New Roomie 1: Can I come over?

Ashton: why? im kind of busy.

New Roomie 1: I think we should talk.

Ashton: fine

Sammi knocked on the door before peeking inside. I was sitting in my living room going through some of my notes from Vi's journal, like I do pretty much every free moment I get. It's almost time for me to make something for dinner, but I'm not really hungry. Sometimes Sammi brings me food since she knows I'm likely to get too focused and forget to eat.

"How are you?" she asked, coming into the living room and looking at my set up. She furrowed her eyebrows and looked worried, but I'm done caring.

"I'm fine. I think I'm getting somewhere with this." She took her phone from her pocket, pressing a few buttons before slipping it back into her jeans.

"Luke told me what happened at lunch with Chelsea yesterday."

"I'm sure he did." I rolled my eyes. Luke tells her everything.

"I thought he told you to stop this," she sat down next to me hesitantly, picking up one of the pages where I'd written other potential leads.

"He might have said that, but that doesn't mean I have to listen."

Sammi sighed, setting the paper down and looking at me.

"Do you really think you'll be able to find her? The police couldn't, and they have access to so much more than you do. I don't mean to be so down on you, but when you really think about it, do you actually believe you'll be successful?"

"Yes." I look directly into her eyes. "I'm the right amount of motivated, and I've got just enough information to have something to look into. If anyone can do this, I can."

"There's no way to get you to stop? What if you just take a week break and...act like a normal person?"

I scoff.

"I can't be a normal person until I'm reunited with Vi. I can't rest until then. I won't, I can't." She frowns. "It's all I think about, when I'm cooking, showering, watching TV, I'm not really doing those things, I'm going over potential suspects or ideas for what I can look into next."

"Ashton,"

"I know you're going to tell me it's not healthy. I've heard all of it before."

"I know how frustrating this must be for you, but you've got to stop."

"Why?"

"You can't keep living like this. You screamed at an innocent girl yesterday, almost made her cry in the middle of a restaurant."

"She was hiding something from me," I tried to defend myself but Sammi stopped me.

"Are you listening to yourself? Ashton, you sound crazy. You can't go accusing people of stuff with no basis for the accusation. Luke said he didn't even recognize you yesterday."

"I had my reasons, Chelsea is lying about something. Someone's lying, and it's got to do with the lawn mowing thing. They've never done that before." An idea pops into my head. I grab my paper of questions for Chelsea, and scribble "ask where she got the idea and why she chose it. new idea? whose idea?" on the bottom of the list. Sammi peered down at it and sighs, pulling her phone out again, pressing around on it for a second before glancing at me.

"Ashton, I'm really sorry."

"For what?"

She puts her hand on my arm.

"I never wanted it to go this far, but we're doing this because we think it's best for you."

"What are you talking about..."

She gets up and walks to the front door, opening it to reveal two police officers led by Luke, who stands by Sammi, grabbing her hand in a comforting grip. They shut the door, the officers walking into the living room.

"Hi, you must be Ashton?" The taller of the two men ask. He's got sandy blonde hair. His face is kind, smile on his round face. His bright blue eyes take in the room, spending a couple seconds scanning my home before looking at all my papers.

"What's happening?" I ask.

"We're here because your friends are worried about you, son." The smaller man says. He's only a bit shorter than the other guy. He's got brown eyes and dark, chocolate colored hair.

"What are you talking about? Luke, why are you with them?" Luke and Sammi are still standing by the door, in between the living room and the door. "Wh-what's going on? A-am I in trouble?" I feel myself start to panic, my breath coming out in short pants, and the taller officer holds his hands up in a gesture of peace.

"Hey, Ashton, it's okay. You're not in trouble, everything is fine, all right? I'm Officer Wigington, this is my partner, Officer Urie. We're not going to hurt you, there's no need to get upset, okay? We just wanted to check on you."

I take a deep breath, drawing squares on my knee with my fingers and nodding.

Sammi comes and sits by me, letting me lean against her shoulder for support and I'm grateful. Luke sits on my other side, hand palm up on the couch, but I don't take it, just smile at him.

"Y-you can sit if you'd like," I gesture to the two chairs in the kitchen behind them. Urie nods and grabs them, giving one to the other and they sit on the other side of the coffee table from us.

"We heard you're taking an interest in the disappearance of Viola Mathers." Wingington says, gesturing to my notes. "Do you mind telling me about it?"

"I already gave my statement." Why do they want me to talk about this again?

"We know, bud. But we'd like to hear more about it."

