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The rain patters on the window of your apartment, and you watch it fall straight down into the dingy alleyway below. It’s a far cry from the beauties of New York, but it’s all you have right now. Were this a month ago, you’d be down there, making a mess of the puddles and enjoying the coolness on your skin, but for now you’re barely brave enough to peek out the blinds for a second.
You pull yourself away from the bedroom window, rolling your shoulders and moving from your bedroom into the living-room-slash-kitchen combo that makes up the rest of your apartment. It's tiny, both rooms cramped, but it's home. You pause at the entry to the kitchen, staring for a second on the marks drawn on the wall.
The highest they go is a little over five and a half feet. Your original height. From that, they’re random. Vastly different increments, from your original height down to a minimum of two inches. The ones at the very bottom are faint.
(It’s hard to hold a pencil when you’re two inches tall.)
But today is a good day, and you are close enough to your original height that you feel comfortable in your own skin. Later you’d record this in your notebook, compare this with previous height shifts. As far as you figure they had something to do with your emotions, possibly your mental or physical wellbeing, but it had only been a month since the incident so there wasn’t enough data to have a concrete answer.
All you know is that shrinking has became commonplace. It varies with how small, and for how long, and you don't know what causes the spurts.
You just shrink sometimes.
You set to work on making breakfast. Bread, canned beans, and some apple juice. Nothing glamorous, but the best you could get delivered to your door, and all things that would keep if you shrunk too small to put the leftovers in the fridge after. Right now, half of what you make is for breakfast, and half will go in the counter underneath the sink, a stash in case your height dropped too far to cook or reach anything else.
Food eventually gathered, you sit down on your sofa, enjoying your meal in silence. The TV wasn’t worth turning on, the noise would eventually become annoying if you were unable to reach the remote to turn it off. So you go over a mental checklist of things to do while you still have the height to do them instead.
You need to make another grocery order, and restock the small stores of water you had in the kitchen cabinet. There’s a pile of doll clothes that need a little bit of tailoring to fit your smallest size, and you wanted to download a few audio books for your Walkman that you keep in a small bookshelf low to the floor, that you use as a bedroom when your bed is too tall to reach.
(On your good days, you prepare for your bad days.)
You had been a secretarial intern at Oscorp, and even that was generous for your job title. At most, you ran around gathering the coffee orders of various asshole scientists, and occasionally helped tidy up paperwork here and there. The chemical spill you were involved in was entirely your fault, despite it just being one test tube splattered on your arm when you were trying to tidy someone's trash left from lunch.
No one saw it, and no one saw when you shrunk.
The world grew around you at a rapid rate, vertigo making the fluorescent lights dance around in your vision. By the time you could even gather what had happened, you were mere inches tall in the lab, surrounded by a towering desk that could put a city block to shame. You had barely managed to sprint underneath it and hole up somewhere safe before you lost consciousness.
You woke up normal sized, cramped and crammed under an average size desk.
You went home. You did not go back to Oscorp. And you have not left your apartment since.
(Dwindling savings and agoraphobia are the least of your concerns. You don't want to turn into Harry Osborn’s personal lab rat, another little scientific curiosity for those scientists to pick apart.)
(You’d figure how to manage this, and then you’d get as far away from New York as you could, and you’d start over.)
(But for now, you stay in your apartment, where you don’t have to worry about being stepped on or stolen or dissected.)
Despite not being hungry, you finish your breakfast. Judging by the darkness from the windows, it isn’t even close to morning, midnight more likely, but it’s a meal and that’s enough, and you’ll call it breakfast if you please. Tossing the paper plate onto the coffee table - easier than attempting to wash dishes and shrinking midway, nearly flooding the apartment, been there - you lean back into your worn sofa. You shut your eyes, allowing yourself a moment of respite.
In the calm stillness of the night, it’s very easy to hear your bedroom window creak open.
You sit up, eyes snapping to your still cracked bedroom door. There’s the slightest possibility that it was just the wind making the old building creak, but all hopes are dashed away the seconds you hear boots on the wooden floorboards.
A small shiver runs down your spine.
