Skip to content

Riley Mercer

Riley Mercer (born Riley Jade Mercer) was a queer, nonbinary, mixed Afro-Puerto Rican and White guitarist, sound designer, composer, producer, and arts administrator. They served as the lead guitarist and principal sonic architect for Charlie Rivera and the Band, co-founded the Fifth Bar Collective, and later led work across Fifth Bar Multimedia, Fifth Bar Films, and Rising Notes. Riley lived with narcolepsy with cataplexy, asthma, and endometriosis. Their life and work joined experimental sound, carefully protected energy, dry honesty, and an understated form of care that their friends learned to recognize even when Riley said very little.

Early Life and Background

Riley was born on October 12, 2007. They grew up working-class on the East Coast as the only child of Lila Mercer, an Afro-Puerto Rican single mother. Riley’s father was White and absent from their life. Lila worked long and irregular hours, including night and double shifts as a nurse, to support the household.

Because Lila was frequently at work, Riley spent substantial time alone and learned practical independence early. They prepared food, got themself to school, managed homework without close supervision, learned household tasks, and coped privately with pain and irregular periods before their endometriosis was understood. Riley did not doubt that Lila loved them, but the relationship was emotionally reserved. Lila’s care was concrete: she paid for guitar lessons even when money was tight, left notes on the refrigerator, checked whether Riley had eaten, and tried to equip them to manage when she could not be home.

Lila repeatedly taught Riley, “You have to be strong. You can’t let the world eat you.” On overwhelmed days, “I don’t have time to argue—you’ll figure it out” made self-sufficiency an immediate household necessity. Riley became capable and resourceful, but they also learned to keep needs quiet and solve problems before another person could experience them as demands.

Music filled much of Riley’s solitary time. They began teaching themself guitar young and learned to tune the instrument from online videos in seventh grade before later formal instruction. Effects pedals fascinated them because one instrument could be altered into texture, atmosphere, noise, and space. Long practice sessions offered both musical development and a private world in which Riley did not have to explain their body, identity, or quietness.

Riley’s birthday remained deliberately low-key, and they often forgot it was their birthday until someone reminded them. Their October Libra birthday suited their quiet introspection and artistic temperament, with its associations of crackling leaves and sweater sleeves. They preferred tea with cinnamon, warm socks, clouds, soft guitar playing, and naps to a large party; a handwritten note tucked into their gig bag belonged to the same gentle ritual. Childhood birthdays were sometimes marked by a note and a cupcake left in the refrigerator while Lila worked. Their bandmates later adapted the ritual to Riley rather than turning it into a spectacle. Charlie usually started a group message, Ezra brought vegan cupcakes, Peter played a strange jazz arrangement of “Happy Birthday,” and Jacob said it once before quietly bringing fresh guitar strings. Riley liked being remembered without becoming the center of a room. Charlie also gave them a note that read, “you’re not hard to love. not even a little.” Riley folded it and kept it in their pocket for months.

Name and Gender

Riley was assigned female at birth and knew early that conventional feminine expectations did not fit them. Their legal middle name, Jade, became associated with an idea of who other people expected them to be. Riley did not use it in ordinary life. As an adult, they petitioned to remove it from their legal name and became Riley Mercer without a middle name. They described the decision simply: “I don’t need this part. I’m whole without it,” and, “I’m enough without a middle. I know who I am now.”

Riley was openly nonbinary in adulthood, used they/them pronouns, and described their sexuality as queer. Lila loved Riley but did not immediately understand every part of their gender. Her initial response—“As long as you’re safe”—combined real concern with a practical distance that left Riley doing some of the work of explanation.

Education

Riley entered the Juilliard School in fall 2025 and earned a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies, with guitar as their primary instrument, in the Class of 2029. Their early training had been substantially self-directed. Conservatory study added formal jazz theory, ensemble work, ear training, arranging, and performance discipline without replacing the experimental instincts Riley had developed alone.

During their freshman year, Riley occupied one of the two single rooms in Suite 1504. Peter Liu occupied the other single, while Charlie Rivera and Jacob Keller shared Room 1504A. Riley and Peter’s similarly low-key temperaments made them easy suitemates. Riley could disappear into a sound loop long enough to arrive late to rehearsal, and Peter’s practical awareness often provided the scheduling counterweight without turning their friendship into supervision.

Riley met Charlie, Jacob, Peter, and Ezra Cruz through Juilliard’s performance and social circles. People-first gatherings began in spring 2026, and the ensemble that became CRATB formed officially during the 2026–2027 academic year, when Riley, Charlie, Jacob, and Peter were sophomores and Ezra was a junior. Riley’s effects-heavy guitar work gave the developing group an atmospheric and electronic range that distinguished it from a conventional conservatory jazz ensemble.

In summer 2027, Riley found a cruise-line audition while drinking cheap wine at Charlie and Jacob’s apartment and held the phone out to Jacob. “Bet you won’t,” they said. Jacob answered, “Watch me,” accepted a three-week entertainment contract, hated it, and returned with a permanent refusal to do another. Riley helped keep the story alive afterward, asking whether Jacob remembered every chord to “Uptown Funk” or whether the trauma lived in his spine. The joke remained funny because the band also respected the boundary Jacob had established.