Sammi taps my arm and nods, telling me to comply. I groan but do as they ask.

"Fine. She's the love of my life and she got kidnapped a couple weeks ago. I've been looking for her since no one else has been."

"That's not quite true. We're still on the case, we haven't closed it," Urie informs me.

"Yeah, but it's pretty much gone cold. That's what I was told when I called last week to see how it was going. No one had any new information or leads, and you'd pretty much given up."

Wingington sighs.

"There's not much for us to go off of, no, but we are still looking into it."

"We'd also like to know what you've been up to. Your friends told us that you're doing a bit of investigating on your own?" Urie lifts one side of his face in a smile. "Are you interested in being a detective?"

I scoff.

"No, I'm interested in getting my girlfriend back. I care a lot about her and I can't keep going on without her. I need her." I bite my lip hard to keep the tears back before looking at the officers again. "And since no one else seems to care about that, I've taken it upon myself to find her."

"Luke has told me about your efforts." The blonde man says, still looking at my papers. "Do you mind if I look at these?"

"Don't mess it up, I have them in a specific order."

"Ashton," Luke elbows me in the side but Wingington just shrugs with a small chuckle, letting Luke know it's okay. Both officers sit forward to look at some of the pages, scanning through the information. Urie picks up Vi's journal.

"What's this?"

"That was Vi's journal," Sammi answers. "She used to keep track of almost everything she did in that, I would constantly find her writing in it."

"She still would if she was here." I mutter, noting the way Sammi spoke in past tense and not liking it.

Urie nods, opening the book and skimming through some of the pages.

"How are you feeling, Ashton? About everything in general, are you happy, sad, upset?"

Is this guy for real? My fucking girlfriend got kidnapped, and he's asking if I'm happy?

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. I can't even figure out how to answer that.

"H-he's been pretty depressed for a while." Sammi replies for me, not meeting my eyes. "He doesn't do much besides read the journal and go through Vi's laptop. And he's still getting nightmares."

I roll my eyes and scoff, which brings the attention back to me.

"Is this true, Ashton?"

"Well, I do other things besides work the case, but yeah."

"What are the nightmares about?"

"Nothing really, they're not a big deal."

Sammi coughs. We all look at her and she blushes.

"What is it?" Officer Urie asked kindly.

"He wakes up screaming sometimes, and I can hear it from my apartment next door."

"That's not true!" I protest. "You said my roommates called you because they could hear it, you didn't say you could hear it."

"Either way, Ashton, that seems pretty serious to me." Wingington says before Sammi can argue with me. I get up from my spot, shoving Luke away and sitting in the armchair in the corner. I don't want these betrayers near me.

"Have you thought about talking to someone?"

"No, I don't need therapy again. I'm fine."

"Again?"

I groan.

"I've got anxiety, when I was younger I saw a therapist and for a while a couple months ago I was seeing someone."

"And you stopped?" I nod. "When?"

"Around the time Vi was kidnapped. I knew it was only going to annoy me, and I'm fine, so I don't need it anymore."

Officer Urie hums, tapping Vi's journal against his knee as he thinks.

"Okay, Ashton. Here's the deal. We're here because your friends are concerned about your mental health. They think you've developed some obsessive actions and they're worried about you."

I glare at my friends who look like they want the ground to swallow them up.

"From what we've heard tonight, we agree with them."

"What?"

"When was the last time you went somewhere not having to do with your...case?"

"I hung out with my friends last week at Sammi's." I say.

"We forced him." Luke mutters. Wingington puts a hand up, silencing my "friend".

"Before that?"

My silence is all the answer he needs.

"Tell me about what happened when you went to lunch with a friend yesterday. Luke said there was high tension between you and your friend?"

"She's not my friend, she's this horrible girl Vi knew from her club and she was lying to me, what else was I supposed to do?"

"Ashton, please don't get upset." I didn't realize I'd started yelling until Urie calms me down. "You're not in trouble, we're just trying to figure out how to proceed from here."

"Proceed with what?"

The officers look at each other.

"So what did this girl do?"

"She was lying to me. I might have yelled at her a bit. Then Luke dragged me away."

"Would you say you're an angry person?"

"No." I snapped angrily.

"Want to try that again? There's no reason to hide anything from us, we're here to help." Urie smiles. I hate his stupid fucking smile and his stupid fucking face and stupid kind words.

"I get angry sometimes when I'm frustrated or scared or feel threatened. I used to take medication for it, but as I said before, I've been fine so I don't have a prescription for it anymore."

