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Everything changed when Ransom went on his solo tour.
A week after Ransom left, Chowder moved in with his girlfriend, Caitlin. Two week after that, Dex left to spend a month with his family in Maine as they transitioned his grandmother into a nursing home. Jack was in Providence at the height of his season and Bitty was very, very lonely.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have any other friends in the area; Bitty was very friendly with the middle-aged wives next door, and sometimes got coffee with a few of the nice boys down the street. But with all his roommates gone and his boyfriend all the way across the country, Bitty got…restless.
So, really, they were all to blame for Bitty stopping by the local shelter. And it was especially Jack’s fault that Bitty adopted a new snuggle buddy he named Emmylou.
Emmylou – Emmy Boo, he was already calling her – was a scrappy little kitten who screamed for food and bit Bitty for petting her too long and curled up on his chest while he binged Cake Wars. She was the cutest little ball of fluff he’d ever seen and, frankly, Bitty was a little in love with his new, orange furbaby.
He set up the Instagram account almost immediately. It would be selfish, he rationalized, to keep all of her cuteness to himself. But Bitty had assumed maybe 100 of his followers would follow her, and maybe a few randos who wanted to see amature cat pictures.
Kitty & the Biscuits hit 8,000 followers in one evening. Bitty was speechless.
That week he began taking pictures of her constantly: sleeping, playing, wearing a tiny cowgirl hat, and on and on. The follower count grew, and soon half of Emmy’s audience didn’t even seem to know who Bitty was. After several years in some uncomfortable spotlights, that anonymity was sort of nice.
A few days before Dex was due home from Maine, there was a rare rainy evening in L.A. Bitty took advantage of the mood it cast to curl up on the couch in Jack’s worn, oversized hoodie with an audio book and a glass of wine. Emmylou curled up on the cushion by head, resting against his neck. She fell asleep quickly, vibrating against him like a tiny engine.
Moving slowly, Bitty traded his wine glass for his phone and took a few snaps. Then, equally as slow, he cropped and edited the photo in Instagram, adding the caption, lazy evening with my best girl, miss emmy booboo.
Bitty hadn’t gotten around to turning off notifications for the app just yet, so he noticed when an account named JLZimm1 liked the photo, then about seven other photos, then followed both Emmy’s and Bitty’s accounts.
Grinning, Bitty took a screenshot and texted it to Jack. This you? he asked
Yeah, Jack replied. Tater’s been showing these pictures to me all week. Wanted to be able to see them myself.
Bitty grinned. Glad Tater’s enjoying her. She’s mighty cute.
She is, Jack agreed. So’s her owner, he added a second later. Especially when he wears his boyfriend’s hoodie.
Yeah? Bitty texted back. Well it’s a good thing you’re playing the Kings soon. You’ll get to see Miss Emmy AND her cute owner. Maybe he’ll wear his bf’s hoodie again. Maybe that’s all he’ll wear.
There was a long pause where Bitty waited with bated breath as the three dots hovered next to Jack’s name. Finally, the response came. Maybe his bf isn’t going to be able to sleep tonight with that mental image.
Bitty laughed, startling Emmy, and took one last selfie with him biting his lower lip and Emmylou glaring up at the camera. Good ;)
Emmy mewled and and settled back down on Bitty’s neck. Bitty chuckled and grabbed his wine and waited for more flustered text messages, warm and content and snuggling his second favorite cuddle buddy in the world.