This isn't weird.

Mr. Fucking Rogers III (Rule of threes, baby!)

Home yet? Any news?

Tess hadn't responded to Ben's sparse-yet-awkward text by the time he woke up. That was reasonable. It wasn't even sunrise. If it was one of her off days from her morning runs, she was probably still in bed. Acknowledgement hadn't arrived by the time he'd finished his own run, either. No big deal. She was a morning person to the extreme, but surely even she needed to sleep in every once in a while.

Maybe she was still out on the road, searching for Millie, but that suggested she'd driven without stopping all night, and while she may have been without physical limits, her car wasn't. She would have had to stop for gas at least once.

Maybe she had died in a fiery crash. Or been arrested. Or moved to Pennsylvania to convert to Amish...ness. Amishism?

Then there was the possibility that a bit of time and distance had made her decide that she hated him again. It certainly wasn't unlikely.

A reasonable man would have waited a few more hours to send another text, but the repair shop he'd stopped by to drop off his broken phone happened to be on her street. Might as well swing by, he thought.

He spotted her car right away—she'd left it at his apartment when they'd taken off, so she was definitely back in town. Steeling himself for potential hostility, he headed upstairs and knocked on her door. Thirty seconds passed with no answer. He tried again. No response. One last try—this time he waited a full minute before admitting defeat.

Just as he was turning to leave, the crash of glass came from within. "Tess?" he called, pounding the door. "Are you okay in there? Tess? Tess!"

The door opened just enough for her to glare out at him. "Fuck you want?"

Ben's eyebrows shot up. "Holy crap, you look like shit."

"Fuck you," she replied, and tried to slam the door in his face, but he braced his arm against it and pushed it back.

"Are you drunk?" he asked.

"Fuck d'you care?"

"It's nine AM."

"So fucken what? S'none of your business."

"Is there anybody in there with you?"

"Nope. Completely fucken alone. Now goway."

"Jesus. I can't leave you alone like this."

"The fuck not? Erryone else did."

"Come on, let me in."

"Fuck off."

"Tess, I want to help you."

"Go. A. Way. Sicka your stupid face."

"Alright, I'm coming in," he said, and she stumbled back as he forced the door open. Under normal circumstances, he knew she would have overpowered him easily, but she was inebriated, and probably hadn't slept in recent memory, either. Her eyes were so swollen and dark, he could almost mistake them for two black eyes, and her t-shirt was mottled with what he hoped were food and drink stains—a few days' worth, judging by the smell.

The apartment was in a shocking state, somehow cluttered and barren at the same time. The bookshelves were gone, and the empty expanse of olive green that had once looked so homey now made the room bleak. Half the furniture was missing, including the sofa; he wondered how Indigo had differentiated what belonged to whom. The remaining furniture was covered with empty beer cans, crumpled food wrappers, and half-eaten take-out containers. Dirty dishes were piled high in the kitchen, and from somewhere he didn't really want to know, the smell of vomit intermittently emanated. A pile of scattered beer bottles, a few of them broken, was on the floor next to the one empty corner of the table, assumably the source of the crash.