Origin story: Riley
Beneath every soft apology Riley whispers mid-kiss…every poem they jot down in the margins of cheap notebooks…and every quiet moan that slips out when praise is too much and not enough.
There was the kid they used to be, sitting alone at the back row of a rural Oregon church, mouthing along to hymns they never believed in, in a body that never felt like home.
The first betrayal was silence.
Riley didn’t even have a name for themself back then. Just “him” in every roll call, “son” in every prayer, “boy” in every unspoken rule about how to walk, talk, behave, exist.
They kept their softness tucked behind library books and notebooks. Wrote long letters to imaginary lovers and burned them in the backyard. Practiced kissing their pillow, just in case someday, someone wanted to stay.
Their parents weren’t cruel per se. Just certain. Christian, conservative, confused whenever Riley flinched at the mirror or floundered in gym class. They didn’t utter the word “gay” unless it was followed by a prayer or a sigh. Didn’t say “trans” at all.
Riley learned early how to smile through sermons. How to fold themselves small enough to survive.
They got out the first chance they could: A poetry scholarship at Portland State. It wasn’t much, but it was freedom with a campus meal plan.
The first week, they showed up to an LGBTQ+ mixer in an oversized hoodie and wrote a fake name on their sticker—just to try it out.
The first time someone used they/them in a sentence and meant it, Riley almost cried in the hallway.
And they kept writing, pens and paper being their only refuge. Spoken word nights, open mics, zines folded with trembling hands.
It was a slow coming-out— First to a professor who kept extra granola bars in her office drawer. Then to a classmate they kissed in a haze of cinnamon whiskey. Then, quietly, to themself.
The more they found their voice, the more their birthplace—and their birth name—vanished behind them like mist.
They wrote their new name—Riley Thompson—on every surface they could. Name tags. Journal covers. Bathroom stalls. And some nights, the underside of their own wrist, in case they forgot who they were trying to become (or, rather, who they always had been).
Seattle wasn’t a destination; it was a direction. They hitched a ride with someone who needed gas money. Found a shared room above a vape shop. Taught poetry workshops at the youth shelter on weekends just to make rent stretch.
That’s where Sofia met them, quietly volunteering, giving more than they had to give. Where Kaori saw their set at a fundraiser and said, “You blush like a boy in a yaoi manga.” Where June passed them a flask and said, “You’re too pretty to be so scared.”
They weren’t recruited into the harem so much as… Invited. Warmed. Seen.
Now Riley moves like a quiet soul with nothing left to prove. Their thighs are soft. Their voice lilts when they’re excited. They still get tongue-tied when someone calls them beautiful.
But their mouth knows what it wants. Their poems are sharper now. Their eyes stay open when they kiss—so they don’t miss a thing.
They have a toothbrush in every lover’s bathroom. A verse tattooed on their hip that no one’s allowed to read unless they’re kneeling.
They still flinch, sometimes, when praised too loudly. But when Chen moans their name with a mouth full of need, they believe it.
And when June screams her heavy-metal remix of “the radio saved my life tonight, that old that the DJ played made me feel all right” into her electric guitar— Riley is always in the front row, the same way that rural Oregon church had expected of them: Hand over heart, mouth wide open, worshipping the noise that redeemed them.