You rise from your spot on the sofa, eyes darting to the front door on the other side of the living room to your left. Part of you wants to sprint out, but you lock up in fear. Outside meant rain, animals, pedestrians, shrinking out there would be a death sentence. The footsteps grow closer. A lump forms in your throat. You can hear your bedroom door creak open.
It takes all your resolve to drag your eyes to the looming figure.
Doc Ock fills the frame of the doorway, strolling into the living room like he owns it. His boots are heavy and thick on the floor, and he tilts his glasses down with a gloved hand just a tad, brown eyes sweeping over the tiny apartment. Even if you didn’t know who he was, he cuts a terrifying figure.
His eyes land on you, and his lips curl up into a smirk. He lets out a soft chuckle, stepping closer to you. You edge back, moving yourself in the direction of the kitchen, not once taking your eyes off the super villain invading your apartment.
“You know, when I heard there was an incident at Oscorp, I almost didn’t look into it,” he says. He speaks conversationally, as if you’re an old friend meeting him for coffee, not the owner of the apartment he just invaded. “They’re so uptight, trying to steal any data from them is near impossible.”
You don’t stop moving until your back hits the far wall of the kitchen, the wrinkled wallpaper rough against your thin tank top.
“I-I,” you stutter out, unsure of what you’re even trying to say. Your throat feels like it’s being constricted, brain refusing to work in tandem to make some demand that will make this man leave .
He steps closer, entering the kitchen. There’s a solid few feet of space between the two of you, but you still have to tilt your head back slightly to look him in the eyes, even at your full height.
“But when I found out it was just a helpless intern? Who didn’t even tell anyone?”
He smiles, taking full delight in your shaking form. He lifts a hand to pull off his sunglasses, folding them and tucking them into the inside of his leather coat, and steps closer.
Otto invades your personal space, stopping just a few inches away from you. His eyes look your form up and down, narrowed in scrutiny, reading you like a physics textbook. He’s roughly half a foot taller than you, putting you about eye level with his jaw, and you throw your gaze down at your feet rather than his intense stare.
“Tell me what happened.”
His voice is solid and low, the sharp command a contrast from the smile that was on his lips just a second ago. His face shifts into something stern, leaving absolutely no room for argument.
“It was j-just a vial,” you stutter out, “I, uh, it spilled on my arm, and I washed it off. Nothing happened.”
The words slip from your lips before you can fully think of the ramifications of lying to a supervillain.
The alternative, though, being shrunken in the hands of Otto Octavius, feels infinitely more terrifying.
Otto steps away, turning to look around your cramped kitchen. He takes in the small space.
“It would be a lot easier if you would just be honest with me, my dear,” he says. He lets out a small sigh, an indication that whatever happened next would be your fault if you didn’t comply.
There’s a shifting underneath his leather coat, and a second later the actuators unfurl themselves from the slit cut in the back. The metal tentacles wind and twist, filling whatever sparse space in the kitchen that isn’t otherwise occupied by Otto. He doesn’t even face you, still investigating the kitchen, but one of the tentacles does wind its way towards you. The pointed tip presses to your chest, skating upwards over your throat to place itself at your chin, tilting your head up slightly.
Otto pauses before the set of markings on the wall. He studies them, his face made of stone, and you can’t help the way your breath hitches in your throat, catching on the metal pressed into it.
The actuator retreats at that, and a small, sly look crosses his lips. His eyes dart to you, and he looks positively delighted .
“Oh, now that’s intriguing,” he says. With that he turns, stepping towards you, rapidly closing the distance.
You shut your eyes, pressing yourself into the kitchen wall as if it would absorb you right there. You can feel his presence draw closer, until the warmth of his body is directly in front of you, the smell of metal and cigars hitting your nose.
Gloved fingertips grip your chin, and your eyes fly open at the sudden contact.
Directly in front of you is Otto’s broad chest. Just a second ago you were eye level with his chin, and now he has to tilt your head fully back in his grasp for you to make contact with his eyes. The fingertips around your chin are large and firm, and he lifts up his other hand to pin it on the wall beside your head.
