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borrowersunflower · 1 month

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Officially submitting a request for any ghostbusters gt or Jurassic Park gt one shot or even headcannons

okay so i've been working on this ghostbusters story for like a week and i just kept writing and writing and writing so this is super long, please accept my offering 🫴🫴🫴

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Really, it was just another day at the office.

You, Ray and Egon? You were over in the lab, poring over red goo and test tubes and weird steam that had stumped you three for days. You knew this slime responded to human emotion in some way, but you just didn’t know quite what it did.

Winston? He was talking to Janine, trying to sort out next month’s schedule, papers falling from his arms as he tried to keep everything straight.

And Venkman? He was sitting, legs crossed, feet up on the table, chomping down on a sandwich as he flicked through channels on TV.

Typical Venkman, as far as you were concerned.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” you sighed. “It’s just — it’s like — where are those lab notes from last week?”

Ray shrugged. “I dunno. Egon, have you seen Del’s papers?”

“Hm?” Egon finally answered after a full 30 seconds of silence. “Oh, uh. No. No, I haven’t, sorry.”

“You’re always losing things, aren’t you, newbie?”

Just the sound of his voice made your blood boil. “Alright, Venkman,” you rolled your eyes. “And I’m not a newbie. I’ve been here since February.”

“Yeah, yeah, talk to me when you save the world and blow up a giant marshmallow, okay?”

You groaned. “Does he have to be here?” you pleaded with your lab partners.

“Of course he does, Del,” Ray said, eyes not once wavering from the experiment in front of him.

“Just pretend he’s not here. That’s what I do,” Winston deadpanned as he whisked past you.

“Love you too, buddy!” Venkman called out.

“Okay, enough talking now, please,” you snipped. “This is confusing enough as it is—“

“Ray? Egon? There’s a gentleman from the Post who wants to speak with you both,” Janine ran into the room, almost out of breath. “And he won't go away.”

Ray and Egon looked at each other and shrugged. “Fine, tell him we’ll be there in five minutes,” Ray said.

You watched in almost horror as the two unceremoniously left the room, leaving you alone with Venkman. Great.

“So, egghead,” Venkman started, sandwich still in hand as he pushed himself up. You heaved another sigh. “What kind of nerdy fun do you get up to over here?”

“Not now, Venkman, please,” you begged. “This slime is serious stuff. And no food in the lab.”

“Psh. It’s not that serious. I’ve been slimed before. We all have.” He paused. “Well, almost all of us.”

You bit down on your tongue to keep from screaming. Peter didn’t want you here, that much was clear. He was perfectly comfortable with the four-man operation, and he strongly opposed your addition even when Egon and Ray begged for it. He eventually relented, but only because he knew it was a battle he couldn't win. You always figured he had it out for you so you’d be forced to quit on your own. The demeaning nicknames, the constant teasing, acting like you didn’t know what you were doing; you couldn’t take it much longer.

“Well, this one is important,” you retorted. “It’s from that weird ass ghost we came across last week. The composition of this, it’s… different than the others.”

“Hm. Different how?”

You turned to him and glared. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, alright, sheesh. No need to get snippy.”

“I have to get snippy when you won't listen.”

“Woah, hey, alright now. Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there is!” you fumed. “You don’t want me here.”

“Oh, we’re just making stuff up now, are we? You know, just because you can’t instantly figure out the solution to a new problem doesn’t mean you can take it out on me!”

“This— this isn't about the slime!” you scoffed in surprise. “This is about you not respecting me here!”

As the bickering continued, neither of you noticed the way the goo began to jiggle and make strange gurgling noises. It only got louder as the arguing went on, until Venkman noticed it was emanating an eerie glow.

“Uh, why is your goo glowing?”

“What are you talking about—” you started, but never got to finish. As soon as you turned and you both were looking at it, the light became blinding and filled the room. You and Venkman shut your eyes and covered your ears as a deafening whining filled both of your heads for the briefest of moments before it all came to a halt.

When you opened your eyes, all you could see was white. You were sitting down, somehow, and you suddenly had a splitting headache that was definitely not there a second ago.

“Ugh… what happened?” you mumbled. Your eyes widened at the weird sensation you felt when speaking — like you were alone in a sprawling field and all your words had floated out into the void, never to be heard by another living soul.

“Venkman?” you tried. Nothing. It took a few seconds to blink away the residual light, but you finally managed to see straight again. A shiver ran down your spine as you adjusted your glasses. Why were you so cold?

As soon as you saw it, you knew.

You had felt this weird looming sensation, so you spun around on your butt to see what was behind you. It wasn’t a person, or a ghost. It was a sandwich. Venkman’s sandwich. Which was now as tall as a house.

You were on top of the table, and you were tiny.

