Work Text:
Pairing: Forensic Anthropologist!Peter x FBI Agent! Tony
Word Count: 1866
Warnings: Graphic depictions of death?
This was the first time the pair had been on a case in months. With Peter having traveled to Laos to catalog new bones discovered there and Tony having returned from his summons to the Pentagon. The two were a little on edge. Peter was excited to see the agent again, though he'd never say that aloud, and he could feel himself flushing with anticipation. Tony, though just having arrived home was trying to leave for vacation and this case just happened to get in his way.
"Is there any way you can hurry this up, kid? Just give it your best guess and I'll put someone in cuffs so I can catch my flight?"
Peter released a loud huff, choosing to ignore both Agent Stark and his ridiculous nicknames, as well as choosing to believe his flush was a result of the sun sat high in the sky. Peter could feel the sun beating down on his back, but was far too engrossed on the partially decayed remains in front of him and the markers bred within the bone that could help identify who this person was.
"From what I can see, she's female. Presence of wisdom teeth indicates they're over eighteen. Width and shape of the pelvic bone would concur with those deductions." Peter pauses for a second, snapping a pair of latex gloves onto his hands before reaching down and slightly rotating the skull. "Normally I wouldn't be so quick to state this, but since someone has a flight to catch, I figured I should inform you that from what I can currently see, it would seem the manner of death here is a homicide considering this large blunt force trauma to the back of the skull that could indicate cause of death."
"Petey, baby, I would say that a girl gettin' her skull bashed in is more than indicative of foul play." At this, Peter turned his head over his shoulder, still squatted over the body and sent the man a chilling glare. Despite what it seemed from the outside, the pair made a good team, though always fighting over seemingly trivial things, always managed to crack the case and put the bad guy in cuffs.
The agent looked at his shoes and adjusted his tie, trying to escape the look he knew was geared towards the stupid pet names that Peter absolutely despised. But Peter knew that if he was ever in a jam, or in any form of danger that Tony would be there to save him, though the boy avidly claimed he was no damsel in distress.
Having put the agent in his place, the boy returned to his work of examining the person before him. It was evident to him that the body was partially buried: as every part of the body excluding the lower half of the girl's right arm was covered in adipocere.
"Hey Pete, why does half of her look like that?"
"Like what?"
"All waxy, it's kinda freakin' me out." Peter sighed, as he had moved over to examine the patch of green grass beneath the partially exposed radius and ulna, before collecting all of his jumbled thoughts to explain the answer to the older man's question.
"From what we can see here," The boy gestured to the waxy half of her body, "we know that she was partially buried. For the sake of time, what you need to know is that because dirt is so compact it lacks oxygen in comparison to above the ground. And as a result of it raining pretty recently, the dirt is a moist anaerobic environment, prime for creating adipocere from the body's fat. The fat reacts with the water in the dirt in a process you may know as hydrolysis and creates this waxy substance." Peter couldn't help the condescending tone that seeped into his words and honestly he didn't even care to try to take it back.
"Right, knew that." The agent shrugged, running a hand through his messy hair and trying to observe the boy working, but at a decent distance. Tony had been working for the FBI for 7 years and considering this was his line of work, dead bodies were no new sight, though he liked getting guts on the rug of his car even less than he liked finding people dead.
"Surely." The kid replied in a snarky tone, attempting to formulate some sort of time of death gap within his head as his eyes focused on the remnants of flesh that were beginning to slip off of the arm bones.
With a sigh, the kid stood to his feet and began removing the gloves, making his way back to the car.
"Where the hell are ya going kid? I didn't get much insight on what the hell happened to this girl!" Stark called after him, with his ridiculously tiny notebook and pen in hand, attempting to catch up to the younger scientist.
"From what I can tell, as indicated by the skin slippage, the body has been there for approximately 2 or 3 days? It's a little difficult to gauge time of death considering adipocere takes weeks to form over an entire body and yet the arm that was left to the elements looks as if it has only been there for a few days. So the answer to your question is: I have to run more tests. Back at the lab. So we're bagging up the body, and taking surrounding soil samples. I'm sure that Bruce can collect those, so you're going to drive me back to the lab."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, really."
"Well I missed breakfast for this call, so you and I are gonna head to the diner and grab a piece of pie, how's that, sweet cheeks?"
"Please just drive, Tony."