If you had to guess, you were a touch over five feet tall, if even that. Otto was a big man before, but the loss of even just a few inches make his presence all the more consuming.
He leans in, peering into your eyes, before lifting up his hand from your chin to tug off his glove with his teeth. He drops it in his pocket, and returns two fingers to your neck to take your pulse.
“This is fascinating ,” he says, the whisper sounding fully like he’s speaking to himself and not to you. You feel like a bug under a microscope, and the fingers on your neck jerk into your jawline as a few more inches dissipate from your height.
Otto’s eyes widen, the smile finding its way on his lips once more. His other hand braces up on the wall as well, eyes darting to compare where your height was a moment ago to now.
(Ever a scientist at heart, and now with a brand new specimen to study.)
“When did this start?” he asks.
Your lips part, and you can’t bring yourself to speak. The doctor doesn’t take kindly to your silence, and removes his hands from the wall, standing to his full height. You’re easily under five feet now, and your heart stutters when you realize how massive this man is compared to you.
“As s-soon as it spilled on me,” you choke out, deciding to keep on his good side. “It comes and goes.”
His face doesn’t waver from it’s now critical look, still analyzing every inch of your form.
“Are there triggers? What instigates it?”
“I tried to keep notes,” you eke out, with a small gesture towards the coffee table in the living room. He stares down at you for a moment, eyes still narrowed in scrutiny.
Unable to tear your eyes off of him, you watch as he moves out of your space once more. He turns, stepping into the living room, and begins rooting through the belongings on your coffee table. Eventually he finds the faded green notebook amid the mess of paper plates and to-go cups, and begins to flip through it.
He scans the pages with rapid precision, flipping through them as he takes in the notes on what you ate, how you felt, other health symptoms.
“A brilliant try,” he says. He turns to you, and he tucks the notebook into his leather jacket. “Inconclusive, nowhere near the work I’d expect of an Oscorp employee, but there might be something of use.”
Your eyes dart to the front door, behind Otto from your position. Part of you wonders if you could manage to race past him, take your chances outside, but the six limbs are a touch of a deterrent. As if reading your mind, he moves back to you, slowly stepping closer and blocking any path of escape.
“Of course, we’ll have to do some tests,” he says.
He leans down to make his face level with yours, and his smile is nothing but sinister. His hand lifts up, much larger than it was a minute ago. A thick finger traces over your cheek, making you feel all the smaller as you realize his hand is larger than your face.
“But I can’t wait to figure you out.”
His low voice sends a drop of ice down your spine. This time you feel the shrinking more than see it, your skin tightening, your joints groaning uncomfortably. It hurts in large spurts, and you screw your eyes shut as things begin to twist in your vision, your entire world thrown off by vertigo.
When you open them, blinking your eyes to bat away the darkness at the edge of your sight, you’re eye level with Otto’s stomach. The ribbed tank top underneath his coat clings to his wide frame, showing off the curve of his stomach where it hangs over the metal brace cinched tight around him. You can see his breath rise and fall in his chest as you drag your eyes all the way up to meet him. Two and a half feet of difference between you, and he feels like a mountain before you.
(And when sheer delight coats his features, you drop an inch or two more.)
“Are you scared, my dear?” he asks.
He doesn’t bother leaning down this time. His hand comes up to press on your stomach, the span of it large enough to wrap around your waist slightly. Otto pushes you into the wall, and you feel the ground leaving your feet as he slides you up against it.
The feeling of another human’s hand covering the span of your entire front with enough room to spare to grab you is downright terrifying. His fingers are big enough to be tree branches, and even as you squirm, their grip is far too solid for you to pry loose.
Otto pins you against the wall at his face level, and he lifts up his other hand to brace it on the wall next to you, carefully studying his hand in comparison to your head. Just a moment ago it was barely bigger than your face, now it utterly dwarfed your head. The forearm along the side of you obscures that side of your vision entirely.
You bring your hands up to grip the wrist of the hand around your waist, attempting to pry at it. He doesn’t even budge a millimeter, his strength massively outweighing yours. You can feel your fingers dwindling in comparison to his hand, the texture of his leather glove getting rougher as your size decreased compared to it.