Career

Main article: Riley Mercer (Career and Legacy)

Riley served as CRATB’s lead guitarist and principal sound designer from the band’s early career. They also played drums and percussion and contributed as a composer, arranger, producer, and studio collaborator. Their guitar parts could supply harmony or melodic counterpoint, but Riley was especially known for making the instrument function as a broader sound-design system: sustained tones, degraded loops, ambient beds, distorted punctuation, unusual tunings, and asymmetrical meter could change the space around another player’s line without overwhelming it.

CRATB’s catalog included ‘’Everything Loud and Tender’’ (2027), ‘’Foundation’’ (2029), ‘’Reckless Devotion’’ and ‘’Crip Time’’ (2031), ‘’Pulse//Stillness’’ (2033), and ‘’No Fixed Point’’ and ‘’Ritmos Hermanos’’ (2035), followed by later recordings through the band’s final decades. Riley composed Spinning Rooms and Late Apologies and produced ‘’Midnight Architecture’‘.

Critics and gear-focused listeners recognized Riley’s use of effects, atmospheric texture, and ability to make an electric guitar sound unlike a conventional guitar. “Chaotic pedal wizard” became one description of a musician whose board looked unruly but whose choices were exact. Riley could create storms, whispers, abrasion, and near-silence and did not treat a solo as an obligation to fill every available measure.

Riley’s main guitar was “Frankie,” a heavily modified matte-black Fender American Performer Jazzmaster with stickers, low-key scuff marks, hand-wired vintage-style P-90 pickups, a satin-finished maple neck, and heavy-gauge strings. The nickname came from “Frankenstein,” reflecting the extent of the modifications. Riley preferred the satin neck because glossy finishes “feel like lying.” They liked that the guitar buzzed when handled carelessly and said, “It buzzes if you play it wrong. I kind of like that about it.”

Their pedalboard included an EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run, Walrus Audio Julianna, Electro-Harmonix Freeze, ZVEX Fuzz Factory, Boss RC-5 Loop Station, and Keeley Compressor Plus. Components and routing were labeled with faded masking tape. Riley carried backup patch cables and tools and could change the board’s function around the needs of a specific room, arrangement, or body day.

Riley played mostly fingerstyle and rarely used a pick unless a piece required it. They favored long reverb, sustained single notes, looped layers, haunting minor movement, and warm grit rather than brightness for its own sake. Their warmup often took the form of a slow improvisation in Dorian mode. They liked unusual tunings because “sometimes the standard ones don’t match how I feel,” preferred 5/4 because “it’s just off enough to feel honest,” and named Emaj7#11 as their favorite chord because it “sounds like a memory you never had, but wish you did.”

Their music also drew on concrete Puerto Rican and Afro-Caribbean materials without treating ancestry as an automatic explanation for every choice. Riley used soft Latin-inspired progressions, bomba- or bolero-inflected phrasing, polyrhythmic layering, and hidden clave figures inside ambient and jazz-fusion work. They once reharmonized a standard around a concealed clave rhythm and did not announce what they had done.

Touring required Riley to plan around narcolepsy, asthma, pain, and recovery. They napped in vans, backstage rooms, and other safe spaces; left post-show social events early when they needed the energy for the next performance; and learned which travel days, venue layouts, and long improvisational sets would demand the greatest recovery. A performance chair, flexible recording sessions, protected rest windows, and longer gaps between tour legs became ordinary parts of sustainable work. These practices did not make Riley less reliable. They were part of how Riley maintained a career across decades.

Riley co-founded the artist-owned Fifth Bar Collective with Charlie, Ezra, Peter, and Jacob in 2035–2036. They led Fifth Bar Multimedia, served as creative director for Fifth Bar Films, and expanded their work in composition, arrangement, production, audio-visual installation, and accessible media. Riley and Peter collaborated on sound design and accessible editing, taught production, and co-hosted ‘’Soft-Spoken’‘, a podcast about quiet rebellion in sound and identity. Riley’s professional work with Carmen joined sound and music to Carmen’s visual-art direction in multimedia installations and performance projects.

From Rising Notes’ founding in 2038, Riley served as Operations Director and helped convert the camp’s values into workable schedules, staffing, rehearsal structures, and program design. They also mentored younger musicians through direct technical help, informal guidance, Fifth Bar education, and Rising Notes.

Riley maintained a comparatively private public profile. They generally preferred group interviews to extensive solo press, spoke most readily about gear and process, and occasionally discussed nonbinary identity with LGBTQ+ publications. They did not need to turn private medical history into public content in order for audiences to notice their seated performances, careful pacing, or periods of absence from promotional work.

At CRATB’s final Lincoln Center concert in 2074, Riley helped move Charlie backstage after he collapsed following the last note. At Charlie and Logan’s joint memorial in 2081, Riley performed a solo soundscape built from Charlie’s recorded interview voice layered with heartbeat rhythms, street sound, and soft rain. Riley remained active in the surviving band and chosen-family network through Jacob’s death in 2083.

Personality and Emotional Life

Riley was quiet, observant, and selective rather than shy. They watched the changing temperature of a room, noticed tensions before they became arguments, and often understood what a person was avoiding before that person named it. Riley did not require continuous conversation to experience closeness. Silence, shared work, and simply occupying the same room could be complete forms of company.

Their internal life was more expansive than their spoken output suggested. Riley processed experience through sound, rhythm, journaling, sketches, and private audio entries. They could be much more revealing in writing than in person because writing allowed them to shape a thought without the physical and social demand of immediate speech.

