Sorry for the wait! I hope you enjoy the new chapter :)

Boulders

Tony glanced over at Peter as the boy adjusted the backpack containing their supplies, then at Rhonda, who, although he was sure was very capable, he worried about tagging along. Peter was enhanced. He was a superhero. And Tony himself had been training to save the world for years now. But this young woman was a grad student. Just a regular person. So if one of those things attacked...what were they supposed to do? As much as he knew that he had to protect Peter...he also had to protect the citizens of this town.

Maybe they could make it back. Maybe they could find a way to get everyone out and they wouldn't have to worry about these things until they had the Avengers on their side and then Hulk could rip them out of the ground and squish them like the worms they were...but of course Tony knew better. Rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and wishing he hadn't lost his hat, he tried to come to terms with it all. Monsters. Underground worms...alien...monsters? No, he chided himself. That's what Morgan would call them. Maybe Peter too. But he had to do better. So...aliens?

With a sudden fierceness, he wanted to get out. Get Peter and for once, just once in his superhero life, he wanted to be selfish. He wanted to save himself and his boy and then come back when all of the Avengers could help them out. And he wanted that for Peter too. He wanted Peter to have a fun vacation where he didn't have to worry about monsters or being attacked or keeping his guard up like he was now, his eyes darting around the desert as he kept an eye out. Or, well, an ear out. Tony thought about reaching out and gripping his shoulder. Asking if he was okay. But the last thing he wanted to do was embarrass the kid in front of this new person. So instead he focused on his own steps, carefully dodging a hole in the ground that looked like it had been made by a prairie dog.

It wasn't long before they were approaching the equipment that marked her camp, and she started gathering things, stacking papers that were stuck under rocks to keep them from blowing away and throwing an old backpack over her shoulder. Tony bit back the question of if this was really necessary, instead glancing over at Peter once more. The kid was standing stock still, chin pointed down, staring at the ground as if memorizing it, and Tony could actually see the hairs on his arms stand up.

"Peter?" he asked, voice pitched low, and Peter looked up at him, wide-eyed, just as the pen on the seismograph began to scratch frantically at the paper.

"Run," the boy choked out, turning first to Rhonda. The scratching caught her attention, and she stared at the line for a millisecond before Peter was grabbing her arm, glancing back at Tony to make sure he was following, and then pulling her away from her papers and into a sprint. By the fence, only about a hundred feet away, were stacks of the boulders that littered the landscape, jutting out from the ground in piles, and Peter paused by them, getting Rhonda up onto one before reaching for Tony who grabbed his arm instead, pulling the both of them up onto the boulder just as one of the snake tongues burst out of the sandy dirt and hissed, moving around and feeling for them. Thankfully, the alien tongue thing found only one of the poles that lay on the ground whose intended use Tony could only begin to guess at.

Mind filled with images of Peter getting sucked under the dirt...of Peter turning to dust in his arms, Tony wrapped an arm around the kid and backed up as far as he could go without falling off. Rhonda did the same, looking from them to the snake-like appendages writhing around in the dirt.

"Look!" Peter pointed at the second tongue that flopped over the boulder, ending in a ragged lump of flesh rather than a head. "Is that the one that got our car?"

"Think so," Tony agreed, turning to Rhonda while squeezing Peter a little tighter. "Do you have a car?"

"I have a truck but it's over there," she told him, breathless as she pointed. Tony followed her finger and stared at the truck off in the distance, parked by the long line of boulders broken up by long stretches of flat earth. So the worms couldn't get them if they were on the rocks...but they'd have to run between them. And these things...Tony had a feeling they were smart. What if they waited for them? What if they set some kind of trap while they were running?

"I could jump…" Peter started to murmur, but Tony shook his head. He wasn't sending Peter off alone. No way in hell. "Tony…" The boy's voice was soft and reasonable, but all Tony could see was Titan. All he could see was the boy reaching for him, stumbling forward and into his arms. His voice pleading and on the verge of tears.

Then the years in between. The years of waking up sobbing from those dreams where he'd relieved it over and over. Or worse, the dreams where it hadn't happened. Where he walked into the nursery and found Peter holding Morgan and smiling at him.

"She's beautiful, Mr. Stark!"

The dreams of his arms wrapping around both of his kids.

And then the mornings. The sobbing into a pillow or Pepper's arms. His boy. He'd lost his boy.

Now he had him back. And it was bad enough that Peter risked his life being a superhero every day. But this...they knew nothing about these things.

"I can do it!" Peter all but whispered, as if Rhonda couldn't hear them from less than a foot away. "They're underground! If I stay on the boulders..."

"We don't know what they can do, Peter. We don't know how strong they are, or how they hunt. Hell, for all we know they can fly."

"I mean...they obviously can't," Peter muttered, mouth set in that rebellious grimace Tony knew so well, and his heart clenched.