“Ho-ly shit…” you murmured, shakily pushing yourself back. Panic was beginning to set in as you took in the now-giant world around you. How was this even possible? Would your health be affected in any way? How were you going to fix this? You couldn’t let anyone see you like this!

“What did you do?!” a voice rang out from behind you. You groaned and turned around. Venkman had shrunk with you.

“What did I do? Are you kidding me? You’re gonna blame me for this?”

“I bet it was that freaking slime,” he muttered, already turning his attention away from you. His eyes darted around the table, which looked more like the Great Plains than a lab counter, to find where the goo you were observing was. He tried to pretend he wasn’t utterly freaked out when the tupperware container holding it came up to his neck.

“It’s like it’s laughing at us,” he sneered, observing the way the goo bounced up and down as he stood right over it.

Soon, you were standing right beside him. “You’re right. That’s…”

“...unusual?” he offered.

“Yeah, you could say that,” you began, “considering we’re FOUR INCHES TALL!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have been messing with that stuff,” Venkman shrugged, slowly walking away from tupperware to the edge of the table.

Your eyes widened as he got closer to the ledge. “Venkman! Be careful!”

“Come on, I’m not gonna… fall…”

In a rare moment, Venkman was speechless. The drop to the floor looked impossibly long – longer than the Grand Canyon, or the view from the top of the Empire State Building. No, this was a longer drop than he had ever experienced in his life.

“That’s… pretty far,” he confessed, voice lacking his characteristic wit. Also at a loss for words as you stared straight down, you simply nodded.

“God, that guy was such a hack, wasn’t he?”

Your eyes blew wide. No, they couldn’t be back so soon…

“I hate reporters. Always making me feel like I’m doing something illegal.” Egon snickered. “Or that I got caught.”

You were frozen. This was the absolute worst-case scenario. Not only were you stuck with Venkman down here, but now you had to deal with two scientists you had only looked up to figuratively. They had to see how you had failed.

“RAY! SPENGLER! DOWN HERE!”

You cringed. It felt so counterintuitive to yell, but Venkman wanted this fixed and fixed fast.

He began waving his arms around frantically. “STANZ! SPENGLER!”

The giant Ghostbusters paused. “Do you hear something, Ray?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

“It sounds like it’s–”

“–coming from the table,” they said in unison. It didn’t take long for their eyes to find you.

“Oh… my…” Ray couldn’t even finish his sentence. He took cautious steps forward, slowly leaning down as he did so. You shrunk back.

“Venkman? Del? What–what happened?”

The words got caught in your throat as his gigantic face settled in front of you. He was so unbelievably huge, and his size filled you with a sense of unavoidable dread.

“Oh, thank god,” Venkman sighed. “Look, you guys have to bail us out. I’m positive that this slime you guys were messing with did this to us.”

Egon and Ray were beside themselves. The square-cube law didn’t allow for this! How could this have happened? Well, they supposed, anything can happen when ghosts are involved.

“Uh… guys? You can see us, right?”

You and Venkman exchanged an unnerved glance that said I’m pretty freaked out that they keep staring.

Cautiously, Egon stuck his finger out and was halfway to poking Venkman before his face twisted into anger and he sidestepped. “Spengler!” he cried. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

Egon pulled his finger back, unfazed by Venkman’s annoyance. “Oh, wow. It’s real, Ray.”

“This… this is incredible. Simply incredible!” Ray’s booming voice marveled. You winced at the volume. “I mean, this is a game-changer! Slime that not only responds to human emotions, but can alter their physical body in ways we – we didn’t even think were possible! I can’t believe this, I…”

Ray trailed off when he finally locked eyes with your trembling form. Sure, he was excited – he knew you understood that – but what he didn’t understand was just how scary this must be for you. To suddenly have your autonomy taken away from you… being loomed over and stared at by beings fifty times your size… it had to be no less than utterly overwhelming.

Venkman rolled his eyes. “You two can ogle at us later, after you find a way to fix this.”

“Sorry, Peter, you’re going to have to speak up,” Egon said, leaning in closer. Your eyes grew wider than you thought was possible, and one shaky step backwards to get away from his pinning gaze sent you tumbling to the ground.

“Egon!” Ray gasped, pushing his friend back. “Del, are you alright?”

Sheepishly, you nodded.

“Sorry, Del,” Egon said, concern all over his face. “I suppose I’m going to have to make a few adjustments to the way we interact.”

“Gee, you think?!” Venkman cried in exasperation. “We’re tiny, you’re huge. There, I think that settles it!”

“Calm down, Peter,” Egon chided with the tone of a concerned father. “Look, we’re going to have to run a few tests to see how—”

“No!” you piped up, surprising everyone, including yourself. You cleared your throat as your eyes darted from Ghostbuster to Ghostbuster. “I mean… you guys are gonna have to give us a little bit to, you know… process all of this.” You eyed Venkman. “Back me up here…”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah, what Del said.”

