The many perks of being Volkner - Installment Five
Title: Early Workings of an Early Mind
Rating: G
Character/Pairing(s): Volkner, Darach, feat. Palmer
Warning(s): Huge amounts of buh?-inducing text.
Summary: Being Volkner had its upsides and downsides to life. A collection of short stories centering around the man and his highschool gang of friends. AU. Meeting his neighbor Darach and his friends prompted a little too much symbolism.
A/N: DP140 alone has opened my eyes to how much a faggot I am for Palmer and his family. I LOVE FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIPS ♥ and I want to hug both of them and cry so badly.
+
The moment Darach and Volkner first met, the clouds turned gray, the sky split apart, thunder waved an angry fist, and the earth shook to its very core. In the distance, the bells of a church tolled ominously, once. Thus Volkner - sixteen then - had come to the conclusion that there could be no meeting more symbolic.
Except maybe the moment when he had met Cynthia and Flint both at once, but that was to come later and he didn't know of their existence back then.
"I presume you're the new neighbor?" Darach asked, though the question was most certainly rhetorical. The one-room apartment had not been owned for months then suddenly, a boy was moving in just like that. "It's a pleasure to meet you, my name is Darach."
Volkner eyed the man suspiciously. His sense of fashion was quite odd and reminded him of a butler. Maybe the fellow worked as one, whatever; Volkner was here for more important matters than fretting about whether his next-door-neighbor was a spy for the FBI or a servant of the royal family. "Volkner. Hi."
Darach continued to smile in that disconcerting manner, clasping one of Volkner's sweaty palms with a gloved hand and pumping it so vigorously the latter swore his bones were being ground to dust. "I hope we'll become acquainted with each other soon enough."
"Ah," Volkner said, for that was the most intelligent reply he could come up with. The sparkles Darach was emitting seemed to completely bounce off the top of his head. "That's...fine."
"Oh? You certainly don't sound fine."
Overhead, lightning had joined thunder in trolling through the fandom of the sky. Volkner eyed the rapidly-graying expanse with much displeasure before turning to Darach and shrugging. He didn't mind, not excessively. Right now, he was just worried about getting soaked. Though sheltered, the arms of rain reached far and wide.
Darach chuckled at the rueful expression on the teenager before his eyes. How many times along the course of his long life had he had the delight of dealing with such little monsters who thought the world of themselves? Volkner seemed smart and maybe a little too serious for his age, but that was alright.
Then again, his type was the hardest to deal with.
+
Soon enough, Darach and Volkner had come to realize various things about each other.
Darach found that Volkner was quite the listener, even if the boy appeared to want out of conversations all the time and much preferred to spend time alone with the four walls of his apartment. That and the kid was serious, much more serious about things than he'd ever imagined was possible for a sixteen-year-old.
Volkner, on the other hand, discovered that Darach wasn't entirely bonkers but most definitely OCD when it came to matters of cleanliness. The crazy fellow would dedicate entire afternoons to dusting what already seemed like the impeccable hallways of his five-room apartment, and on random occasions would request to clean Volkner's, because damn was that one-room dingy in comparison. Darach couldn't stand grease stains or offensive specks of dust. They seemed to glare up at him in ridicule. And thus the man dusted, wiped, and cleaned till everything in his home glittered obnoxiously.
"What," Volkner had blurted out, when he'd snuck a peek over Darach's shoulder at the living room, "Have you been doing!?"
Darach shrugged. He smiled so much that Volkner sincerely wondered if his face was born that way, or if something got a little too stretched back when the man was being conceived. One day, he decided, he'd buy Darach something for facial cramps.
"Just cleaning."
"...Cleaning," muttered Volkner disbelievingly. Forget glittering, the rooms were sparkling like the morning sun. Darach would never need nightlights for the rest of his life. "You say? That's a little too compulsive."
"So says the boy who sparked that one debate with me yesterday on the possibility of bleeding batteries," Darach said, delivering his lines as smoothly as a conductor would direct his orchestra. His words tumbled and spilled into each other like flawless notes, and even Volkner admitted that the curious man held a sense of constant class with his ways.