"Just...we need to think, okay? Maybe...maybe we can wait them out. Just...give it a little time before we do anything rash. Okay?"

Before Peter could answer, Rhonda turned and began to climb onto the boulder beside them. There were three or four of the huge rocks, all grouped together, and Tony tugged on Peter's arm as they climbed onto the largest one. Below them, the ground shifted as the worm withdrew its tongues and moved around to where they were standing. It knew. It was following them? So...what? Could they hear them somehow?

With a sigh, Rhonda sat, pulling her backpack off and making herself comfortable, and Tony could see that Peter still wanted to run for the truck. Still wanted to save them. But Tony needed him to wait. To wait for them to figure this out and actually think before they acted. So when Tony sat, Peter did too, and Tony thanked his lucky stars that Peter still listened to him despite the hero worship having worn off some time ago. He was already dreading the day when the listening stopped.

It wasn't ten minutes before his leg started to bounce, fingers fidgeting, eyes moving around the empty landscape as Tony tried to engage Rhonda in conversation. Peter wasn't great at sitting still in the best of circumstances, and he reached out, patting Peter's back as Rhonda told him about grad school and her studies. The boy flashed him a brief smile that seemed like more of a grimace, and he knew that Peter wanted to follow through on his original plan. That he wanted to get to that truck, consequences be damned, and get them out of here.

And, as the time passed, Tony found himself more and more amendable to the idea. They hadn't heard anything from the strange animals or alliens or whatever they were under the ground. Maybe they were gone. Maybe they'd given up. But Tony had never had such good luck in his entire life, and he doubted that it would start now. Soon, Peter was chatting with Rhonda about his own life, minus his vigilante activities, and potential colleges and his aunt. She didn't question their story, that Peter was Tony's step-son, but Tony knew there had to be some doubts. Peter did his best to call him 'Tony' but it was still a hard habit for the kid to break, not to mention the fact that Peter had offered to jump between the boulders like it was nothing. Still, the third member of their strange group asked no questions about superheroes or secret identities, and for that, Tony was grateful.

Soon, the sun was starting to set, and Tony could feel their eyes on him. Peter, especially, looked worried, and once more, Tony berated himself for pulling off the highway and into the worst possible town. One trip. That's all he wanted. And he swore that he and Peter would have a trip without any sort of terrible interruption one day, and if he had to convince the Avengers to come along to fight off potential threats, so be it.

"How about this," Tony started, voice placating as he glanced at Peter. "We sleep here. First thing in the morning, we see if Stumpy down there is gone. If he's not, we get to the truck." By we, of course, he meant Peter. And judging by the grim look on Peter's face, the kid knew it. Tony hated it. Hated that Peter was so ready to risk his own life...that he had to ask his kid to.

Rhonda agreed, glancing over at Peter and nodding, and Tony was glad that she wasn't going to ask any questions...at least, not yet.

As it turned out, she was waiting for the right moment.

It wasn't too long before Peter fell asleep, curled up in a nook between their boulder and the one beside it, his fingers stuck fast so that he wouldn't fall. They'd all shared some of the water Peter had brought in his backpack, and he saw the kid shivering a little in his sleep, but all he had were his own clothes. Hoping Peter would be okay for the night, and resolving to sleep close to him once he actually felt tired, he stared out at the landscape and wondered if he dared to see if the alien was still around. What if he just brought it back?

"So...what are Iron Man and Spider-Man doing out in the middle of nowhere?" Rhonda asked, breaking the silence with her whisper. Tony whipped around to look at her, but of course it made sense. Honestly, it would have been stranger if she hadn't caught on. She was smart, after all. "Nobody around here keeps up with the outside world much, but I did a paper on you in undergrad for one of my classes. Social sciences or something. All about superheroes. And there are plenty of conspiracies about Spider-Man...that he's your secret son."

Tony snorted, making sure to keep the sound quiet. Nothing would wake Peter faster than his own raised voice. "I have my AI keeping tabs on the rumor mill," he admitted. "I make sure to get rid of any evidence that might lead back to him."

"So it's true? That he's your son?"

Tony shrugged. "Close enough." Years ago, before everything, he would have denied it. Laughed and shrugged it off and assured whoever was asking that he most certainly did not have any secret children. That Spider-Man was a vigilante he'd helped out and that Peter Parker was an Intern he barely knew. Not now, though. Now, those words would taste like a betrayal, even if they were said to protect Peter.

"If we make it out of this, I won't tell anyone." He glanced over, surprised at the casual tone. It wasn't said as a bargain or as a plea, just a statement. A kind statement. She was smiling a little out into the darkness. "He seems a little young to be fighting monsters, though."

"Tell me about it." In his sleep, Peter shifted a little, and Tony reached out without thinking to rest his hand on the boy's back. "This was supposed to be a break for him. He'll be off to college soon and…" Tony shook his head, a little embarrassed to have let that slip out, but Rhonda smiled.