Riley’s care was action-based. Tea appeared beside a person who was falling apart. A blanket covered someone who had fallen asleep. A protein bar arrived during a rehearsal crash. A cable was moved out of a path before it became dangerous. Riley could sit nearby without demanding a disclosure or retreat far enough to protect privacy while remaining available if needed.

Charlie described Riley’s care as “love with the volume turned all the way down.” The description fit because Riley rarely narrated what they were doing. Friends often recognized the pattern only after the water, food, blanket, quiet room, or correctly timed interruption had already helped.

Quietness did not make Riley passive. They were one of the most direct people in CRATB’s circle, with a flat, factual delivery that made difficult truths harder to deflect. “You know you fucked up, right?” was not an opening for debate. It was a statement offered without a performance of rage or moral superiority. Riley’s honesty could be uncomfortable, but friends trusted that it was not manipulation or an attempt to win a room.

During Ezra and Charlie’s early rivalry, Riley refused to turn care into allegiance. They told Ezra when he had been unfair and then sat with Charlie after Ezra’s words made him cry. The callout and the comfort belonged to the same ethic: see the full situation, say what is true, and remain present for the human consequences.

Riley’s humor was dry, pun-heavy, and often delivered without a visible cue that a joke had begun. “Cool cool cool” could mean agreement, reluctant acknowledgment, or refusal to spend more energy on a subject. Their group-chat commentary compressed affection into mock regulation, including the message to Ezra, “you are not allowed to wear sleeveless tops to fan events anymore. we’ve voted.”

Self-reliance was both Riley’s strength and one of their most persistent constraints. Childhood taught them to answer difficulty with “I’ll figure it out.” They could solve practical problems alone, improvise when a body or schedule failed, and protect their work with remarkable persistence. The same reflex made it difficult to ask for care before a situation became urgent.

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Riley was mixed Afro-Puerto Rican and White. Their Puerto Rican and Black heritage came through Lila, who was Afro-Latina and born and raised in Philadelphia. Their absent father was White, and Riley had little connection to his family. Riley therefore grew up with that ancestry present in their identity and appearance but without an active paternal family culture around it.

Lila’s work schedule made cultural transmission uneven rather than absent. Riley heard Spanish, music, family recipes, and ordinary household habits even when there was little time for formal teaching or sustained community participation. English became their primary language. They understood conversational Spanish strongly but spoke it with hesitation, especially around fluent native speakers. Spanish fragments came more easily when Riley was exhausted, comfortable, or working inside music.

Foods associated with home included arroz con gandules, plátanos, sancocho, rice and beans, and the adobo and sazón Riley continued to keep in later kitchens. They brewed cinnamon-and-clove tea by boiling the spices rather than taking a shortcut, a method passed from their grandmother through Lila. Old boleros Lila hummed while cooking sometimes reappeared as fragments Riley worked privately into guitar lines.

Riley experienced colorism and an in-between position in which they felt “too much of one thing, not enough of another.” They were not fully claimed in some Black American spaces and were not always recognized within Puerto Rican or Latinx communities. With limited family and community connection, they often navigated those exclusions alone. Their gender nonconformity added another dimension of not fitting the categories available to them. They could be read differently depending on context and did not make cultural identity, racial legibility, or gender available for other people’s classification on demand.

Music became Riley’s primary cultural home because it allowed the different parts of their identity to coexist without requiring a category for each one. Their fascination with pedals that transformed a familiar guitar sound into something harder to classify paralleled their refusal to make themself fit fixed racial, gender, or artistic categories. CRATB’s multiracial, multicultural community offered a belonging Riley had lacked in childhood: they did not have to become less of any part of themself to remain there.

Minjae Lee called Riley ‘’hyung’’ as part of his chosen-older-sibling language. His use of the traditionally male Korean term was specific to their relationship and inclusive understanding; it did not redefine Riley’s gender or establish a general rule about Korean kinship terms.

Speech and Communication

Riley’s speaking voice was a warm, low, androgynous alto, slightly rough around the edges and more noticeably raspy when they were tired. They spoke quietly enough that listeners sometimes had to lean closer. Their laugh was uncommon and usually arrived as a low, startled chuckle, as though amusement had broken through before Riley could filter it.

Their speech was slow and economical. Riley paused in the middle of sentences while choosing the exact shape of a thought, and a sentence could begin with more energy than it ended, trailing into a gesture or shrug. They used fillers such as “Mm,” “Kinda,” “Weird, right?” and “…Not sure that makes sense, but yeah.” They did not routinely repeat themself merely because another person had failed to listen.

Metaphor came more naturally than clinical summary. On a bad body day, Riley might say, “I feel like… someone folded me in half and forgot to unfold me.” Their explanation of narcolepsy was equally compressed: “lights out, brain throws confetti and dips.” Neither phrase made the underlying experience trivial; humor made explanation possible without requiring a long account of symptoms.

Riley’s Spanglish remained situational: “Tengo que dormir, bro,” “Low-key me duele todo pero I’m chilling,” or “This tone is… como se dice? Unreal?” The Spanish lived more securely in their ear than their mouth, and Riley did not pretend to greater spoken confidence than they had.

Writing allowed a wider and more vulnerable register. Riley’s journals and audio entries documented pain, fear, exhaustion, music, strange chord shapes, and observations they did not volunteer aloud. Their texts could show more playfulness than face-to-face conversation, although they were notorious for reading a message immediately and replying three days later with “ahh sorry just saw this.”

