Chapter Text
The architecture department studio was already bustling with activity when Rain had arrived. It smelled like stale coffee, foam boards, adhesive tapes, sweat wet cutting boards - the usual architecture paraphernalia. Rain liked that smell - it meant he was in one of his favorite places.
At the moment he was just sitting there watching his best friend Sky arguing with a design draft.
"Tell me the shading calculations are wrong," Rain said, sliding into the seat across the table.
"They're not wrong."
"Tell me anyway. I just want to hear you say it."
"The west façade gets four hours of glaring sun in the afternoon and you specified floor-to-ceiling glass with no shading devices.", Sky didn't look up. "Also, you're late."
"I'm exactly on time. You're just early to annoy me."
"I'm early because I don't treat class times as loose suggestions, unlike some people who think buildings are designed on 'good vibes'."
He says making air quotes.
"They are designed based on light. I know that's the whole point."
"They are also designed on, not blinding the people inside them."
Rain leaned over the drawing, studying the offending wall of glass with theatrical seriousness. "We'll add louvers."
"Now you'll add louvers."
"I was always going to add louvers. I was building suspense."
"You were forgetting louvers."
"Same thing, different framing." Rain grinned, and Sky's mouth twitched, almost a smile, quickly suppressed.
“Hold on, let me see that again.” Something had caught Rain’s eye. “This side will be tricky. Maybe we are better off using Perforated Metal Panels.”, he suggested, now truly serious.
“Good catch!” Sky agreed.
By early afternoon Rain and Sky were making their way from the studio to the firm, which took up the ground floor of a weathered old building with tall arched windows. It was a heritage building which had been in the Theerapanyakul family since it was constructed decades ago.
The firm was renting the ground floor space from Theerapanyakul Holdings, a fact Rain had learned by accident, from a lease document forgotten in the copier.
Nobody at the firm talked about the landlord much. When they did, it was in the careful, extremely neutral tone people used for a name that was never mentioned carelessly.
They'd both started at the same time, hired off the same professor's recommendation. Rain for the model shop, Sky for anything that involved actual precision, which the firm had quickly learned meant nearly everything to keep the business going.
Sky claimed the desk nearest to the plotter, close enough to intervene the moment a print job started drifting off-scale, and had already redrawn the office's supply request form twice because the old one, in his words, "invited erroneous purchases."
Rain was elbow-deep in a client model when Phayu found him, hunched over the corner desk nobody else wanted, too close to the stationery store, too far from the bathroom, but exactly the way Rain liked it. A spot that gave him a view of the entire office.
Rain stood transfixed, eyes on his model. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but something felt wrong.
"Wrong glue," Phayu said, without preamble.
"It's the glue that was on the shelf."
"That's contact cement. You're gluing balsa."
Rain looked at the model roof in his hands. Thin sheets of balsa, the seams curling where the glue had gone soft and shiny instead of drying clear. "It's fine."
"It's not. Contact cement doesn't hold balsa, it just sits on top looking like it's holding. Give it a day and the whole roof lifts off in one piece."
"So it peels off in front of a client on Thursday."
"Exactly."
"Then on Thursday the client and we will be in for such a wonderful surprise."
Phayu's mouth didn't quite move, but the muscles in his face loosened. He set a small bottle of wood glue on the desk, unrequested, and went back to his desk.
Rain had worked at the firm for four months. He still didn't know Phayu's actual title, only that everyone treated him like he was P'Teerapat's right hand man, which he sort of was.
He built models faster than anyone in the office and caught structural errors even senior architects missed.
In Rain's second week, he'd quietly redrawn a design on a sheet Rain had botched and never mentioned it again.
That had somehow made Rain feel worse. Because now Rain felt he owed him a debt he couldn't repay.
"You're staying late again," Phayu said, an hour later, once the office had thinned to the two of them and the cleaning crew was slowly trickling in.
"The model's due Thursday."
"It's Tuesday."
"I like being ahead of things."
That was true, but not for the reason Phayu probably assumed. Being ahead of things meant he would never have to worry about falling behind. It meant when his mother's shift ended around seven, if the hospital didn't hold her longer, he could put his tools down without leaving anything unfinished.
"Did you eat lunch?" Phayu hadn’t actually seen him eating since they arrived.
Rain was caught off guard. He inadvertently glanced at his wallet lying on the desk before he responded.
"I had a big breakfast."
"Not what I asked."
Rain gave him the easy smile that had gotten him through a hundred conversations he didn't want to have. "I'm efficient. Low maintenance."
"You skipped lunch too. I watched you not eat it."
"You were watching me?"
"You sit across from me. I'd have to try really hard not to notice."
A quiet laugh escaped Phayu’s lips.
Glad the conversation was over, Rain reached for the glue just to have something to do with his hands.
Phayu didn't push further, he noticed everything but didn’t pursue it when he didn’t think it was his place to do so.
At six-thirty, P'Teerapat came through on his way out, an effortlessly charming man with a warm and gentle demeanor , and paused at Rain's desk and looked at his model with real interest.
"This is good work. You have a good eye."
"Thank you, P'Teerapat."
"Is Phayu teaching you badly, or are the mistakes your own?"
"I take full credit for those. He's very patient."
Teerapat laughed and clapped Phayu on the shoulder, the easy affection of a man who'd hired him straight out of his thesis defense in his final year and never regretted it.
Something about the Sathorn warehouse contract came up, a site survey, light enough to mean nothing. Phayu's jaw tightened before he answered, evenly, that the survey was booked for next week. Rain didn't think anything of it and continued with the task at hand.
Theerapat then walked to the office admin’s desk. He picked up the stack of invoices and started going through them one by one. He seemed perturbed, but Rain didn’t know why. He just noticed him close his eyes, rub the bridge of his nose and put the stack down. He sighed louder than he intended to, making both Rain and Phayu look at him quizzically. As soon as he realized what had happened he just said, mock dramatically “Bills!”, and chuckled, making both of them grin.
After Teerapat left, the office settled again into its late evening quiet, printer humming, one fluorescent tubelight flickering over the plotter.
"You're staying till I leave," Rain said, half a question.
"I have work."
"You've been staring at that spreadsheet for two hours."
"It's very interesting."
Rain smiled down at his model, glue drying clean this time, and didn't examine too closely why it felt warm in the chest. Someone staying later than they needed to, for no better reason than to keep him company.
At seven his phone buzzed.
- Running late, picking up an extra shift, don't wait up, eat something good for me. -
He read it and felt the familiar ache he couldn’t name, which appeared every single time her shifts ran long - love, worry and something that wasn't quite disappointment but close. It happened more often than he wished.
His expression or body language must have given something away because…
"Everything okay?" Phayu asked, not looking up at him.
"Yeah," Rain said, mostly meaning it. "My mom picked up overtime again."
He didn't say more, and Phayu didn't ask him to. He just watched him flip the phone face-down despondently.
Finally ready to head home, he carefully organized his desk, putting things back in their assigned spots and cleaning up. Phayu got out of his seat with his bag and switched off Rain’s desk lamp. Rain nodded at the man who had evidently been waiting for him, pretending not to and they headed out of the office. One towards his bus stop and one towards his blue bike parked outside.