"My mom and I did the same thing after my senior year of high school...we took a road trip down the west coast and…" She trailed off, swallowing hard. "She, um...she died a few years back, but those were some of my favorite memories with her. Even the parts where we fought or got lost...I mean, that's not such a big deal compared to underground animals appearing out of nowhere and hunting you within an inch of your life but…" She trailed off with a shrug and a faint smile. "You know."

"I do," he said with a nod and a smile. Tony didn't ask how her mom had died. A few years ago was during the snap or the blip or whatever they wanted to call it. Had Rhonda disappeared? Had her mother? It was all too personal to even think about asking, even in the dark.

So instead, Tony lay back, resting his head on the rock and grimacing at the pain he knew he'd wake up with, his side pressed to Peter's back. Immediately, the boy turned, still sound asleep, and sought him out, his forehead pressing against Tony's shoulder and his knees into Tony's hip. "Little monkey, just like your sister," he murmured, missing his little girl with a fierceness that was matched by his gratitude that she wasn't here, trying to sleep on a boulder in the middle of the desert.

Peter hummed in his sleep, shifting a little closer, and Tony pressed a kiss to his hair before closing his eyes and trying to fall asleep.

When Tony woke, he was already sweating. Grimacing, he wiped a hand over his face, trying to shade his eyes from the sun that was too bright even this early in the morning, and turned to look for Peter, only to find the space beside him empty. Immediately, all of his grogginess and the residual pain in his neck and back disappeared as he jerked upright, looking around for the boy. "Peter?" he called, then found Rhonda stepping over from the boulder leaning against the one that had become their temporary home.

"Over there," she pointed, just out of sight, and adjusted her shirt. Tony nodded. Right. Bathroom. Which reminded him, that was something he would also have to take care of soon. So as soon as Peter climbed back into sight, Tony ruffled his hair, then climbed down to the lower boulder out of sight, keeping an eye out for any movement under the ground as he did so.

Once he had rejoined the others, he took the granola bar Peter handed him. It took the edge off of his hunger, but he knew that Peter had to be starving. They had to get off of this rock and back to town. Soon.

"Alright. Let's see if Stumpy the Asshole has given up on us yet."

Rhonda took the lead, reaching down for one of the many poles on the ground carefully, keeping her feet firmly on the boulder, then began to tap at the ground. Tony glanced at Peter, grimacing when he saw the boy ready to leap into action. He wanted to grip the back of Peter's shirt in his fist, like he would with Morgan when she was sitting beside him on the dock to keep her from falling in, but he managed to squash the urge.

She tapped the pole on the ground over and over, and he felt a rush of hope. Maybe it was gone. Maybe it…

And then a tongue shot out from the ground, grabbing at the pole, and Rhonda let go, jumping back a little.

"Fuck!" The word escaped from Tony's mouth before he was aware of it, but, he figured, at least it was Peter and not Morgan sitting next to him.

"Doesn't he have a home?" Peter grumbled, dropping his head back as he sat down hard on the boulder.

"Apparently not," Tony answered with a sigh.

"They're underground," Rhonda murmured, crossing her arms. "They have no eyes, no sense of smell…"

As soon as she trailed off, it clicked in Tony's brain. "So they hunt by sound." Both Peter and Rhonda turned to him, and he watched their eyes light up in understanding.

"The vibrations...they can feel the vibrations," Peter whispered.

"And this rock is a perfect conductor." While Rhonda looked impressed...almost excited, Peter's face dropped into incredulous dejection.

"So we're never getting off this rock."

Rhonda stood, moving over to the top of the largest boulder just as Peter began the argument he'd obviously been waiting for.

"I should just go now."

"Peter…"

"What? They hunt by sound. We can't just sit here in total silence for hours. We have to drink water! And eat something."

Tony knew that Peter had to eat something...probably sooner rather than later. And granola bars weren't going to be enough.

"Besides, I can get to the truck."

"You'll be alone." He wouldn't be able to get to him. Tony wouldn't be able to save him if something went wrong.

"Hey guys?" Rhonda called, but Peter was already speaking, voice soft and persuasive, like Morgan when she wanted a juice pop.

"Only for like, two minutes. I'll get to the truck,"

"What if they get you before then?"

"Guys? I think I have an idea…"

"They won't!"

"And what if they get you in the truck? You've never even driven a truck!"

"I've driven a car!" Peter cried, and Tony snorted despite himself.

"I saw that car after you drove it, kiddo. You totaled it. And it wasn't even your car."

"Okay, but Flash had it coming."

"Hey!" They both turned then, finding Rhonda standing at the edge of the boulder, one of the long poles in her hands. "You guys ever pole vault?" And with that, she stuck the pole in the ground, launched herself from the boulder, and the pole carried her to the next in the long line of rocks.