full name. rigsby scott wriley.
nicknames. riggs – solely riggs.
birthday. fifty – may 19th, 1975.
zodiac sign. taurus.
gender. cis man – he / him.
orientation. none of your business.
birthplace. new york city, new york.
occupatuion. former professor at borough of manhattan community college, current high school english teacher at the local high school ( focusing on special education students ) .
residence. northwest austin – small apartment with his son, jack.
caution for illness ( heart defect ) , mentions of hospitals + tests, medical decline and death. each paragraph is marked and a less detailed tldr can be given if asked.
he can say it was comfortable, but he can’t say it wasn’t lonely – always feeling like the black sheep of the family in comparison to his siblings, even if they truly didn’t have miles ahead of him any any aspects. riggs is the glass half empty kind of guy. empathetic, but will look for the worst case scenario in every scenario. that’s what makes him so .. alone. the lack of childhood friends who kept in touch, sans over the summer where forced proximity made them stay near, the idea of having a big friend group is foreign to him. and he’s been okay with that, for the most part. but now it kind of stings in the worst way.
born in new york city, new york, his family comes from big shots: lawyers and doctors and dentists and marketing representatives who often found their names at the bottom of billboards. it’s kind of a hard stretch legacy to try and slot yourselves into. all around the country, the wriley’s found success in doing whatever it was that they set their minds to. except riggs, of course. he didn’t have much ambition – there wasn’t a drive to do anything, one thing in specific. he’d shy away from those big college essays and family friends asking what his life plans were. even by the time he graduated high school, he had no idea. it ate away at him like a dog gnawing at the tail – end of a raw hide. bitten to the bone and without a doubt ready to be thrown away. he went to college – in the big city, of course.
a local run – down community college was where his life truly started. or, at least riggs would say so – he met his wife there, serena, and they fell in love in the smicht hall english class on the first floor of the main campus. the story itself is simple: girl meets boy, boy meets girl, they make googly eyes at each other and all of a sudden he’s proposing with a way too out of his price range ring and they get married at the court house because only a few people bothered to rsvp and then comes a baby. and they did all of that, too, but not without caveats: it took them ten years to even start dating. riggs was playing the long game while she was playing the field ( he was, too, but half-heartedly and without really thinking ) . in a weird show of either narcissism or being far too cheesy they got together on the ten year anniversary of them meeting: august 16th, 2003.
they’re happy in new york city. serena is a nursing student when riggs enters for his master’s in special education, and his first year teaching the year they get married, 2004. they share a tiny one bedroom apartment in lower manhattan, both close to where they work. it’s quaint, and a shoe – box, but they wouldn’t trade it. the glass half empty is that – never truly empty.
illness tw / the bad part, really, starts when she turns 36. riggs is returning home from a day at work, finding her on the ground before she left for her shift at the local hospital. and at first, it’s brushed off. stress – the hospital has been cutting positions to save face after a scandal and doing what it needs to recoup costs of paying lawyers. she can’t bare to loose her job. the second time is when she’s on shift – collapsing, shaking and withering in a way that has riggs waking up and running the 7 blocks to the hospital in the middle of the night to be at her side while they figure out just what happened. the e.r rules out neurologic causes – that doesn’t do much but make riggs shake himself. someone kind of strong, resilient against odds that tended to stack against him like a topsy-turvey game of jenga, begins to lean at the thought of losing her. and he doesn’t.
diagnosis tw / the year is 2011 and the hospital begins to make lists and rule out things that don’t quite fit – there’s various young – adult deaths in her family, but they’re so scattered that it doesn’t make sense, at least not to riggs. there’s a reason he’s a teacher and not a medic. tests and heart monitor’s and the scariest few weeks of his life comes to a screeching, tire – track on the tarr halt when he hears the words long qt syndrome. and he’s never heard of it. of course he hasn’t, it’s yet another slap in the face of life. they all get it eventually. their son isn’t even a year old when he has to get tested for it. there’s change overnight and riggs feels sick to his stomach when he looks back at it. there’s a way of feeling guilty for wasting all those years, for punching pavement instead of making moves and telling her how he felt years before they got together.