"That's a perfectly good topic,” Volkner protested. "And technology does the world much more good."
Darach laughed, pushing his glasses delicately up the bridge of his nose. "Ah, but you forget," he said, "That even machines need to be maintained; they need to be oiled. Without maintenance, without proper cleaning, in that essence - they'd be absolutely nothing, for machines lose their purpose to humans the moment they begin to fail."
+
By the time he had turned eighteen (which was sometime this year) Volkner had thought many things about his neighbor. So far, only one of those thoughts had been remotely dirty in nature, and it hadn't involved himself so it was fine.
Darach was established as insane (he had pretty much admitted it somewhere down the line, followed up by a simple 'but do you really care now?'), but a genius nonetheless. He worked wonders with the solutions to Volkner's scientific problems and worked part-time as a human dictionary with only a few pages missing.
It seemed that he really did serve a royal family, but found enough time in between to juggle a couple other jobs, which was the main reason why he insisted on spiriting himself away at night.
For a period of time, Volkner wondered if Darach had any connections to his family. He always seemed to know so much, but it was rude to randomly pop questions. And the man appeared to be on quite good terms with some of Volkner's teachers - he hung out with Palmer and Dahlia on occasion, discussed conspiracy theories with Thorton, and was effectively bullied in the gentlest way possible by Argenta.
There was this one time Palmer had visited in person just when Volkner decided to get himself a breath of fresh air. The two bumped into each other just as Palmer made to ring Darach's doorbell. Volkner could do nothing but stare. Palmer stared back.
And then Darach flung the door open.
"The two of you know each other?" he asked, pointing at Volkner and alternating his gaze between the two. Volkner wanted to shake his head but Palmer answered for him anyway.
"To a certain extent," Palmer smiled in an all-too inviting way at Volkner, which sent shivers down his spine. Bloody hell, why were the Principals always the creepy ones? "Right, Volkner?"
"...Uh."
"That's a yes, right?"
"I think so."
Palmer rolled his eyes good-naturedly before turning to Darach, whose expression made his amusement quite obvious. "Anyway, Darach! You still owe me, you know. I can't keep paying for you when we go down to Dahlia's; my tab's overdue enough as it is!"
"Why, Palmer, can't you hang in there for just awhile longer?"
"My paycheck doesn't have half the stamina I do!" Palmer wailed. Volkner was left, seemingly forgotten, on the sidelines. "Come on, you keep this crazy apartment of yours cleaner than your own hair, you have to have the cash to pay up sooner or later."
Darach arched an eyebrow. "And you came here just to tell me all that?"
Palmer sighed, shoulders slumping, though not in defeat. If anything, he was now more determined than ever to get the inglorious bastard before him to pay his dues. "Ah, no," he said. "There's actually something else we have to sort out. Coincidently, Dahlia's been having problems running the bar as it is. Any ideas?"
"Not now," Darach frowned, before his expression lightened and he turned to Volkner. "Ah, Volkner, sorry about this but I'll have to ask you to leave. This is personal and between the two of us, if you don't mind."
Volkner shrugged, though his interest had been piqued. "Are the two of you friends?"
The other two men exchanged amused and knowing sidelong glances. "Something of the likes," Darach said, and Palmer laughed. "I trust you're already aware that Dahlia, Thorton and Argenta are also good friends of ours. The five of us spent our childhoods in the same neighborhood and grew up together."
"I was there first," Palmer butted into the conversation. "Well, actually Argenta was," he laughed. "We just didn't know she was there."
"I arrived after you, didn't I? Thorton joined us soon enough. Then Dahlia was a transfer; the last of our group to clock in."
"Good times, good times," Palmer sighed, fondly. "And then Argenta, she was always there, I just had no idea we'd end up like this. Not until she almost killed me by complete accident, that is."
"Oh, that incident with the jeep? Shows how you should never let a woman drive without a license to kill."
