Work Text:
Mew stretched out its little pawsies in its sleep, enough for you to see each individual bean on each individual toe, and it took everything in your power not to squeal in fear of waking the little thing up. Your thumb quivered over the button at the bottom of your phone.
Click.
Mew didn't stir at the noise. You resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief and started snapping more pictures from as many angles as you possibly could. Pictures of Mew's cute little nose. Pictures of Mew's cute little toe beans. Pictures of Mew splayed out like a forgotten stuffed animal, lounging in the way that only cats could that made you wonder what the hell was up with their spine.
You tiptoed away across the soft carpet of your living room, and retreated to the kitchen to sort through your photos in better lighting.
You were getting paid for these pictures, so you wanted them to be the best they could be.
You scooted yourself up onto one of the barstool chairs, already unlocking your phone with one hand and readying the other to swipe through all the pictures you'd just taken. A few motions with your fingers later, and you were off to the races. Mew was an incredibly rare pokemon—possibly the only one of its kind—so the fact that this one just happened to like hanging out in your house and didn't mind being recorded at all was a huge boon to the scientific community.
The first time you'd ever posted a picture of Mew to social media, you'd been in some wild pokemon identification forum, trying to figure out if the cute little critter that you'd found sitting in your sink one night was just a weird espeon or something. It was pink and psychic and had a long tail, so had to be espeon, right? You wish. By the time you woke up the next morning, your inbox was flooded with inquiries from dozens of different pokemon professors all over the world, all asking about how you'd encountered Mew, how Mew had gotten into your home, and whether you were willing to assist in their research. Reading through all those messages had made for a uniquely stressful evening, even if you were able to relieve some of your stress by giving Mew scratches behind its ears.
Since then though, with you making yourself known as a credible poster and Mew making itself known as a repeat visitor, you've entered into sort of an agreement with the scientific community at large. You'd keep posting any new discoveries you'd made (or anything that reinforced previous discoveries) regarding Mew's physiology and habits, and they'd pay you to document the regular goings-on of one of the most poorly understood pokemon in the world. On paper, it was a very dry and scientific agreement.
In practice, it meant you got paid to record all the cute shit Mew did at your house.
Which was everything Mew did at your house.
You took a decent number of minutes to sort through everything, eventually settling on the ten or so best photos of Mew sleeping on your couch to post to your blog, along with the general time, date, and prior activity information that the scientists liked to have for reference. It wouldn't do for them to have a hypothesis on one of Mew's behaviors get dashed all because you'd forgotten to add some data to your posts.
With everything all settled and done, you tapped the submit button, watching with a smile as your phone refreshed and the blog updated. You'd be getting a small deposit later in the day after the eggheads checked and confirmed it there was indeed new Mew content on the blog. Gotta make sure they didn't jump the gun and send you money for whatever random thing you happened to post after all.
You set your phone back into sleep mode and jumped in your barstool seat at the reflection on the glossy black screen.
Mew hovered just behind your shoulder, staring in that curious way only Mew could at your phone.
You turned your head. Mew's big blue eyes drifted over to your face.
"Mew."
"I know you know what my phone is," you said, already thinking back to the various times that the small psychic pokemon had swiped it from you when you weren't looking.
"Mew."
Mew floated on over to your other side, lazily drifting further in the air as it went back to staring at the device in your hand. It took you a moment to realize what the pokemon wanted. You pressed a button on your phone, lighting the screen up once more, and navigated over to your camera.
"You want to take a picture?" you asked. You angled the camera in its direction. A smile came to your face as Mew floated in closer.
"Mew!"
"Yup. Smile for the camera, little guy," you said, tapping the screen.
A few minutes later, another picture was uploaded to your blog: you, with Mew looming over your shoulder, smiling together.