~Iron Family~

Return of the Ned-i

TW: Abuse

***

The Wagners certainly knew how to save money.

They only spent what they made on the kids, which meant they had around $160 a week on food. All Bernard earned from his own job he kept for himself. Now that Peter had temporarily (he hoped) joined them, they had started getting a bit more money from the state, but he was also another mouth to feed. Not to mention he was older than the other kids and he had super high metabolism.

Although Miranda didn't have a job other than being a foster mom, she didn't really care what they did all day. She mostly talked on the phone to her friends or watched TV.

When Mr. Stark had called, Bernard had been upset at Diego, who had done something to the refrigerator. Now it had to be looked at. He'd been so angry he'd smashed a beer bottle on the ground, and Peter was just thankful he'd thrown it at the ground and not a kid.

Bernard had stormed out of the room and ordered Peter to take the kids to the park, which he did after cleaning up the glass, since no one else was going to do it. He'd gotten a handful of glass splinters in his palm, but he ignored them, hoping his super-healing would take care of it.

They were currently heading to the park, Peter in the lead because he was the oldest.

"Why do you get to be in front?" Kayla complained, dragging her feet. "I'm the only girl and I keep you dummies in line. I should be in front."

"We're not dummies!" Arnwaldo exclaimed as he tripped over his own shoe, which was on backwards. Peter didn't want to know how that had happened.

"Because I'm the oldest," Peter sighed.

"By how much?" Diego asked suspiciously, stroking his chin.

"I'll be fifteen tomorrow."

"It's your birthday tomorrow?" Kayla yelped. She started jumping up and down.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Billy asked.

"I didn't think it was very important."

"Of course it is, my dude," Arnwaldo panted, leaning heavily on Peter's shoulder as he attempted to fix his shoe. "Fine fifteen man, you can drive now!"

"You need to be sixteen for that, dummy," Kayla reminded him.

"Stop calling me a dummy!"

"Guys," Peter held out his arms as if that would calm them. "We'll never get to the park at this rate. You can argue later."

They gave him grumpy looks, but stopped fighting.

***

They made it to the playground with the only casualty being a worm, so Peter took that as things going well so far.

Diego and Kayla made a break for the only two swings that weren't for babies and Billy ran for the monkey bars.

"Don't you wanna go play?" Peter asked Arnwaldo, who was standing stock-still next to him.

"I'm too old for such things," he insisted sophistically, eye twitching. He groaned, then sprinted towards the swings, hollering "Wait for meeeee!"

Peter laughed and shook his head. Arnwaldo was just plain weird.

He stood there supervising them for about five minutes before someone rounded the corner down the sidewalk that made Peter's heart leap in his chest. He was talking to a girl that was a head shorter than him.