"Have either of you witnessed any of this?"

Luke and Sammi both nod hesitantly.

The officers look at me.

"Okay, Ashton. We think you need to go back to therapy."

"NO! I don't want to go to that."

"Son, don't argue with us. We're not regular beat cops, we're Police Psychologists. We deal with all sorts of things, including issues like this. We're only trying to help. Your friends are worried about you, Ashton. This has to be hard on you," Wingington gestures to my notes. "And your friends are just doing their best to get you through it. They can't do it on their own, so they asked us to come in."

"And based on what you're telling us, we think it'd be a good idea for you to talk to someone."

"He used to see the school psychologist, Dr Lanthorn." Sammi says.

"Great, I'm sure you'll be able to start appointments up again, right?"

I cross my arms and stare at my shoe. I don't want to be here anymore.

"We also have to take all of this away."

"WHAT?" I shriek. "You can't do that, I need this, I need to find her."

"You're not in the proper mental state, Ashton. You can't keep obsessing over this. You need to move on and leave the investigation work to the actual police."

"I'd leave it to you if you guys did anything!" I stand up, and both the officers sit up, on high alert with a "mentally unstable" guy getting agitated, probably. "But you did absolutely fucking nothing! While you were telling me you had nothing to go off of, I found a lead, and I started looking into it. What have you done besides find her cellphone on the street? And literally nothing more than that?"

"Please sit down," Urie says in a commanding voice and I huff but comply. He is an officer, I see the gun strapped to his hip. I'd be an idiot not to listen. "We're doing our best to find her. It's difficult; these guys were really good. They hardly left any trace, but we're still looking into it."

"Where did you find your lead?" Wingington asks. "How did you know to look into that girl you had lunch with?"

"It's in her journal. I've been reading it to get clues. She met the men who I think did the kidnapping once, and apparently they've been following her around. She saw them at the mall a couple times, at the park, they were outside our apartment complex at least once."

Sammi gasps and Luke gets up, stepping over me to comfort Sammi, holding her close. He runs his fingers through her hair, but he looks uneasy too. I guess they didn't know about that.

"Well, we're going to take the journal back to the station then and look into it. Maybe we'll get a lead and be able to have her back to you."

"You can't have that, I-I need it."

"We're sorry, Ashton. This is official police property now, it's part of an ongoing investigation. Get the papers, Brendon?" Wingington says, and he sounds sad. I know he doesn't care though.

"Stop. You can take the journal, but you have no legal claim to my papers. Those are mine, my property and they're not part of your investigation. You have no right to take them."

Urie sighs, stopping from shuffling the papers together.

"Okay, Ashton. You can keep those. But you have to promise me you'll go to therapy and try to move on. I'm going to be real with you, because I think you need to hear it." He waits until I look at him to speak. "There's a very high chance we might not be able to find her. We've been at it for a month and have nothing to show for it. From what we know of kidnappers, they don't always keep their victims. You have to be prepared for the chance."

"I just need to know what happened to h-er." My voice cracks and Sammi lets out a little sob. Luke rubs her back, cooing comforting words to her to get her to calm down. "I'm sorry, Sammi, I didn't mean to upset you." The officer apologizes, "It's the truth though, and you three are old enough to hear about the reality of the situation. We'll do our best, I can promise you that. We're going to put our best detectives on it, and if you guys remember anything or hear something, I want you to call this number."

Urie takes a card from his pocket and writes a number on the back before handing it to me.

"That's my personal number, if you think of something that could help, I want you to call me, no matter what time or day it is, got it?" He looks at all three of us in turn and we nod.

"Great. You also mentioned her laptop, yeah?" Wingington says and I nod. Sammi mentioned it earlier. "We'll need that too, if you don't mind." He looks at me expectantly so I go into my room to grab the laptop and charger so I can reluctantly hand it over to them. I wish I could take a couple of the pictures from it and put them on my own laptop, but I'm not given the chance. I hear the four of them talking, so I wait in the doorway to my room.

"Thank you guys for calling, you were right to do what you did."

"We just couldn't watch him live like this anymore, it's so sad." Sammi sniffled.

"He isn't eating, isn't focused on anything else besides this dumb journal. We tried so hard to get him to do something else, but he wouldn't. Thank you for taking it."

"If that's what you think is best, then it's no problem. You guys are good friends."

Yeah, good friends who don't believe in me and who don't want their friend to be found.