"That would be a little too sexist, Darach," Palmer chided. "But I'll make an exception for her. Though she makes an excellent drinking buddy, unlike you. You can't hold your liquor for shit! You're always the first of us to get buzzed."
Darach scowled, embarrassed. "I make up for it in other areas. At least I still retain some dignity in my drunken state. You, however, are completely shameless."
Palmer made a noise halfway between a groan and a loud laugh.
"Anyway," Darach turned to Volkner, "If you'll excuse us. We have quite some catching up to do."
Before Volkner could react, Darach had hauled a surprised Palmer into his apartment and shut the door with a click of finality. The teen raised an eyebrow, his amusement curling and settling around his stomach like a contented cat. Volkner had no idea Palmer was such a cool kid, both in his (seemingly) flamboyant youth and even now as a jaded old man.
With adults, he decided, opinions were always needing to be rewritten.
+
"...See you," Volkner heard Palmer say, just as he clambered back up the staircase to his apartment. The day had worn on, and it was now about seven in the early-evening. It had been four when Volkner had left.
The two passed each other on the way, and Volkner was surprised to see that the long, green coat Palmer always wore had been folded neatly and was being carried by the man. Facing upwards was the character for 'king'. Volkner wondered if he would hear someday the story behind the coat. For now, he nodded his greeting to the man.
Palmer chuckled. "I'm not exactly your principal anymore when I'm not working."
"But I still know you, right?" Volkner pointed out, realizing too late that he may have been a little too blunt, but Palmer didn't seem to mind.
"Ah, true," he sighed, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly. "So much to worry about and so little time."
"Worry about what?"
"Things you wouldn't understand," Palmer said, and his eyes seemed to fix on some part of the sky behind Volkner, distant as it were. "You kids have different worries these days, but you'll see when you grow up."
"Yeah," Volkner snorted. "Everyone tells me that all the time."
Palmer shrugged nonchalantly. "Every generation's different. Right now I worry about my son, my duties, and my obligations. Then there's Dahlia. I know you caught that part of my conversation with Darach."
"Ah, that."
"Her family runs a bar that she's sort of in charge of," Palmer explained. "Between working at the school and juggling the business on that end, she's having a hard time managing. It's not that business has been bad, but she just doesn't have enough staff on hand willing to work longer hours for lower wages."
"You can't exactly blame them, given the demands."
"But it complicates things, yeah?" Palmer eyed Volkner, who couldn't help but nod. "But I've said enough for today. One day when you end up at the edge of all your glorious screw-ups in life, maybe you'll start to understand. I didn't understand anything either, back then."
"I see."
Palmer laughed. "We were all kids once, Volkner. In a different time, maybe, but the essence of the challenge is the same. You'll have to face up to it sooner or later. Understand that."
"But I already do," said Volkner, puzzled and indignant all at the same time. While he didn't quite understand what Palmer was saying because the man seemed to be talking more to himself more than anyone, he still accepted part of those words as the truth from the mouth of a weathered veteran who had gone before him down the road of life.
"Are you sure?" Palmer was back to gazing at the sky, now tinged a light hue of violet, clouds dyed a brilliant orange by the setting sun. "When the time comes for you to decide, will you be ready?"
Volkner had absolutely no idea what he was meant to decide, or what sort of tangent the man was now on - what would he become when he grew up? Or was it one of those situations where he was just supposed to nod and shrug his way through? And decide what? There were so many questions, and the lines provided weren't numerous enough for the answers.
In a sense he thought Palmer was talking about something he didn't know of, for the man had seemed so distant and thoughtful, unlike the crazy old coot with his wild and wilder antics in school that Volkner was getting increasingly used to. Flint complained about those antics all the time, much to the chagrin of Cynthia, who supported Palmer like a vehement fan in all the wrong ways.
Right now it didn't really matter. A small part of Volkner wanted to answer Palmer that no, he wouldn't be ready for whatever it was, but -
"Yes," he said so anyway.