medical decline tw / the years are slow, the days are slower. it’s never enough. she begins to decline despite best efforts – avoiding triggers, taking medication, pondering an implant. riggs goes paler every time she mentions it – but the fear is held back behind stone in favor of being strong for his family. every year she gets worse, but serena takes it in stride. jack grows up and riggs can’t be prouder of his kid. smart, quick, kind, and maybe just a little bit of a troublemaker – someone who always causes riggs grief, though not always for the same reasons. despite testing every year, he still holds his breath that one day it’ll just appear to rehaunt them all their lives.
death tw / he’s working late when he gets home and the house is quiet – they’re 45 now, and things seem .. okay. riggs doesn’t iike to mess with fate more than he has to, and, really, it likes to mess with him in turn. she’s seemingly sleeping for her shift tonight. but it’s not sleeping --- her shift had already started, hours ago, and her phone is continuously ringing. the rest is a blur of his own cell phone and frantic yelling into the device and sirens and calling for friends to make sure jack is taken care of. she’s gone before he can even think it, and it’s a knife punch to the gut he hadn’t been expected. she was fine – she’d been fine, she’d had a check up the month before. things were going well. riggs can feel himself falling apart, but the pieces are haphazardly put together when he has to tell jack. and that breaks him all over again.
instead of dwelling into his grief, riggs jumps into his work – another degree, helping out with more and more around the community. ignoring his own plights in order to help others. and that works, for a while, but he knows it won’t work forever. there’s only so much community work he can do before the rocks he stacked up high comes crashing down onto him again – his son looks at him pitifully in-between quips and teenage angst, now still tenfold. his family’s concerned. there’s the idea of moving back to austin, texas --- the place he’d called home every summer when he went with his siblings to visit his aunt for those bastardly hot summers in the 80’s. both of his siblings had been thinking about it, one’s already there. the city doesn’t let him sleep when all he can think about is her with every skyscraper and ambulance siren. so, they move.
jack isn’t happy and really, riggs isn’t either, but he’s always been the grin and bear it type.
• reads self help books and watches manifesting tiktoks in order to try and boost his self moral. it doesn’t work because he doesn’t do any of the work they call for and also because he doesn’t believe in it. i won’t lie to you all he’s pretty depressed. he’s not mean but he’s just sad as hell. that one homie who has profound sadness behind his eyes .. yeah. sorry. he tries his best, but sometimes it just doesn’t turn out how he wants. i’d love for that to change, though …
• does not talk about his wife – not really with strangers. the mentions of her outside of the home are few and far between ( this does not apply to jack, obviously ) and really, he’s trying to “get over” it like brother you should “get over” to a therapy session man. he still makes it a point to celebrate her birthday and their anniversary, however, and makes a big deal out of it for his son. that’s the whole point. and there’s not really much he doesn’t do for his son.
• speaking of jack … jack is 15 and the light of riggs’ life, actually. is a tasmanian devil who tends to give riggs more gray hairs than he’d like and is very much a boys boy. he was upset about the move, actually, and they’re still kind of at odds about it right now, but riggs is hoping that changes soon because he’s kind of losing it all over again. a mini football star, riggs is sure, jack has gotten it into his head he’s gonna go into the nfl. and while his dad doesn’t love that idea … well, he can’t stop him. stubborn as a mule and knows damn well he can fight his dads protests, but riggs would never actually stop him from doing something he’s passionate about.
• swears like a sailor and his students love it. never really had parents to tell him to hold his tongue and to be classier, considering they were pretty much always gone and didn’t care as long as he wasn’t getting into deep trouble. he hasn’t gotten in too much trouble because his former kids in nyc knew that if he did, he’d be let go – yes he was their favorite teacher and he takes pride in it.
• has a masters in special education, and a bachelor’s in education. he loves kids, and they like him. it’s been a good fit – he’d always been the type to try and advocate for an underdog, but he’s not exactly the most forthcoming type. riggs knows what it’s like to be an outcast and not really have people in your corner. he wants to make sure his students don’t feel like that --- attends their games and projects and those types of things.
• lonely but he’s swears he’s fine. constantly trying to “make friends” but it doesn’t really work. he’s 50 years old and thinks he’s just gonna be lonely for the rest of his life, like join a bookclub grandpa and let’s get it going.
• wears weird shirts and loves to go thrifting. he thinks it’s funny and so do i. finds the ones with the worst graphics and puns and just weird dad shit. a lot of the things he does is just because riggs finds them humorous. i cannot say i say the same about it.
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