"Call us if there's anymore problems, and let me know if he gives you any problems with therapy, you have my number," Urie says getting up. I leave my room, walking over to hand him Vi's stuff. He turns to me. "It's important you do your best to move on with your life, Ashton. We'll do our best to bring her back to you, but you need to take care of yourself, too."

I nod, not finding any words left to speak to him. I'm trying not to let my rage take over, but I'm upset and fuming right now.

The officers say goodbye to me and my "friends" before they let themselves out. I stare at the couple on the couch before turning around to head to my room. If I start speaking to them, I know I'll explode and I don't think that's the best thing right now.

"Ashton, wait." Luke says, stopping me with my hand on the door handle, back facing them.

I shake my head.

"Let us explain."

"Mate, I'm super fucking pissed right now. I won't be able to speak calmly about this. Aren't you afraid of my rage issues showing, like we had to tell the officers?"

"Hey, that's not fair. They asked you if you got angry, that wasn't us."

I turn around, ready to engage. I told them it wasn't a good idea, but they didn't listen. They shouldn't fucking test me. Luke is standing a couple feet from me and Sammi is still curled up on the couch.

"No, you just called them, told them to take the journal, and told them I needed fucking therapy because I'm obsessive."

"We're just worried about you, Ashton. We don't like seeing you like this." Luke frowned.

"Like what? Determined to find my girlfriend?" I shake my head. "It's like you two don't care if we never find her."

"Hey, that's not fair. Vi was Sammi's best friend."

"Quit talking about her like she's dead!" I explode. "She's still out there somewhere, she's still your friend, and she's still my girlfriend. Don't talk like we're never going to see her again!" Tears roll down my face unchecked and I don't care. I can't take it with them talking about her in the past tense. She's still out there, she has to be.

"I'm sorry, Ashton, I didn't mean to upset you like that, it was an honest mistake." Luke coos softly. I take a shuddering breath and nod. "We really just wanted to help you."

"If you wanted to help me, you would have helped me with the investigation, not called the cops and force me to go to therapy. I don't want to meet with Dr Lanthorn."

"You can get a new therapist if you want, Ashton. You don't have to see him." Sammi said. "Is there something wrong with him?"

"Who I see is not the point!" I exclaim. "It's the fact that you went above me and had the police come and get rid of the one thing that was going to bring her back to me!"

"They'll have it now, they'll be able to continue the investigation, which is their job."

"They won't do anything, they're all idiots. They couldn't find anything on her before this, and I was on to something."

Luke sighs.

"You really didn't, mate. You had the ramblings of a crazy guy who really was hoping something would pan out. You clung to the tiniest grasp and ran with it. It wasn't going to lead to anything, it's better to let the police handle it."

"Luke, you shouldn't say-"

"No, Sammi, it's fine. At least I know now."

"Kn-know what?" She gets up, coming to stand by me and Luke. Luke puts his arm around her. 

"Know that Luke's never believed in me and was never my friend in the first place." Luke gasps and Sammi raises her eyebrows. "A real friend doesn't pull this shit, a real friend helps and listens to his friend when he tells him things."

"Ash, I know you're upset, please don't say things you'll regret. Why don't Luke and I leave,"

"Good. Please do and never come back." I glare at Luke. "You're not welcome here anymore."

"Ashton, don't be ridiculous. Of course I care about you, that's why I called the cops. You weren't listening to me, I had to do something. You can't keep living like this." Tears well up in his eyes, but I force myself to look away.

"Please get out, I need to be alone right now."

"Ashton,"

"I said, GET OUT!" They're still standing there, and I decide I can't be here anymore. I brush past them and grab my keys and phone. I slam the front door shut, running down the hall and outside. I'm too angry to drive, so I take the sidewalk and start running.

It's 2.5 miles to my destination, usually a 5 minute car ride, but it takes me half an hour to run.

I'm out of breath, sweaty, and crying when I knock on the door of the green house. My hands are shaking and I'm gasping for air as I wait for the door to open.

"Ashton, what a surprise!" Flora gasps upon seeing me on her doorstep. She unlocks the screen door, opening it for me and she gasps when I look at her. "Oh dear, what's wrong?" I launch myself into her arms and she holds me, letting me cry. It's all I can do right now.

***

Geez, I don't think that was supposed to happen, but here we are fam 😝 here's more Soft Flora Hours for all the haters 😘

What do you think about that? Who do you agree with, Luke and Sammi, or Ashton?

I had a lot of free time today so I wrote almost 4,000 words in this chapter (in between rounds of among us lmao)

Sooo anyway. That's all for today.

~ashtonfortherwin