt' comin back to hurt us or Mommy. We're okay. And Mommy will protect us. She always does, Della, dang it, don't start buttin in."
"I don't think I'm gonna have to, Dally." Della teased, sticking her tongue out at her twin brother.0