END...for now.
A/N: Guess who's up next?
Rating: G
Character/Pairing(s): Volkner, Darach, feat. Palmer
Warning(s): Huge amounts of buh?-inducing text.
Summary: Being Volkner had its upsides and downsides to life. A collection of short stories centering around the man and his highschool gang of friends. AU. Meeting his neighbor Darach and his friends prompted a little too much symbolism.
A/N: DP140 alone has opened my eyes to how much a faggot I am for Palmer and his family. I LOVE FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIPS ♥ and I want to hug both of them and cry so badly.
+
The moment Darach and Volkner first met, the clouds turned gray, the sky split apart, thunder waved an angry fist, and the earth shook to its very core. In the distance, the bells of a church tolled ominously, once. Thus Volkner - sixteen then - had come to the conclusion that there could be no meeting more symbolic.
Except maybe the moment when he had met Cynthia and Flint both at once, but that was to come later and he didn't know of their existence back then.
"I presume you're the new neighbor?" Darach asked, though the question was most certainly rhetorical. The one-room apartment had not been owned for months then suddenly, a boy was moving in just like that. "It's a pleasure to meet you, my name is Darach."
Volkner eyed the man suspiciously. His sense of fashion was quite odd and reminded him of a butler. Maybe the fellow worked as one, whatever; Volkner was here for more important matters than fretting about whether his next-door-neighbor was a spy for the FBI or a servant of the royal family. "Volkner. Hi."
Darach continued to smile in that disconcerting manner, clasping one of Volkner's sweaty palms with a gloved hand and pumping it so vigorously the latter swore his bones were being ground to dust. "I hope we'll become acquainted with each other soon enough."
"Ah," Volkner said, for that was the most intelligent reply he could come up with. The sparkles Darach was emitting seemed to completely bounce off the top of his head. "That's...fine."
"Oh? You certainly don't sound fine."
Overhead, lightning had joined thunder in trolling through the fandom of the sky. Volkner eyed the rapidly-graying expanse with much displeasure before turning to Darach and shrugging. He didn't mind, not excessively. Right now, he was just worried about getting soaked. Though sheltered, the arms of rain reached far and wide.
Darach chuckled at the rueful expression on the teenager before his eyes. How many times along the course of his long life had he had the delight of dealing with such little monsters who thought the world of themselves? Volkner seemed smart and maybe a little too serious for his age, but that was alright.
Then again, his type was the hardest to deal with.
+
Soon enough, Darach and Volkner had come to realize various things about each other.
Darach found that Volkner was quite the listener, even if the boy appeared to want out of conversations all the time and much preferred to spend time alone with the four walls of his apartment. That and the kid was serious, much more serious about things than he'd ever imagined was possible for a sixteen-year-old.
Volkner, on the other hand, discovered that Darach wasn't entirely bonkers but most definitely OCD when it came to matters of cleanliness. The crazy fellow would dedicate entire afternoons to dusting what already seemed like the impeccable hallways of his five-room apartment, and on random occasions would request to clean Volkner's, because damn was that one-room dingy in comparison. Darach couldn't stand grease stains or offensive specks of dust. They seemed to glare up at him in ridicule. And thus the man dusted, wiped, and cleaned till everything in his home glittered obnoxiously.
"What," Volkner had blurted out, when he'd snuck a peek over Darach's shoulder at the living room, "Have you been doing!?"
Darach shrugged. He smiled so much that Volkner sincerely wondered if his face was born that way, or if something got a little too stretched back when the man was being conceived. One day, he decided, he'd buy Darach something for facial cramps.
"Just cleaning."
"...Cleaning," muttered Volkner disbelievingly. Forget glittering, the rooms were sparkling like the morning sun. Darach would never need nightlights for the rest of his life. "You say? That's a little too compulsive."
"So says the boy who sparked that one debate with me yesterday on the possibility of bleeding batteries," Darach said, delivering his lines as smoothly as a conductor would direct his orchestra. His words tumbled and spilled into each other like flawless notes, and even Volkner admitted that the curious man held a sense of constant class with his ways.