“That's it, isn't it? You're frightened.”
He practically growls , his voice low and throaty. It makes you still entirely, turning your face back up to his. Leaning in close, he consumes your entire vision, filling more and more as you feel your size dwindle from your form.
Otto’s hand darts back from your waist, and as soon as a small scream leaves your lips something snatches the back of your shirt. Otto’s hand returns once more, this time clasped over your mouth as you dangle from the claws of one of the actuators.
He tuts at you, squeezing his hand over the lower half of your face lightly. It covers your mouth, your jaw, and there’s plenty extra of the massive palm. The leather is warm and bitter on your lips.
“Be good for me,” he says. His voice is soft, coming out like a gentle request, but the sharp look in his eyes threatens you to dare not disobey. “Be quiet, please, my dear.”
You try to nod, but can’t even budge under the strong grip of the doctor. He feels the miniscule movement, though, and releases your face a moment later.
He steps through the kitchen, the actuator swinging you around by the back of your shirt. None too gently, it pushes you against the markings you have on the wall, dropping you down to your feet. You stumble, barely able to catch your balance, before Otto’s hand returns.
His bare hand is warm, covering your entire shoulder and some of your bicep as he pushes you into the wall.
“Not even three feet tall,” he mutters. His grip on you loosens slightly, pushing you to the side as he leans in to inspect the markings on the wall. His eyes trail downwards, landing at the lowest heights you have marked. His gloved hand comes up to trace the faint pencil mark, standing at a proud two inches.
With him momentarily distracted, you step backwards. You edge back into the living room, trying to ignore the dizzying feel of everything expanding in the slightest increments. The gradual shrinking hadn’t stopped since he arrived, hopefully no more spurts would happen. You’re halfway into the living room, and cast a quick glance to the front door.
One of the actuators slam into the floor in front of the door, sending splinters of wood shattering into the air. You flinch violently, and in the same motion your height crashes down another foot, the metal arched around you rapidly growing as you rapidly shrink.
The doctor rises to his full height, and even with the distance between the two of you, it’s obvious you barely reach his mid-thigh right now. He steps closer towards you, each one of his legs bigger and thicker around than your entire body. It’s like watching a building move, and you can feel the ground lightly tremor from your position much closer to it.
“There’s nowhere for you to go,” he says, his voice filled with a touch of mock sympathy. “I doubt you could even reach the handle to the door.”
The actuator behind your back, blocking the way to the door, darts up, pushing its tip into your back. The sudden shove causes you to stumble, the jolt of fear instigating another shrinking spurt. Your body compresses in on yourself, and it’s all you can do to look up to Otto, watching his figure rise higher and higher above you.
He smiles.
As soon as you can muster the strength to move, you sprint for the direction of your bedroom. The floorboards seemingly grow under your bare feet as you move, the wood grain getting rougher on your skin as you get smaller. By the time you make it to the door you’re a little less than a foot tall, and it takes all of your strength to shove the door closed.
(You don’t hear footsteps. You hear a chuckle, low and satisfied.)
(He isn’t chasing you.)
(Because there’s nowhere for you to run.)
Even with the distance and the door shut, you still dwindle down. You don’t stop moving, knowing you have to get as far as you could before running will get you nowhere. Watching your bed and scattered piles of dirty clothes turning into monoliths would just terrify you further, so you don't linger on anything as you dart for shelter.
When you land at your final height of two inches tall, you barely make it to the nightstand beside your bed. The door to the bedroom slowly creaks open, and you fling yourself underneath the nightstand. A haggard cough escapes your lips as you inhale dust and stale air, and you shove your arm over your mouth to silence it.
It’s quiet.
You can still hear the rain pattering outside, only interrupted by the occasional clap of thunder. The lighting in the room is dark, even darker underneath the cramped nightstand. The swirls in the grain of the fake wood are taller than you are.