You groaned. “Thanks for the help.”

“Del’s right,” Ray agreed, turning to Egon. “Right now, we can just… ask them how they feel. Besides, we have to re-calibrate all of our equipment and cancel all our appointments until we can get this sorted out.”

After a moment of thinking, Egon nodded. Even though he still thought the best way to solve this was to run as many tests as possible, he understood the need for space.

In a shaking voice, you recounted the events leading up to the shrinking and how you felt now – overall normal, just overwhelmed and a little cold.

“Well, that makes complete sense. Your bodies are so small that the amount of heat you lose proportional to your height is faster than you can generate.”

“Oh, great, so we’ll freeze to death?”

Ray hesitated. “Well… all science points to yes, but you told me you feel completely normal.”

“So far,” Venkman grumbled.

“And nothing is darker?”

You both shook your heads.

“Fascinating. It was always theorized that the smaller you get, the less light your eyes would be able to process, therefore the world would appear darker.”

“I mean… I guess it’s darker,” you admitted. “But not by much.”

“Incredible. So basically, everything we’ve ever posited would happen if humans were shrunk… isn’t happening to you at all. I’m surprised we can even hear you talking, to be honest.”

The longer this Q&A went on, though, the more tired you grew, and Ray noticed. Truthfully, he always had a soft spot for you, which is why he lobbied heavily to bring you on board in the first place. You were the top of your class at NYU in biochemistry, not to mention you were passionate about helping others in any way you could. He could barely stand watching you cower away from the world you loved and have dedicated your life to understanding.

“Guys?” Winston’s voice rang from the back of the room, finally back from sorting out the schedule. He wasn’t going to be happy that all his hard work was about to go to waste. “Who are we… talking… to.”

As soon as he joined the fray, it became too much for you. “I… I… I can’t do this,” you sniffed, the first tear finally breaking free. “I – this is crazy.”

“Del? Are you okay?” Ray asked, sorrow written all over his face. A rather unfamiliar feeling suddenly washed over him – he wanted to scoop you up, hold you close and reassure you that everything would be alright.

“They don’t look okay,” Winston replied, his wide eyes fixated on you.

It was like the worst kind of judgment day you could imagine; like you were in trouble at school and everyone was in on it, or being scolded by your parents all over again. Three people you considered to be your family were now unfathomably large, and right now, there was no end in sight. Were you going to have to look up at them forever? Have them cart you around wherever you wanted to go? How were you going to shower?

“Del–” Egon started, but it was too late. Now furiously wiping away tears, you ran toward what you perceived to be an amorphous blob of technology behind you and disappeared around the back of what was, ironically, a microscope.

You instantly dropped to the ground, folding your knees into your chest and tucking them in tight. Right now, you wanted nothing more than to be left alone for the next several hours.

You wouldn’t even get a few minutes.

“You know, we’re going to need them if we ever want to get back to normal.”

You wiped your eyes and sniffed. “I don’t really want to talk right now, Venkman.”

Instead of the usual quick-witted comeback, Venkman took a seat next to you, stretching out his legs, as if that would make him taller again. There was a rare comfortable silence between you.

“Did you know I got fired from Columbia?” he said suddenly, unprompted.

You looked at him in surprise. “Uhm – no. No, I didn’t, actually.”

“It was a while ago. Heck, it’s what inspired us to start the Ghostbusters in the first place.”

You sniffed a laugh. “I didn’t even know you worked at Columbia.”

“What, is that so hard to imagine?”

“...Yes. Yes it is. What were you, a professor of laziness?”

“If ‘laziness’ gets you PhDs in parapsychology and psychology, then, yes.”

At that, you had to laugh. “I think you’re making that up.”

Venkman feigned offense. “Ask Ray and Egon! They wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Maybe if they weren’t a hundred feet tall and could crush me in an instant, I would.”

You hadn’t meant to let that slip, but you also didn’t regret saying it.

Venkman sighed, but it wasn’t out of annoyance. It was out of… concern?

“Look, kid.” That was the first time he had ever called you that. “This is weird as all hell, don’t think I don’t agree with you on that. All I’m saying is… all of us, we’ve fucked up before. Massively. This… this isn’t your fault, you know, right?”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“Is it working?”

You wanted to say no, to keep snapping at him and telegraphing just how awful he usually made you feel. But right now… you weren’t feeling that. Maybe you just didn’t have the energy. He was probably just trying to cheer you up out of sheer necessity.

“Maybe,” you said. “Maybe not.”

Venkman shook his head. “You’re one impossible kid to please, you know that?”

Somehow, that response didn’t make your insides boil up with anger. Instead, you smiled.

“Should… should we check on them?” Egon asked, still staring straight at the microscope.

Winston shook his head. “Give ‘em time.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, you and Venkman emerged from your hiding spot. Venkman didn’t seem to have a problem staring up at his longtime friends, but for you, it was still too difficult and too weird. You kept your eyes trained in front of you, nervously wringing your hands together.