"That's a perfectly good topic,” Volkner protested. "And technology does the world much more good."
Darach laughed, pushing his glasses delicately up the bridge of his nose. "Ah, but you forget," he said, "That even machines need to be maintained; they need to be oiled. Without maintenance, without proper cleaning, in that essence - they'd be absolutely nothing, for machines lose their purpose to humans the moment they begin to fail."
+
By the time he had turned eighteen (which was sometime this year) Volkner had thought many things about his neighbor. So far, only one of those thoughts had been remotely dirty in nature, and it hadn't involved himself so it was fine.
Darach was established as insane (he had pretty much admitted it somewhere down the line, followed up by a simple 'but do you really care now?'), but a genius nonetheless. He worked wonders with the solutions to Volkner's scientific problems and worked part-time as a human dictionary with only a few pages missing.
It seemed that he really did serve a royal family, but found enough time in between to juggle a couple other jobs, which was the main reason why he insisted on spiriting himself away at night.
For a period of time, Volkner wondered if Darach had any connections to his family. He always seemed to know so much, but it was rude to randomly pop questions. And the man appeared to be on quite good terms with some of Volkner's teachers - he hung out with Palmer and Dahlia on occasion, discussed conspiracy theories with Thorton, and was effectively bullied in the gentlest way possible by Argenta.
There was this one time Palmer had visited in person just when Volkner decided to get himself a breath of fresh air. The two bumped into each other just as Palmer made to ring Darach's doorbell. Volkner could do nothing but stare. Palmer stared back.
And then Darach flung the door open.
"The two of you know each other?" he asked, pointing at Volkner and alternating his gaze between the two. Volkner wanted to shake his head but Palmer answered for him anyway.
"To a certain extent," Palmer smiled in an all-too inviting way at Volkner, which sent shivers down his spine. Bloody hell, why were the Principals always the creepy ones? "Right, Volkner?"
"...Uh."
"That's a yes, right?"
"I think so."
Palmer rolled his eyes good-naturedly before turning to Darach, whose expression made his amusement quite obvious. "Anyway, Darach! You still owe me, you know. I can't keep paying for you when we go down to Dahlia's; my tab's overdue enough as it is!"
"Why, Palmer, can't you hang in there for just awhile longer?"
"My paycheck doesn't have half the stamina I do!" Palmer wailed. Volkner was left, seemingly forgotten, on the sidelines. "Come on, you keep this crazy apartment of yours cleaner than your own hair, you have to have the cash to pay up sooner or later."
Darach arched an eyebrow. "And you came here just to tell me all that?"
Palmer sighed, shoulders slumping, though not in defeat. If anything, he was now more determined than ever to get the inglorious bastard before him to pay his dues. "Ah, no," he said. "There's actually something else we have to sort out. Coincidently, Dahlia's been having problems running the bar as it is. Any ideas?"
"Not now," Darach frowned, before his expression lightened and he turned to Volkner. "Ah, Volkner, sorry about this but I'll have to ask you to leave. This is personal and between the two of us, if you don't mind."
Volkner shrugged, though his interest had been piqued. "Are the two of you friends?"
The other two men exchanged amused and knowing sidelong glances. "Something of the likes," Darach said, and Palmer laughed. "I trust you're already aware that Dahlia, Thorton and Argenta are also good friends of ours. The five of us spent our childhoods in the same neighborhood and grew up together."
"I was there first," Palmer butted into the conversation. "Well, actually Argenta was," he laughed. "We just didn't know she was there."
"I arrived after you, didn't I? Thorton joined us soon enough. Then Dahlia was a transfer; the last of our group to clock in."
"Good times, good times," Palmer sighed, fondly. "And then Argenta, she was always there, I just had no idea we'd end up like this. Not until she almost killed me by complete accident, that is."
"Oh, that incident with the jeep? Shows how you should never let a woman drive without a license to kill."
