#risaiah

they're best friends! but also gay lovers! probably husbands! rikers fuckin huge but he's actually the baby of the friend group. he's disabled and autistic so he didn't have much help growing up in a small town and got written off by a lot of his family and peers. isaiah, who comes from a really shitty abusive home and was written off time & again for it, saw riker going thru that shit a grade under him and latched on. he pulled riker into his friend group w hunter and bette, and while id say rikers closest w bette and isaiahs closest w hunter, they definitely have their own very specific bond.

hunter comes from money and high status and bette comes from reliable middle class family so neither of them really Grasped what isaiah and riker were going thru. it made the two of them a really deeply tied duo, leading to isaiah moving in with riker in highschool when riker dropped out to get his own place. when hunter left town to pursue his career in acting and bette left for cali to go to college, it was just the two of them left to pick up these broken pieces of traumatic childhoods and scratch up their own little impoverished life together. (i really like this song for that period in their lives..) later in their teens riker hits a massive growth spurt bc he starts eating properly, gets his glasses and hearing aids and starts to really groom and care for himself, alongside isaiah who starts to gain confidence and heal up with a sort of finality.

they end up living in the city once isaiahs got his tattoo career panning out and from there become a lot more established and comfortable! it's good. they take care of each other. isaiahs a lot more confident and doesn't let anyone say Shit to riker and rikers a very domestic man, does a lot of the home making and cooking. they're a good mesh tbh and probably my absolute favorite ship.

that said they definitely feed into each other's shit too, i loooove working w their alter egos maverick and ruckus, they're absolute terrors, esp if you get them to work together.