At this height, the closest thing of comparison you had was that you were the size of a battery, or two quarters laid lengthwise. You’d measured yourself against things multiple times in the long days spent alone and tiny. You knew how being small felt.
(But being small and hunted down?)
You hear his boots creak softly on the floorboards, as if he’s trying to move as silently as possible through the dark room. You push yourself a touch more into the shadows, hoping he didn’t have time to catch sight of you before he entered.
(It’s goddamn terrifying. )
You try to listen to his footsteps over the sound of your own heart in your ears, trying to keep track of where he’s in your room.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. His voice rumbles like thunder. It couldn’t be more than a low tone, but at your size, his voice sounds like a movie theater speaker system directly in your ears. “It would be best for you to come out now.”
Even if you wanted to heed his words, you’re firmly rooted to the spot. If you could shrink anymore, you’d be downright microscopic right now with the fear flooding your veins. His footsteps draw closer, and you lift up a hand to your lips to stifle the gasp when his boots stop before the nightstand.
You don't even come up to the top of the toes of his boots. The floorboards creak underneath him, the sound deafening at your close proximity. Fingers dig into the flesh of your cheek as you try to keep yourself from uttering a single noise.
Otto sighs. Disappointed, tired, and his foot taps on the ground slightly in impatience. The miniscule movement sends tremors through your small frame.
A sound like the world tearing apart erupts above you. Metal crashes into wood, and the sight of the building sized dresser being lifted effortlessly by a massive metal tentacle is so incomprehensible you can barely process it. The actuator tosses aside the nightstand like it’s nothing, and you’re left collapsed at the feet of Otto Octavius.
It’s all you can do to bring yourself to look up at him. He towers over you, looking like he could loom over the Empire State Building itself, unfathomably large. When his brown eyes spot you, his familiar smile returns.
You scramble to your feet, but before you can even move, two tree-trunk sized fingers are pressed around you, one to your stomach, one to your back. The ground rapidly falls from your feet as his gloved hand lifts you high in the air. All attempts at struggling are stilled the second you get a glance of the drop below, seemingly hundreds of feet down.
Otto shifts you so you’re sitting in his palm, the length of it easily twice your height. The leather is warm on your skin, and you pull your knees up to your chest, as if making yourself smaller would make you less of a target. His towering fingers arch slightly over you, preventing you from falling off, but it feels more akin to cage bars looming threateningly.
He draws you close to his face until it’s the only thing that fits in your line of sight. From this close up you can see all of the intimate details. The faint hint of stubble on his cheeks, the small smile lines in the corners of his mouth, the sheer curiosity in his eyes as he visually devours you.
He doesn’t take his gaze off of you, analyzing every single centimeter of your body. The heat of his breath washes over you, and you can feel the rapid pulse in his palm betraying his calm demeanor.
Otto lifts his ungloved hand, placing the pad of his index finger under your chin. The tip of his finger could easily cover your entire face, the finger itself twice your height, but he angles your face upward with the most delicate motion.
He takes in your tiny features, leaning in closer to examine you further. The tremble of your chest, the terrified expression on your face, your eyes unable to look anywhere but his.
“Fascinating,” he whispers. The word washes over you, his voice surrounding you like warm thunder.
He stands up straight, giving you a bit of reprieve from the close proximity, but only for a moment. His free hand tugs at the collar of his jacket, and he pulls you close to his expansive chest. Catching your eyes still on him, he gives you the smallest wink and the smuggest smile before you’re sent plummeting through the air once more.
You land in something warm and soft, cloth to one side and leather to the other. It only takes a second for you to figure out he dropped you into his coat pocket, and as he lets it go to fall back against his body, you slam into his chest.
“Thank you, my dear,” he says. He doesn’t have to say the words as more than a whisper for them to reverberate throughout your entire body, every noise in his chest shaking you down to the bone.
The world swings into motion as he starts walking, and it’s all you can do to latch onto the thick fabric. His heartbeat is loud against you, pressed right to his soft chest, and you can feel the warm body heat rolling off of him.
He gives a final pat to the pocket, large fingers pressing into your trembling figure to make sure you’re situated, before he vanishes into the night.