"That would be a little too sexist, Darach," Palmer chided. "But I'll make an exception for her. Though she makes an excellent drinking buddy, unlike you. You can't hold your liquor for shit! You're always the first of us to get buzzed."
Darach scowled, embarrassed. "I make up for it in other areas. At least I still retain some dignity in my drunken state. You, however, are completely shameless."
Palmer made a noise halfway between a groan and a loud laugh.
"Anyway," Darach turned to Volkner, "If you'll excuse us. We have quite some catching up to do."
Before Volkner could react, Darach had hauled a surprised Palmer into his apartment and shut the door with a click of finality. The teen raised an eyebrow, his amusement curling and settling around his stomach like a contented cat. Volkner had no idea Palmer was such a cool kid, both in his (seemingly) flamboyant youth and even now as a jaded old man.
With adults, he decided, opinions were always needing to be rewritten.
+
"...See you," Volkner heard Palmer say, just as he clambered back up the staircase to his apartment. The day had worn on, and it was now about seven in the early-evening. It had been four when Volkner had left.
The two passed each other on the way, and Volkner was surprised to see that the long, green coat Palmer always wore had been folded neatly and was being carried by the man. Facing upwards was the character for 'king'. Volkner wondered if he would hear someday the story behind the coat. For now, he nodded his greeting to the man.
Palmer chuckled. "I'm not exactly your principal anymore when I'm not working."
"But I still know you, right?" Volkner pointed out, realizing too late that he may have been a little too blunt, but Palmer didn't seem to mind.
"Ah, true," he sighed, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly. "So much to worry about and so little time."
"Worry about what?"
"Things you wouldn't understand," Palmer said, and his eyes seemed to fix on some part of the sky behind Volkner, distant as it were. "You kids have different worries these days, but you'll see when you grow up."
"Yeah," Volkner snorted. "Everyone tells me that all the time."
Palmer shrugged nonchalantly. "Every generation's different. Right now I worry about my son, my duties, and my obligations. Then there's Dahlia. I know you caught that part of my conversation with Darach."
"Ah, that."
"Her family runs a bar that she's sort of in charge of," Palmer explained. "Between working at the school and juggling the business on that end, she's having a hard time managing. It's not that business has been bad, but she just doesn't have enough staff on hand willing to work longer hours for lower wages."
"You can't exactly blame them, given the demands."
"But it complicates things, yeah?" Palmer eyed Volkner, who couldn't help but nod. "But I've said enough for today. One day when you end up at the edge of all your glorious screw-ups in life, maybe you'll start to understand. I didn't understand anything either, back then."
"I see."
Palmer laughed. "We were all kids once, Volkner. In a different time, maybe, but the essence of the challenge is the same. You'll have to face up to it sooner or later. Understand that."
"But I already do," said Volkner, puzzled and indignant all at the same time. While he didn't quite understand what Palmer was saying because the man seemed to be talking more to himself more than anyone, he still accepted part of those words as the truth from the mouth of a weathered veteran who had gone before him down the road of life.
"Are you sure?" Palmer was back to gazing at the sky, now tinged a light hue of violet, clouds dyed a brilliant orange by the setting sun. "When the time comes for you to decide, will you be ready?"
Volkner had absolutely no idea what he was meant to decide, or what sort of tangent the man was now on - what would he become when he grew up? Or was it one of those situations where he was just supposed to nod and shrug his way through? And decide what? There were so many questions, and the lines provided weren't numerous enough for the answers.
In a sense he thought Palmer was talking about something he didn't know of, for the man had seemed so distant and thoughtful, unlike the crazy old coot with his wild and wilder antics in school that Volkner was getting increasingly used to. Flint complained about those antics all the time, much to the chagrin of Cynthia, who supported Palmer like a vehement fan in all the wrong ways.
Right now it didn't really matter. A small part of Volkner wanted to answer Palmer that no, he wouldn't be ready for whatever it was, but -
"Yes," he said so anyway.
END...for now.
A/N: Guess who's up next?