Music remained Riley’s most fluent communication. They could answer an argument with a calming loop, respond to another player’s mood with a texture, or let one note sustain where a spoken reassurance would have felt inadequate. Riley also sang privately on rare occasions. Their singing voice was richer, fuller, and steadier than their tired conversational voice. Peter once heard it through a thin apartment wall and chose not to interrupt or mention it afterward.

Health and Disabilities

Narcolepsy with Cataplexy

Main article: Narcolepsy Reference

Riley had narcolepsy with cataplexy. Excessive daytime sleepiness and sudden sleep episodes had been part of their life long before diagnosis. Friends and classmates interpreted the habitual napping as a personality quirk, and Riley knew the safest places to sleep in the buildings they used regularly. Later diagnosis reframed those years as the history of an undiagnosed neurological disorder rather than laziness, indifference, or an unusual talent for sleep.

Riley learned to recognize when sleepiness was becoming irresistible and, when warning allowed, positioned themself somewhere safer before losing wakefulness. Planned naps, medication timing, sleep hygiene, and recovery windows were part of management, although touring, irregular call times, and time-zone changes could disrupt every part of that system. They slept in vans, empty backstage rooms, coats, rehearsal corners, and other available quiet places because the body did not wait for a socially convenient setting.

Cataplexy caused sudden partial or complete loss of muscle tone during strong emotion while Riley remained conscious. It was not fainting, a seizure, or falling asleep. People close to Riley learned to protect their body from injury, clear space, wait without panic, and communicate without assuming that lack of movement meant lack of awareness.

During the March 2029 Velvet Frame Lounge shooting, Riley saw police tase and restrain Ezra as he tried to reach the critically wounded Nina Cruz. The emotional shock triggered a severe cataplexy episode. Their body went completely limp; they remained conscious but could not move. Peter coordinated Riley’s emergency care and accompanied them to the hospital while Jacob went to Ezra.

Asthma

Riley also had asthma. They carried a rescue inhaler and managed respiratory triggers during travel, rehearsals, and performances. Smoke, cold air, exertion, strong smells, illness, and unfamiliar venue environments could require changes to plans or faster access to medication. Asthma and narcolepsy created different risks and were not treated as one generalized condition.

Riley sometimes minimized early wheezing or chest tightness while concentrating on work. People who knew their pattern could notice before Riley stopped playing; Elliot, for example, had handed Riley the inhaler before Riley fully registered that they were wheezing. The action belonged to practical familiarity, not to Elliot diagnosing or controlling Riley’s treatment.

Endometriosis and Hysterectomy

Endometriosis affected Riley from their early teens. Painful and irregular periods, chronic pelvic pain, nausea, and fatigue interfered with school, practice, touring, and ordinary movement. Riley initially believed the severity was something they were expected to endure. The pain was dismissed or normalized for years before diagnosis, and hormonal treatments did not provide adequate relief.

In their early twenties, at approximately twenty-one, Riley chose a complete hysterectomy in the context of endometriosis. The decision was intentional, gender-affirming, and grounded in bodily autonomy. It was not an emergency intervention, and endometriosis was not treated as automatically cured by removal of the uterus. Surgery ended menstrual bleeding, left small laparoscopic scars on Riley’s abdomen, and substantially changed the conditions under which they traveled and worked, while residual pelvic pain could still occur.

Fatigue and Pain

Riley lived with persistent fatigue and chronic pain as effects of narcolepsy, endometriosis, disrupted sleep, performance labor, and recovery. The symptoms affected how long Riley could remain upright, how much speech or social interaction they could sustain, and how much recovery a performance required.

Relationship to Their Body

Riley’s clothing, name, and physical presentation gave them ways to inhabit gender without making it a performance for other people. Their androgyny was not a midpoint between two required categories. It was the ordinary form of Riley’s face, body, voice, and chosen presentation.

Years of having pain, exhaustion, and gender misunderstood made medical encounters costly. Riley prepared to explain symptoms precisely, anticipated misgendering and dismissal, and sometimes delayed disclosure because the work of being believed consumed energy they already lacked. Later access to clinicians who respected both their body and gender made treatment and self-advocacy less adversarial.

Relief after the hysterectomy did not require Riley to perform uncomplicated happiness about surgery, and complexity did not make the choice less theirs. Riley made a deliberate decision about their own body with the support of chosen family; the operation was not imposed as the only possible response to an acute crisis.

Riley feared becoming the reason a tour, rehearsal, or relationship could not continue. They minimized symptoms, hid the effort required to keep working, and sometimes allowed other people to interpret medical behavior as eccentricity. Their private formulation was, “It’s easier to let them think it’s just a bit. Easier to be the mascot than the liability.” The “human house cat” nickname grew partly from that gap: other people saw someone who could nap anywhere and disappear between obligations, while Riley was managing a neurological disorder.

Carmen was the first person whose description of Riley as beautiful they believed, though other people had said it before. She included the dark circles, fatigue, dry skin, and scars in that beauty rather than treating it as something visible only when those signs disappeared.

Over time, Riley became more direct about access, rest, and bodily limits without becoming louder or more socially expansive. They learned that accepting care did not erase competence and that interdependence did not reproduce the childhood experience of being a problem another person lacked time to solve. Their growth was not a conversion from quiet to outspoken; it was a shift from silent endurance toward quiet self-advocacy.

