Chapter Text
With one lightweight hand-carried parcel in one arm, Veneer releases a heavy sigh as his spare arm reaches for the apartment’s exterior’s button-like doorbell.
“Here goes nothing…”
Ding-Dong!
Honestly, this whole trip’s last purpose — at least according to him — was to directly visit this very disability pension recipient — who kept begging him over walls of text that this cybernetic leg enhancement would be best delivered in-person.
And Veneer knows so well that his own forte isn’t to engineer, other than designing one… based on the theories of how you stitch up a mannequin’s. But even worse is… the detour has to happen right in the middle of this actual family trip to Mount Rageous.
How can he be harshly blaming Glaze though, when Glaze literally got GLAZED OVER by Velvet back when she was alive and well, being the teenage tyrant she was?
This very judgement is already enough to conjure up an imaginary scream Glaze must’ve had when Velvet ‘retrofitted’ poor Glaze without the latter’s consent, the moment she launched her unruly limbs at his weak, unmatched body.
It was a pretty loud, pained “AHHHHHH!”, wasn’t it? Louder than a clap of thunder, yet Veneer himself was too detached to even have his ears perked up.
A firm grip grasps his heart into a crumpled paper ball. He presses his spare hand’s fingers onto his chest, refusing to let the pebble-sized weight go.
This isn’t something — or more specifically, this very participant in the disability subsidy programme — I’ve ever told FJ & Sparkles in detail, NOT AT ALL.
Gloss? Obviously.
Floyd? Heck yeah.
Marvel? No doubt.
Everyone else, including my son-in-law and daughter-in-law? Why do I even have to ask myself about this one?
But my own two adoptive kids…? The ones birthed by my one and only sister…?
How am I supposed to articulate something so, so damaging to somebody who’s presumably disabled for life, and no amount of her changes can change anything about… whatever this is?
…Like, you can’t change how a glazed donut has already been GLAZED, even when you despise the powdered sugar that’s been glazed onto it—
CREEEAAAAK. Followed by a peek from the squeaking door causing Ven to temporarily lurch backwards, protecting the package fiercely, until he recognizes the familiar voice and that one mint-hued eye emitted from the narrow gap.
“Veneer… I mean, shit… Prince Consort Veneer, isn’t it?”
Regaining his gait into a manly posture — like a spring narrowly bouncing back, Veneer forces a nervous smile and stretches out his arms slightly to vindicate the package’s authenticity being a simple, humble cardboard box.
“Mr. Glaze, your package of that cybernetic leg has… arrived!”