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True to his word, Peter worked tirelessly at the lab, trying to discover the mystery of the accelerated rate of the formulation of adipocere and the slippage of skin. It had been long past 24 hours since he had eaten pie with Agent Stark, and though he could feel the exhaustion in his limbs, his mind was moving a mile a minute.
"Have you slept yet, kid?"
The boy laid the skull back on the lab table and let out a sigh, before shaking his head, his back still turned to the door and by extension, the agent.
"You really need to catch some z's in order for us to catch this guy, Pete." Still refusing to turn around, the boy stared over to the other lab table where another body laid.
"I know, Tony. This case...it's just...really getting to me." Peter swallowed the lump in his throat, attempting to shove down the load of emotions that came with working on cases like these. "I'm fine though, honestly, I feel like I could put in a couple more hours worth of work."
At this, Tony sighs, before crossing the threshold and grabbing the boy's forearm, turning him gently to face him. The agent smiled at the boy, a gentle smile, one that reassured the kid that no matter what happened, the older man would be there for him in whatever capacity he needed him to be. And so the boy gently smiled back.
"Please go nap on the couch, and I'll keep looking through what we have, see what I can find, okay?" Huffing in defeat, Peter nodded and slipped out of the room, towards his office where that heinous orange couch called his name.
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After days upon days of endless researching, swabbing, running things through the Mass Spectrometer, calculations, phone calls, pulling strings with higher ups, and far too many all-nighters, Stark had caught the man.
He was a nobody, just like they all were. Thinking they were somebody enough to take another's life, and that was part that made Peter shiver. That was the part that reminded Peter of how he lost his brother, Harley, to some absolute nobody.
It was cases like these that shook Peter to the core, and made him reconsider his occupation. Made him wonder if he was cut out for this: looking at corpses every day and helping Tony find criminals. Criminals who felt no remorse, or sometimes who couldn't even remember their victims' names. It was days like these when he realized that he couldn't be alone. Couldn't hold himself together without someone acting as glue.
So during days like these? Tony came over.
Peter would sob, hysterically, laid atop his bed and Tony would just hold him. Tony would card his fingers through the boy's knotted, curly locks, and press kisses to his forehead. Tony would just lay there and hum gently, as the boy curled into his chest.
Tony would let him fall apart, but he would always put him back together.
"T-Tony?" The boy called out in a gravelly voice, and the man stopped his humming.
"Yes, Pete?" The man's eyes shifted from where they were focused on his hand carding through Peter's hair, to the boy's honey brown eyes, before smiling gently at him.
"W-We can do this right?" At the boy's question the man quirked an eyebrow, continuing to run his fingers through the soft strands atop the boy's head. He thought for a moment before inquiring.
"Can we do what, babe?" The boy's fists were balled up in the man's t-shirt, and silent tears streamed down his round, flushed cheeks, before he spoke up again.
"We can keep doing this. We can find bodies...and run labs and-and catch killers? We can keep looking into the face of death in order to f-find justice right? These people deserve at least that, right?" The boy looked so lost, and Tony let a soft sigh escape his lips.
"Peter...I can't even fathom how difficult this must be. How hard it must be to get out of bed every day and know that what you do is what someone did for Harley all those years ago. But you have to recognize that we're better than them. We can, and we will make sure that all of those criminals receive proper punishment for the crimes they've committed and the lives they've destroyed. Petey, baby, what we do here, together is so incredibly difficult, so incredibly taxing in that every day adds up but Pete, we save the lives of those who were potential victims. We bring peace to families and I am so incredibly sorry that you may never know that peace, but you do amazing work." The boy was shaking in his arms and so Tony held him as tight as he could without causing him pain.
"D-Do you think that maybe one-one day we'll find whoever hurt, Harley?" The man held his breath, unsure of making false promises, but he shook his head gently to himself, before nodding with fervor.
"I think that if you and I put in the time and effort that we could, yeah." Peter barely nodded on the man's chest before his honey eyes locked with the older man's dark whiskey ones.
"You wouldn't mind? P-Postponing your trip to help me?" With an airy chuckle, the man kissed the younger boys forehead and shrugged.
"Eh, the Bahamas ain't really for me anyways. What do you say we take a trip up to the NYPD and look at those old case files? See what we can dig up?"
"I thought you'd never ask."