Physical Characteristics

Build and Bearing

Riley stood approximately five feet seven inches tall and had a slender build with soft lines. They were not physically presented as fragile. Their body occupied space quietly: a slight slouch in a chair, knees tucked toward the chest, a shoulder against a wall, or a seat on the floor when furniture required more effort than it was worth.

Movement was deliberate and economical. Riley slipped through crowded rooms without drawing attention, leaned or sat whenever possible, and avoided gestures that cost energy without communicating anything useful. When they had more capacity, the same economy could read as fluid rather than tired. When sleepiness or pain increased, their motion slowed, their head lowered, and the work of remaining upright became easier to hear in their voice and breathing.

Skin, Face, and Eyes

Riley had light-medium brown skin with warm golden undertones. Fatigue and pain could leave rosy or darkened areas beneath their eyes, and the skin of their hands was often slightly dry. Their complexion was not uniform in every condition or light, but its golden-brown base remained consistent.

Their face was softly androgynous, with a rounded jaw, gentle brow, strong cheekbones, and softness through the cheeks and mouth. Their lips sometimes rested slightly parted, as if they had just woken or might speak after deciding whether the words were necessary. The features did not become masculine or feminine according to angle; other people’s categorization changed while Riley’s face remained the same.

Riley’s eyes were muted hazel and could appear gold or grey-green. They were often heavy-lidded. Riley’s gaze was steady but not routinely direct; they frequently listened while looking just past a speaker or following a thought through the room. Eye-contact habits did not indicate inattention. Riley often noticed more while appearing not to look.

Riley’s beauty often became apparent gradually, on a third or fourth look or through growing familiarity. Their delicate features and bone structure came through Lila’s side of the family, and their cheeks and mouth retained a softness through chronic illness. Unguarded moments made those qualities easier to notice: playing with their eyes half closed, resting in a backstage sunbeam, or laughing at something Peter said before they could contain the response. Riley and the people around them often overlooked that loveliness beneath the fatigue, slouch, and low-pulled beanie.

Hair

Riley’s hair was thick, soft, wavy, and shoulder-length, with a tendency to frizz. They usually wore it half tied or tucked beneath a knit beanie. Riley dyed it frequently in muted shades such as lavender-grey, faded sea green, and dusty rose. Older colors could remain at the ends, creating overlapping bands rather than a single uniform dye job.

Hair care remained low-demand and compatible with variable energy. A beanie could contain texture on a rushed or exhausted day, reduce sensory distraction, and fit the soft-grunge clothes Riley already preferred. The changing color offered expression without requiring Riley to build a more elaborate public presentation around it.

Hands and Touch

Riley’s hands often conveyed a history and affection they did not put into speech. Permanent guitar calluses thickened their fingertips enough to tolerate brief contact with hot surfaces without flinching. Beneath the calluses, the skin remained chronically dry despite moisturizer, part of the wider bodily strain accompanying Riley’s fatigue and dehydration. Ink from lyrics, tuning maps, set notes, or doodles marked their fingers and palms. The fingers remained busy in quiet ways: adjusting pedalboard cables, tracing a chord shape on a tabletop, picking at a cuticle under stress, sketching in a margin, or preparing tea.

The calluses were Riley’s oldest continuous bodily feature, preceding the abdominal scars and dark circles. They connected the child picking out melodies on a secondhand guitar in Lila’s apartment to the professional building layered soundscapes on a customized Jazzmaster. Guitar playing had remained physically present in their hands through the intervening changes in health, name, and public life.

The hands could tremble finely when Riley was underslept, overwhelmed, or working beyond capacity. Carmen, Peter, and Charlie learned to notice the change without taking the instrument or decisions away from Riley. Charlie understood the fine tremor as a fellow musician who knew what it cost to keep playing through it. The same hands that controlled heavy strings and densely routed effects moved gently when setting down a mug, laying a blanket over someone, or steadying another person’s equipment.

Riley had made chamomile tea dozens of times for every bandmate at different breaking points. Their hands moved with the same unhurried tenderness they brought to the guitar, precise and economical because they were conserving energy for what mattered. Their touch could be warm even though narcolepsy-related temperature difficulties often left their extremities cold. That gentle, undemanding care remained constant beneath Riley’s quiet presentation.

Riley’s abdominal laparoscopic scars remained normally covered by shirts and hoodies.

Proximity and Presence

Riley tended to choose corners, walls, floors, and deep sections of couches. They did not demand interaction from the people beside them, and the absence of that demand made others gravitate toward them. In a studio, the quietest person in the room could end up near Riley without either of them formally choosing company.

Their stillness was distinct from disengagement. Riley could track a conversation, another person’s breathing, the location of a cable, and the kettle from a curled position with their eyes half closed. Being near them often lowered the expectation to perform sociability. Friends could rest, work, or say nothing without Riley treating silence as a problem to solve.

Their company felt like that of a cat who had chosen to sit nearby: deliberate, undemanding, and offered without explanation. It also resembled background music whose absence became noticeable only when it stopped and the quiet no longer felt right. Riley’s gentle pull differed from Ezra’s fire or Charlie’s electricity; bandmates gradually migrated toward their seat in the studio without being summoned or becoming the audience for someone else’s performance.

Apparent indifference could conceal how closely Riley had been following another person’s needs. They noticed cold, sadness, exhaustion, or wheezing and placed tea, a blanket, or an inhaler within reach before the person had necessarily asked. Those small acts could remain invisible until someone recognized the pattern afterward. Charlie’s image of love at low volume also described the attention needed to hear a quiet guitar part beneath a prominent vocal; the people closest to Riley learned to hear that part.