Venkman clapped his hands. “So! You guys come up with a brilliant plan to get us back to normal yet?”

Ray, Egon and Winston exchanged glances.

Ray ventured to speak first. “Well… truthfully…”

“We have no idea how long it would take,” Egon interrupted. “Or if we even can do it.”

“Nope, I won’t have any of that quitter talk,” Venkman said a little too quickly. “Can’t you see how much that would upset Del?”

All eyes fell on you. You squeezed your hand harder.

“Venkman’s right,” Ray declared. “We have to try everything we can. Exhaust every avenue! We won’t stop until you two are back to normal.”

“...I can help,” you said meekly, almost too quietly to hear. “I mean, I was studying that stuff for days, and I’m the one it zapped. I should be able to–”

“–no, Del, you can’t,” Ray said suddenly. At that, you finally mustered up the courage to look at him. He looked stressed. “It’s too dangerous, and you’re too small. What if you get hurt?”

You felt your face get hot. “Then I’ll deal with it! I–”

“I think we all need a break,” Winston stated in that firm, authoritative voice of his. When the other Ghostbusters failed to think straight, he was always there to pick them up. “Maybe we can deal with this in the morning, alright?”

Everyone nodded in unison. Winston was usually right about these kinds of things, and he knew it.

“Well, I’m goin’ home and getting some rest. Maybe now that Venkman’s so small, we won’t have to hear his yapping all day.”

Peter frowned. “Ha ha.”

Suddenly, you heard a soft voice right next to you. “Hey,” Winston practically whispered, marveling at just how small you were. He wanted to be comforting, but truthfully, he didn’t know how much words would help. “Hang in there, alright? You just let me know if you need a break from these yahoos.”

The way you gaped back at Winston, so impossibly large when situated right next to you, he wasn’t surprised that all you gave him in response was a nod. The small smile he gave you was reassuring, but it was hard to keep your breath from hitching when he stretched back up to his full height and left the room.

That left the four of you.

“If you three don’t mind, I need to go over Del’s lab notes and start modifying our equipment,” Egon said, eyeing the array of instruments at the corner table. “Or, Venkman, perhaps you’d like to come with me–”

Venkman was quick to refuse. “Nope, nooooope, nuh-uh. I’m not climbing into anyone’s sweaty hand. Just… bring me food and a blanket, I’ll make do on the table.”

Egon couldn’t suppress his smile at how adorable tiny Venkman was. “Alright, camper.”

Venkman furrowed his brow. “Don’t smile! This is not amusing!”

“Maybe not for you,” Egon deadpanned, laughing at the death stare Venkman gave him as he walked away. You don’t think you would get used to the feeling of watching your friends walk around a giant room, taking mere seconds to cover ground that would have taken you forever.

You finally noticed that Ray was eyeing you, but with a different look. Was he… nervous?

“Del…” he started, unsure of how to ask this. “Why don’t you – um, if you don’t mind–”

“Oh, this is embarrassing,” Venkman muttered.

Instead of bothering to finish his unsalvageable sentence, he sucked in a breath and put his hand, palm-up, down onto the table a few inches from where you stood. You gulped and stepped back, not prepared for just how massive it was going to look.

“Why don’t you come with me and get some supplies for you and Venkman?” he finally asked. “Nobody knows what you two need more right now than you.”

Every one of your basic instincts told you not to get on his hand; no, don’t even go near it. He won’t even be able to feel you in his palm. He would forget that you’re there, close his hand, tip it down, crush you, drop you…

But this was Ray. The guy who believed in you from the very start, who you had connected with almost instantly. Whether you liked it or not, you had to rely on him now – hell, you had to rely on all of them. You were a team, after all. A famous, ghost-hunting, rag-tag team that you spent every waking hour with… and you wouldn’t want it any other way.

To Venkman’s surprise, it only took you a few moments of deliberation before deciding to climb onto the hand. You hoisted yourself up like you were situating yourself on a boat – more like a lifeboat, in this scenario. You didn’t really know how to sit, or what would be more comfortable, but you supposed you had all the time in the world to figure it out.

Above you, Ray smiled. He wanted nothing more than to fix you, but damn it if you weren’t absolutely adorable at four inches tall.

“Ready?” he asked, consciously keeping his voice low.

You took a deep breath. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

“Enjoy the ride!” Venkman called out, waving to you as you were lifted into the air.

“Try not to get jealous!” you grinned back, adrenaline coursing through you. It was the first time you felt like joking all day.

“Trust me, I’m good down here,” Venkman said, before muttering to himself, “for now.”

Ray beamed down at you, and you gave him a wary smile back. This was uncharted territory for any human in recorded history, but you had the Ghostbusters. You were going to be okay.

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