a/n: rose from the dead to write a completely self indulgent riarlie fic. highly based upon 500 days of summer bc i rewatched a ton of 90s/00s movies. watch out for a clueless au but no promises
/
Charlie's life begins on a Monday.
It begins in the elevator on the first floor when he's listening to music, his leather messenger bag sound over his shoulder, wearing his most rumpled flannel shirt because he couldn't find it in himself to give a damn. It begins when a thin hand attached to a thin wrist presses a hand against the the elevator door right as it's about to close and a girl steps inside, wearing a blue dress. In her hand is a small tattered briefcase.
Charlie casts his eyes away from her. It's rude to stare, he figures, and fixes his gaze on the security camera tucked into the corner of the elevator before he hears a voice.
"Hey, you like The Smiths?"
He looks at her, startled. "Huh?"
The girl taps her ear, motioning toward his headphones. "The Smiths, right?"
Before he can stop himself, a surprised beam breaks on his face. "Yeah, you know them?"
"I love them," she says.
They smile at each other. The elevator door opens.
The girl steps out and her dress flutters around her knees.
She is really fucking pretty.
/
"You stood with the new girl in the elevator?" asks Zay appraisingly. He's leaning on the wall between their cubicles the office. "Dude, I heard that she's, like, a bitch. But she's crazy hot. Good for you."
"She's not hot. She's beautiful, and she loves The Smiths, and I love The Smiths." Charlie breathes out. "I think she's my dream girl."
"You're getting ahead of yourself," chides Lucas from the cubicle next to Zay. "Also, she's the receptionist. I think she's a temp. Isn't she only here for a couple weeks before she's shipped somewhere else?"
"I don't have enough of a connection with her to call her beautiful," says Zay.
"So I only get a few weeks to try to ask her out," Charlie sighs. "And I don't think she's a bitch. That's derogatory. And I have never been more positive that she's my soulmate. It was in the air, man. It's fate."
"Do you even know her name?" Lucas asks.
"No, but I will."
Zay laughs. "Right."
/
The whole branch of the company goes to the bar a week after, and Charlie, Lucas and Zay dress down and meet there. Lucas brings his girlfriend Maya, who manipulates them all into buying mojitos for her and slaps Lucas on the ass exactly twice.
"Your girlfriend is crazy hot," Zay tells Lucas, "and the complete opposite of you. You're basically an old man."
"That's the correct usage of the term hot this time," agrees Charlie.
"Yes, very unlike the classic beauty of Receptionist Girl Who Likes The Smiths," Zay mocks, taking a swig of beer. "Timelessly beautiful."
"Who're we talking about?" Maya asks, suddenly reappearing at Lucas's side.
Zay points a thumb at Charlie, who rolls his eyes. "Mr Romantic thinks that this girl he met on the elevator for two seconds is the love of his damn life. Sure, I myself love a good romcom and falling in love, but love at first sight is bullshit."
"That's not true, I didn't fall madly in love with her when I first saw her," Charlie protests.
Maya cocks an eyebrow slyly. "You're 'madly in love with her'?"
Before Charlie can protest further, a breeze flutters through the bar and subconsciously he glances toward the door. A silhouette stands in the middle of the doorway, and immediately Charlie know who it is.
"It's her," he hisses.
Lucas smiles. "Who, your 'dream girl'?"
"Hey, get her over here," Maya says suddenly. Her grin is catlike. "I wanna talk to her. Girl to girl."
"I'm very afraid of that," Charlie groans, the same time that Lucas warns, "Try not to scare the life out of her."
"Not this time, babe," Maya assures, kissing Lucas on the cheek. "I'm just gonna get her to talk to Charlie."
She walks off. Zay says, "You need to keep your girlfriend on a leash, dude."
/
Maya brings the girl over, and after all the introductions the group engages in deliberate small talk, which is full of Maya directing the conversation to Charlie. The girl's name is Riley, which is sweet and feels lovely to say, but Charlie really doesn't have the chance to say it a lot until Lucas and Maya exchange a look and drags Zay to the karaoke machines so Charlie and Riley can talk in peace.
"So, what else do you like, other than great music?" Charlie asks.
Riley laughs. "I like reading. Old literature is great; Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, that sort of thing. What about you?"
Charlie thinks for a moment. "I like coffee, I guess."
"Who doesn't," replies Riley.