Riley’s stillness offered rest that other people could borrow. It differed from Jacob’s coiled tension, Logan’s steady gravity, or Ava’s active calm. Their company carried the ease of three-in-the-morning conversations, Sunday mornings, rain at a window, and half-finished tea, encouraging people to slow down, sit on the floor, and stop performing. Within the band’s larger personalities, Riley could be the quiet room where presence did not require loudness.

Personal Style and Presentation

Riley dressed for gender comfort, sensory tolerance, temperature changes, and low-effort movement. Their wardrobe combined soft grunge with practical layers: oversized hoodies and sweaters, flannel, thrifted jackets, hand-cut jeans, worn Converse, broken-in boots, and muted earth or desaturated sunset colors. Mauve, dusk blue, soft sage, faded black, and grey-green recurred more often than bright or sharply contrasting colors.

Sleeves were often long enough to pull over their hands when they were cold or anxious. Clothes were nonconstricting and easy to manage through pain, sleepiness, or medical care. Layering let Riley respond to temperature without changing an entire outfit, and looser shapes reduced both sensory irritation and dysphoria.

Function did not make the style accidental. Muted hair color, scuffed shoes, softened fabric, repaired garments, pins, patches, and the lived-in surface of Frankie’s case created a consistent aesthetic. Riley preferred objects that showed use and adaptation over objects preserved so carefully that touching them became another obligation.

Onstage, they did not create a separate high-glamour persona. Clothing remained compatible with sitting, pedal use, guitar straps, cables, and abrupt changes in capacity. Dark circles, a slouch, or a beanie could become part of public recognition, but Riley did not owe an audience an explanation of which visible detail came from style and which came from illness.

Tastes and Preferences

Riley listened to ambient and post-rock artists including Hammock, Explosions in the Sky, and early Sigur Rós. Lo-fi hip-hop, extended jazz improvisation, and science-fiction film scores also appeared in their private listening. “Time Isn’t Real and Neither Is My GPA” was one of their stranger playlist titles. “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys was a guilty pleasure Riley described as, “Ironic. Kind of. Maybe.”

Their most disliked common progression was G–D–Em–C. Riley once threatened, “If I have to play that in another coffee shop, I’m faking a faint.” The joke reflected musical boredom, not a literal claim about using disability as deception.

Comfort food included rice with miso soup and soft tofu, which Riley called “warm and quiet, like a blanket but edible.” They kept dried mango and plain saltines as easy snacks and mixed lavender chamomile with lemon balm for tea. They had a very low caffeine tolerance: a small amount of tea could keep them awake for hours, while coffee was generally avoided.

Riley ran cold and nearly always kept a hoodie and hand warmers nearby. Their favorite plant was a snake plant—“Stays alive. Doesn’t ask questions.” They liked wind moving through leaves, the soft clink of teaspoons against mugs, and other quiet nonmusical sounds with enough texture to reward attention.

A smooth river stone found during a band camping trip remained in their gig bag. Riley said, “It plays D minor. Spiritually.” The answer was typical: absurd, musically specific, and delivered without clarifying whether anyone else was meant to laugh.

Habits, Routines, and Daily Life

Riley’s schedule depended on capacity rather than one rigid sequence. They sat or reclined during rehearsals when needed, sought quiet places between obligations, protected post-performance recovery, and left social events early rather than borrowing energy from the next day’s work. At home, a blanket and herbal tea were usually within reach.

Sleep could interrupt any plan. Riley used alarms but slept through the one alarm clock they considered functional often enough for the description to become a joke. They knew reliable nap locations at Juilliard and later learned the same map in studios, venues, tour buses, and Fifth Bar buildings. When they were genuinely relaxed, they sometimes snored softly and rhythmically.

Their gig bag combined instrument care, access supplies, and private creative material. It usually contained a microfiber cloth, extra strings, a miniature hex wrench, spare patch cables, protein bars, a small thermos of herbal tea, a compact lavender pillow, hand warmers, a notebook full of lyrics and tuning maps, and a sketchbook filled with surreal line art and botanical doodles. Strange chord shapes acquired names such as “cloud spiral.”

Riley kept journals and audio entries because speech was not always available at the speed experience occurred. They recorded ideas, body patterns, fragments of language, ambient sound, and the emotional structure of a piece before deciding whether any of it belonged in public work. Regular time with Frankie remained the most stable creative routine across changing homes and health.

During their Juilliard years and early adulthood, Riley shared a Brooklyn apartment with Ezra and Peter. Each resident had private sleeping space. Practice sound traveled through closed doors, instruments occupied much of the available room, and the household kept paths clear at collapse height for Riley’s cataplexy. Peter tracked supplies and logistics; Riley kept chamomile tea available; Ezra brought a less predictable nighttime rhythm. Care happened without converting the home into a clinic.

One 2028 night, Ezra called Nina while drunk and emotionally unguarded. Riley brought chamomile tea, gave Nina and Ezra room to talk, and remained near enough to help without monitoring the conversation. The same domestic practice later shaped Ezra’s recovery: presence was available, privacy remained intact, and a person did not have to perform being all right in order to stay.

Riley retained a permanent quiet room within the Band House network for periods when they were in residence or needed retreat, even after Macon Street became their primary Brooklyn home with Carmen. The room and its Riley-specific care design did not make every later night there part of a primary residence.

