Of all of the things in the office, Derrick had come to hate the desk more than anything else. A modern thing, composed of aluminum and plastic with a thick, broad, tempered glass work surface, it was where he found himself more often than not as Kirti passed the exceptionally long hours at her tasks. Promotion after promotion had not dulled Kirti’s drive for her work, and she often spent all night and most of the early hours of the morning in her office collating data, running projections on earlier results, and in general advancing the cause of science. Derrick spent those hours on that cold glass surface, shivering from the exposure and bereft of clothing.

Derrick suspected Kirti left him on the glass desktop deliberately, knowing how cold her office got, and how vulnerable he was to the chill at his size. Standing not quite three inches in height, he knew full well that he was dependent on Kirti for everything, food, water, shelter, and of course, any semblance of warmth. It was that latter element of survival that Derrick always lacked while Kirti worked. Most of the time, after a few hours, he found himself huddled over, next to a monitor or the computer tower, desperate for some kind of relief.

It was when Kirti got the inclination, however, that he was allowed to finally warm himself up. Kirti would remove her shoes, and her socks if she’d bothered to wear them, and kick her bare feet up on her desk, and allow Derrick to do his best to lick and massage them. Of course, as small as he was, the effect was minimal, but Derrick at least got some warmth out of being so close to her comparatively massive soles.

Kirti stretched in her chair, her arms, her neck, her back, and Derrick knew what would follow. He rushed from where he rested near the tower to just next to her keyboard in dutiful anticipation. Sure enough, after the snaps and pops of her various joints, there was a brief shuffling of her legs, the squeal of her office chair as she reclined back, and kicked her bare feet up on her desk.

Immediately the familiar, acrid scent hit Derrick like a train. No matter how much progress Kirti had made in her research, she refused to buy new shoes unless absolutely necessary, and still never wore socks, leaving the pair of feet now towering over Derrick just as repulsive as when he’d first been introduced to them in the observation room so long ago.

Unlike that first introduction, however, Derrick did not recoil from Kirti’s stinging scent or the heat radiating from them, instead he charged forward, desperate, if not eager, to fulfill his task. He tried his best to embrace her heel, but knew his arms could never reach around it, still it absorbed some of the impact as he barely slowed.

Without waiting to recover, he began to adorn Kirti’s heel with kisses, as many as he could, as fast as he could, and making sure his whole face buried into her heel with each kiss. He could barely see around the foot, but caught the glow of Kirti’s phone, while the foot above him flexed idly, an arch almost out of reach wrinkling into the ball and of course, massive toes above.

She rarely addressed him directly, and when she was ready for him to switch feet, she showed as much by bowling him over with the foot he worshipped, and pinning him to the desk under it. As she lifted it up, the sound of her or sole briefly sticking to the desk, Derrick found himself scrambling to climb back to his knees in the sweaty outline of her foot on the glass. Her other sole descended, this one positioning itself at an angle to allow his lips to reach her arch, despite his tiny stature. He needed no command to continue kissing, now licking between each one, at Kirti’s sole.

"Great news, Derrick!" Kirti announced. "It looks like the FDA just cleared the experimental drug you took through phase four!"

Derrick didn't respond, he'd learned Kirti didn't want a response, and anything he said would be more dangerous than beneficial. Instead he kept his face pressed into her sole, his tongue licking away at her arch. He barely even slowed as her other sole closed in behind him to sandwich him between her feet.

"In public trials, with sufficient dosage, the drug proved effective at slowing shrinking even better than Amplidine!" Kirti said, reading from the report. "They're going to market it as 'Amplidine XT' and sell it at four times the cost of regular Amplidine! And…"

Derrick had learned not to scream, so when Kirti’s soles pressed together, smothering him between her sweat-drenched, hot flesh, he barely uttered a peep of surprise. There was a cacophony of noise, squishing and squelching as her soles rolled around him, compounded with her thunderous heartbeat, and a delighted, if significantly muffled squeal of delight from Kirti.

“My ad-hoc dosage research resulted in it clearing phase four! I’m getting a promotion and a bonus!” Kirti said, her soles finally releasing Derrick.

Without the pressure of her feet, Derrick peeled ungracefully off of the sole he’d been attending to and fell back down to the cold glass of the desk. He had only a few moments to consider what had happened. It was only when the shadow of her foot fell over him that he scrambled to his knees. He’d learned she didn’t like it when he was unattentive.

“Did you hear that?” Kirti asked, settling her toes onto Derrick and letting him resume his duties. “The research on you got me a promotion!”

Derrick didn’t respond. He’d learned not to. Kirti’s foot pushed down and Derrick’s legs slid out from under him as the sole, many times his size, began to press him into the glass. Although fear flooded into him, he knew better than to fight back, with luck he’d be allowed to crawl out from under her sole in a few moments, or wake up having passed out from lack of air or too much pressure. As the darkness began to seep into the edges of his vision he heard Kirti over the thunder of her pulse.

“I’m going to make sure I keep you close underfoot, my little medical trophy.” Kirti said, as her toes clenched around him and he passed into darkness.