Guilty By Association

4

"Come on, come on."
Hobie's shaking hands fumbled with his watch, the screw driver nearly dropping from his hold, he just couldn't hold it steady enough. He had swung back frantically to his boat and cleared all his tables, the place looking like it'd been turned upside down. Notes were scattered all over the floor, messy hand-writing inelegible for anyone other than himself. It had been two days since Pavitr ran off. Two days of having no idea where in the multiverse he could be, which endless sea of galaxies he'd dove into. "Goddamn it!" He'd gotten no sleep. Pavitr's last few words, his tear stricken-face, the devastation in his eyes imprinted into his mind with a branding iron.

He'd been so indelicate with his watch, it had nearly dismantled at one point, but the clamoring panic at the pit of his stomach willed him to keep it together, to try and not destroy his only hope of ever seeing him again.

He finally managed to hold the screw driver right, twirling it carefully to tighten the knots, all eight of the tiny things, his mind about to break with anxiety. And once it had been turned on, his fingers rushed to press and swipe and configure the new settings he added. He could not do much. Yet.
It was not as if he had the database of the entire multiverse, to try and condense all those worlds into designated digits, like there was some sort of algorithm dictating and assigning them to each other—he didn't have that kind of resource nor time.

But at the very least, he could open up his watch's history, he could save all the places he'd been to like little slots. And each slot had just a singular dash (-) to indicate that they were there, that he'd been there. With Pav.
There was no certainty Pavitr had gone to any of these places again, but he had no where else to start.

Hobie didn't wait for a second longer to step in the first portal he opened, the flower dimension. And he'd ran the area, minding little about the threats of mother-arachnids. He checked every rose because Pavitr liked to curl into them, skipped every rafflesia because Pavitr hated their smell, and fuck, he missed him.
"Pav!" He called out on top of the crown of thorns, "Pav!" to the dandelions that rode the skies like airplanes, "Pav!" He yelled into the giant hibiscus whose petals he had hit more than a month ago.

He trekked the next one exhausted, his nose twitching at the rotting corpse of a spider Pavitr had killed, the rose anthers withered to a crisp. "It's my fault its dead!" Pavitr yelled so sorrowfully back then, and Hobie understood now more than ever. He understood everything.

He drove at 100 to the mall, nearly crashing at the entrance and went straight to the groceries, finding their empty sausage cans untouched even by maggots. The aisles were hollow, not a soul in sight, not for the mall, not for the city, not for the entire land-mass, not for the Earth. And he'd realized just how ominous and threatening this was as a feeling when he'd stood face to face with it, alone. Pavitr completely masked it all up with the warmth of his company. He never noticed just how ear-ripping the silence here was when he had his voice to drown it down with back then, singing to Ed Sheeran off-key.

Hobie carried on.

The waves were calm, contrasting harshly with the tidal surgers within him as he felt dizzy with fatigue. The island was as beautiful as ever. It was Pavitr's favorite, for the ease of mind it offered in their brief stay. They should have taken their time with it. Not even two weeks was enough to fully bask in its ammeneties.

Hobie's boots buried well into the sand, kicking aimlessly as he trudged towards their tree, their little settlement. The hammocks weren't there, but all their equipment still were. The make-shift stove, the plates of coconut husks, and weaved roofs. Even the broken volleyball ball. He'd picked it up, just a husk with a few layers of web left, and sat underneath the tree, resting his back against the trunk for shade.