"Well, unless you don't," says Charlie, "maybe we should grab a coffee together." He pauses. "Maybe I should give you my number, to set it up?"
He gets a good look at her then. She's still dressed in work clothes, wearing black slacks and pumps and her hair in a sleek bun. Her lips are painted pink and her eyes are sweetly brown and she's a daydream at night. It's fate, he thinks to himself.
He watches her lips curl into a smile.
"Sure," she says.
Charlie hides his own smile behind a sip of beer.
/
She texts him later that night.
Are we friends now?
He swallows.
(He texts back yes.)
/
Charlie's typing up an email at his desk when Riley perches herself at his desk. It's been a week since their official declaration of friendship, and it's been good. Great. It's been considerably better than before, because before he was busy pining at her from afar but now he can do it from the proximity of their friendship. Which he does. Painfully.
Still, this proximity is better than he could have hoped for, because it includes the closeness of inside jokes, the laughter, the casual touch on the hand or shoulder or arm. And the casual touch happens more often than he had previously thought it would. Undoubtedly friendship is bountiful with many more benefits than the faraway dreaming and uncertainty.
"Charlie," she's saying, "I'm so bored right now I honestly don't know what to do. There's only solitaire on the computer but I think there's a virus on my computer or something because nothing's working. I'm dying. There's nothing to do."
"I guess answering the phone isn't included, A-K-A your job," Charlie teases, secretly hoping that she won't seriously consider his comment.
She doesn't. "Oh, Charlie, you goose," she says in the affectionate way she does that makes him tingly and nervous. "Anyways, I'm here to drop off a mixtape. I heard a new song—well, not new, I guess, I just hadn't heard it before—and I thought of you. I was so bored I made the mixtape of some songs I think you'll like."
Charlie, even more tingly and nervous from the thought her of thinking of him, asked, "Seriously, for me?"
"Sure! I figure we can discuss it over the coffee. How about this Saturday?"
"Um, yes! Yes," Charlie stammers, "it's a date."
Riley stops swinging her legs. "As friends or like a real date?"
Charlie mentally facepalms. "Um, as friends, obviously! What did you think it was?"
"As friends, of course." She laughs. "No big."
But her eyes are trained on her lap when she says this, and Charlie wants to die, because he's just made things so much worse. Of course he had to go ahead and say the word date and add romantic implications to something clearly not romantic.
A moment later, Riley looks up, gives him a bright smile and says, "Well, guess I should go do my job now." She hops off his table and exits his workspace.
Lucas turns to Charlie with a sympathetic frown.
Zay's head pops up from the wall between them. "That's rough, man."
Charlie groans and puts his head in his hands.
/
In a moment of weakness, Charlie texts her that night: Hey, we're good, right?
Three dots appear, disappear, then appear again.
Definitely.
/
Charlie's life really begins on a Thursday.
He standing in front of a copier, making 20 copies for a big meeting with his boss, when Riley enters the room. She's wearing a green dress with shoes that make her legs look great, and Charlie tries not to look when she stands at and uses the copier next to him. Life had carried on from the incident two days before, and laughter is still exchanged and touches on the arm and shoulder are still used fleetingly, like a memory of a good dream. The coffee hasn't been discussed since.
"Hey," Riley says, voice breaking his thoughts.
At this greeting, he glances at her, and forces himself to keep casual. "Hey."
Keeping casual is difficult, especially when the person you're keeping casual with glances at you a few times, then a few more. Charlie wishes that he didn't have to print 20 copies of everything.
Then she steps closer, a hair's width apart from him, and Charlie's breath hitches.
The resulting kiss is soft, soft like her eyes, soft like the color of the blue dress he saw on her the first day that they met, soft like the touch of her hands in his hair, on the back of his neck. He places his hands on her cheeks, then slide it to her waist, breathless. He can feel the curve of her smile on his lips.
Their foreheads rest against each other when they break apart, taking shallow breaths matching the slowing rate of Charlie's heart.
"Hey," she says again.
"Hey," he says again.
Riley removes her hands from his hair, smoothes her dress, and when she looks at him she's like the sun: sunny and bright, a smile honeyed and endearing.
She picks up her copies and promptly leaves.
Charlie touches his mouth and whispers, "Shit."
/
"I told her that you were madly in love with her," says Zay later. "Did something happen because of it?"
"Shut up," says Charlie, grinning.