Personal Philosophy

“I’ll figure it out” was Riley’s first philosophy because childhood made it necessary. It supported competence, musical experimentation, and the ability to improvise around systems that had not planned for their body. It also carried the danger of treating every need as a private problem that had to be solved before another person noticed.

Riley believed sound could hold truths that ordinary speech could not. Their playing prioritized authentic texture over technical display, risk over sterile correctness, and silence over an unnecessary note. Experimental work did not mean randomness; it meant finding the form that matched what Riley actually heard rather than forcing experience into a standard tuning or expected meter.

Their later philosophy made room for interdependence. Needs were not character flaws, accommodation was not proof of artistic weakness, and chosen family did not require Riley to minimize themself in exchange for belonging. Accepting a chair, a ride, a meal, a witness, or recovery time could protect the work and the person doing it.

Riley did not become optimistic about every institution or assume that explanation guaranteed understanding. They became more selective about where explanation was worth the cost and more willing to state a boundary without apologizing for having one.

Family and Core Relationships

Lila Mercer

Lila raised Riley alone while working long nursing shifts. Their relationship was loving, practical, and emotionally complicated. Riley understood the economic pressure under Lila’s absences and did not interpret every missed moment as lack of love. At the same time, being required to manage so much alone shaped Riley’s difficulty asking for care long after the childhood emergency had ended.

Lila supported music materially even when she did not understand every sound Riley made. She paid for lessons, noticed guitars for sale, asked whether Riley was eating, and expressed pride in short written or texted messages when work kept her away. She could misunderstand Riley’s slowness, fatigue, gender, or need for softness and still continue trying. The relationship remained “okay” rather than becoming either estrangement or an uncomplicated portrait of perfect support.

Carmen Rivera

Main article: Riley Mercer and Carmen Rivera

Riley and Carmen’s relationship developed slowly from friendship. Carmen was patient, introspective, and grounded and did not require Riley to disclose emotion on demand. Both understood creative expression through their respective media more readily than through words, giving them natural common ground. Her consistency gave Riley room to open without turning vulnerability into a test the relationship had to pass; she demonstrated through repeated actions that she would stay when things became difficult.

Carmen was the first romantic partner who made Riley feel fully seen. She recognized gender, chronic illness, creative life, and protective guardedness together, offering an understanding Riley had not experienced in their biological family. Her continued presence helped Riley learn to accept care without treating every need as a burden that might drive someone away. The relationship became a private refuge where being loved meant being witnessed and accepted, not merely tolerated despite the cost of care.

Carmen learned the difference between Riley choosing quiet and Riley losing capacity. She offered care without taking control, respected both gender and medical autonomy, and remained present through the hysterectomy decision and recovery. Riley did not have to hide pain, sleep, scars, or exhaustion to remain desirable in the relationship.

Their creative partnership joined Riley’s music, production, and sound design with Carmen’s visual-art leadership in Fifth Bar Multimedia projects, installations, and performance work. They kept much of their romantic life private while sharing a primary home at the Macon Street apartment in Bed-Stuy and a West Coast home at the Narragansett Cottage in Ocean Beach. Carmen’s Rivera surname did not make her biologically related to Charlie; her connection to him belonged to the wider chosen-family network.

Charlie Rivera

Main article: Riley Mercer and Charlie Rivera

Riley and Charlie met at Juilliard in 2025 and became bandmates, friends, and chosen family. Their personalities differed—Charlie’s public energy and verbal warmth were more expansive than Riley’s—but both understood the need to sit, sleep, cancel, or remain quiet without treating it as rejection.

During their early Juilliard years, they once ended a punishing rehearsal asleep on the floor after both had pushed beyond capacity. The recognition that followed created a practical bond. They shared rest without embarrassment, carried supplies that could help the other, and learned to distinguish company from a demand for conversation.

Riley later told Charlie about years of endometriosis pain and dismissal. Charlie did not answer with a promise that Riley’s body was secretly fine; he located the failure in the system that had refused to believe them. The conversation helped establish the kind of medical and emotional honesty their friendship could hold.

During Ezra and Charlie’s conflict, Riley held Ezra accountable and stayed with Charlie afterward. Across CRATB’s career, Riley and Charlie coordinated rest and access, covered practical gaps during bad body days, and protected one another’s right to stop. Riley remained part of Charlie’s close circle through the 2074 final show and his death in 2081.

Ezra Cruz

Main article: Riley Mercer and Ezra Cruz

Riley and Ezra became friends through Juilliard and CRATB and later shared the Brooklyn apartment with Peter. Riley’s stillness and Ezra’s intensity did not cancel each other. Riley could offer accountability without humiliation, while Ezra could offer loyalty without requiring Riley to become more outwardly expressive.

After Ezra physically pushed Charlie during an argument, Riley found him and said, “You know you fucked up, right?” The statement named the harm without turning the encounter into a contest. Riley’s directness gave Ezra something he could admit rather than fight.

During Ezra’s rehabilitation after his January 2035 overdose, Riley visited daily. They stayed through crying, vomiting, and severe withdrawal sickness without demanding gratitude or a reassuring performance of progress. When Ezra left rehabilitation and feared being alone during the worst cravings, he slept on Riley’s couch. Riley remained close enough to make solitude safer without monitoring him continuously.

