Work Text:
The only thing that makes Bitty look twice at the @cutestanimalpixx Twitter account when he gets the notification that they’ve followed him is that Taylor Swift follows them. He’s not totally susceptible to peer pressure but some people just… know their social media stuff, okay? So he takes a gamble, follows the locked account back, and gets on with his day.
That evening they’ve approved his follow request and he shrugs, what the hell, and settles in to the usual chaos of trying to sort an active Twitter account into some kind of comprehensible narrative. The mentions are absolutely lost on him, since most of them are with other locked accounts, but he can pick threads out of the main body of the account, like yesterday:
@cutestanimalpixx
HCA Maria is off tonight. Say hello to HCA LUCA
20:19
@cutestanimalpixx
It’s like having a new babysitter.
Me: Maria lets us order pizza
Sis: Maria lets us stay up after 10
Me: Maria lets us watch PG-13 movies
20:24
@cutestanimalpixx
HCA Luca: Hey man that Tweeting looks really fatiguing. I could tweet for you
Me: DO I LOOK LIKE I WAS BORN YESTERDAY
HCA Luca: :-| :-( :'-(
20:35
@cutestanimalpixx
HCA Luca is watching Game of Thrones with us B-)
20:47
On a hunch he presses ctrl+F, types in “HCA” and gets it to search from the bottom up, and pretty soon he has the acronym unraveled in a tweet from a week and a half before.
@cutestanimalpixx
If I have to interview homecare aides all day i should get one of those big hooks they use for auditions on buggs bunny
14:55@cutestanimalpixx
Mom: Do you like hockey
HCA: Why yes, I–
Me: NEXT
14:57
Bitty narrows his eyes, scrolls up a bit, clicks on a picture to enlarge it. Two bags on a neat, tidy bed in a room with window curtains and a potted fern hanging from the ceiling; the bed has rails and wheels. The floor is speckled linoleum. One bag is a squareish duffel; the other is a soft-sided cat carrier with something orange inside. @cutestanimalpixx has captioned it, “BLOWING THIS POPSICLE STAND :D :P #RehabLyfe #SoLongSuckers”
He hardly has to scroll at all before he finds a good picture of the cat, a majestic marmalade longhair with a highly distinctive little ginger dot on its white snout. It’s Kit Purrson.
“Hi, Kent,” he whispers.
A new tweet pops up.
@cutestanimalpixx
Me today: OK which crutch comes with a coffee holder
Store dude: Uhhh I don’t think that’s an option
Me: THIS IS MANHATTAN MY MAN DON’T TELL ME CRIPPLES DON’T DRINK STARBUCKS
19:01
Bitty laughs, and feels guilty for laughing. He shouldn’t laugh; it’s awful. He covers his eyes and his first instinct is to tell Jack. That’s his first instinct for a lot of things but also Jack would just–Jack would get it, would get why he was laughing and feeling awful about Kent facing heartbreak with insouciant panache. It was just so–he didn’t know why he was even surprised.
He doesn’t even know what to say. But on second thought, he goes through and favorites all the cat pictures.