The public sometimes speculated that Riley and Ezra were romantically involved because of their closeness. Ezra once proposed trying it “just for publicity.” Riley answered, “You’re gorgeous, Ezra, but I’d murder you before the week was up.” Their refusal to dramatize the rumor reflected the actual relationship: intimate chosen family without romantic partnership.

Devyn Sullivan

Devyn was Riley’s “soul sibling.” Their closeness included similar temperaments, a shared nonbinary identity, and recognition across different experiences of cultural belonging. They understood one another through half-sentences, shared references, and comfortable silence. Riley noticed when Devyn’s normally moving hands became still or their mouth tightened or flattened with emotion; Devyn, in turn, recognized Riley’s fatigue and withdrawal before most people did.

Riley and Devyn met during a Fifth Bar recording session. Within five minutes, they were exchanging memes under the table and teasing Peter about his bass lines. Their friendship included late-night messages, shared sarcasm, and quiet conversations on balconies about gender, grief, and living with chaos. They shared clothes, exchanged piercing jewelry, and coordinated outfits for events. Riley called Devyn “my emotional support twin.”

Their early rapport included Devyn’s account of getting an exhausted Ezra to nap within their first three weeks as his assistant. Riley was impressed by how quickly Devyn had understood his resistance to being told to rest, and the text exchange became shared teasing and an acknowledgment of Devyn’s place in the inner circle. Riley later learned that Devyn’s withdrawal signaled depleted capacity rather than anger or disinterest, although how to offer company during that withdrawal remained unresolved between them.

When Ezra tried to fire Devyn during a meltdown, Riley blocked the doorway and told him, “Try again, diva. They’re ours now.” Riley treated Devyn as part of the chosen family rather than someone whose belonging Ezra could revoke in anger.

Peter Liu

Riley and Peter were Juilliard suitemates, Brooklyn roommates, bandmates, and long-term collaborators. Their shared comfort with quiet made domestic life unusually easy. Peter’s organizational habits and Riley’s capacity-based rhythms could coexist without either person interpreting the other as controlling or irresponsible.

Peter accompanied Riley to the hospital during the Velvet Frame crisis. In later professional life, they worked together across Fifth Bar Multimedia, accessible editing, production education, and ‘’Soft-Spoken’‘. Peter also heard Riley sing privately and protected the moment by leaving it unremarked.

Jacob Keller

Riley and Jacob shared decades as Juilliard classmates, CRATB members, and chosen family. The cruise-ship dare remained one of their most frequently retold early stories.

After Charlie and Logan died in 2081, Riley visited Jacob during the worsening late-onset neurocognitive disorder that grief and bipolar depression had accelerated. Riley brought warm cookies from his favorite bakery, spent time with him without infantilizing his uneven language or functioning, and joined others in pushing his custom piano chair down a park hill while he shouted, “WEEEEEEE!”

Riley joined Peter, Ezra, and the Keller-Harlow family during Jacob’s final days in 2083. They were present for his last morning and remained part of the gathered family when he died.

Legacy and Continuing Work

Riley thought of their legacy primarily through artistic contribution, though their personal impact also mattered deeply to them. They hoped to be remembered for expanding jazz guitar, bringing experimental electronics into fusion, and making soundscapes that could hold emotional experiences ordinary speech could not reach. Their guitar and sound-design vocabulary expanded CRATB’s range; their production, composition, and multimedia direction continued through Fifth Bar; and their operational work helped Rising Notes function. Younger musicians encountered Riley as a technical mentor who could discuss tone, arrangement, access, and sustainable practice without requiring them to imitate Riley’s personality or career.

More privately, Riley hoped to make room for other disabled and nonbinary musicians. Their mentorship offered people navigating similar combinations of identity and health the understanding they had once needed. Riley wanted accommodation to make sustained artistic excellence possible without being treated as evidence of failure.

Their long collaboration with Carmen produced work across sound and visual art. Their partnership with Peter preserved quiet, process-focused forms of public conversation. Their decades with Charlie, Ezra, and Jacob left Riley as one of the surviving keepers of CRATB’s private working history after the deaths of Charlie, Logan, and Jacob.

Riley and Carmen’s relationship offered a model of sustainable, joyful queer love built through practical care and full recognition rather than romantic idealization. Within the band, learning to see Riley beyond the affectionate house-cat persona became part of the group’s growth. Riley had been a quiet anchor who made room for the others’ turmoil; their friends came to recognize the person whose consistency, continued presence, and loyalty had carried enormous private cost. Riley also learned to take up more space without making their care or identity into a performance.

Riley was still living after 2083.

Memorable Quotes

“This tone is… como se dice? Unreal?”

“I feel like… someone folded me in half and forgot to unfold me.”

“lights out, brain throws confetti and dips.”

“It’s easier to let them think it’s just a bit. Easier to be the mascot than the liability.”

“you are not allowed to wear sleeveless tops to fan events anymore. we’ve voted.”

“You know you fucked up, right?”

“It buzzes if you play it wrong. I kind of like that about it.”

“Sometimes the standard ones don’t match how I feel.”

“It sounds like a memory you never had, but wish you did.”

“It’s just off enough to feel honest.”

“You’re gorgeous, Ezra, but I’d murder you before the week was up.”

Characters Main Characters Living Characters Musicians Guitarists Sound Designers Composers Black Characters White Characters Latinx Characters Puerto Rican Characters Afro-Latino Characters Mixed Race Characters Mixed Heritage Characters Disabled Characters Chronic Illness Characters Asthma LGBTQ+ Characters Nonbinary Characters CRATB Members