if you're feeling it, could i please request "playing with each other’s fingers" for an oc of your choice👀 — @shoshiwrites
happy (belated) bday my dear shosh. here is a very very belated prompt to celebrate. this is an AU i've had for years but @loveduringthewar's beautiful West Wing AU inspired me to get some real writing done on it. summary: poet laureate mattie james is dutifully protected by secret service special agent joe toye.
a friday in autumn, 2:19 pm
Joe finds himself in a chair across from Mattie, who’s surrounded by a gaggle of vigilantly curious middle schoolers as she holds his palm and moves his hand around.
“See?” she says, angling his fingers toward the fluorescent lights overhead, “it’s too big. So,” she lets his hand down once more and slips her wire work off his finger. “We gotta make it smaller but if we squeeze it—”
“There’ll be a bend, like, a little point.” One of the kids makes a ‘V’ with his hands and Mattie beams.
“Exactly! Let me show you how to avoid that.” She sits back with the paperclip ring and the circle of kids closes around her once more.
Joe takes a moment to look around for help from any of the other adults in the room, hoping someone else is willing to jump in and play model while he gets back to his very serious job of protecting a representative of the state, but he’s only met with endeared smiles from the teachers and duty-bound refusal from his fellow agents. Bull’s at the door with a sympathetic but ultimately unmoved nod, Bill’s glancing over with a smug, thrilled sneer between chatting to one of the instructors, and Johnny shakes his head before looking at the floor. Joe knows what that means—you made your bed, now lie in it.
Or, as Mattie likes to say, grow a spine.
It’s not like Joe doesn’t have a spine. He spends his days telling people what they can and can’t do, where they can and can’t go, and who they can and can’t speak to, all without getting caught up in their pleas and compromises. This job does not allow for missteps; he’s not a man who takes chances. But this, and but is doing a lot of work here says the Mattie in his brain because she lives there now, this is different.
This is the fourth school they’ve been to this week and it goes the same every time. They arrive to a warm, overenthusiastic welcome from the teachers and an excited-slash-confused-to-borderline-hostile reception from the students. Mattie’s music isn’t necessarily targeted toward the middle grades, her poetry even less so. But she gets up there nonetheless.
Hi, I’m Mattie. I make music and I write poems.
Are you good at it? a kid will ask, always a boy—this one proudly introduced himself as Tyler, always towards the back of the room, always accompanied by giggles.
Mattie shrugs. Some people think I am, some people think I’m trash. And the shock of that admission, from an adult, from a capital-I important adult, breaks the spell of awkwardness and within a few minutes, she’s charmed the whole room. The kids are eating out of her palm. Even the ones who were determined to be difficult have either bought in or are about to.
Joe is now familiar with the mix of admiration and jealousy on a teacher’s face when they realize that Mattie’s nearing a participation rate that Maria Montessori would be jealous of. Johnny leans over to them with a grimace of empathy. It’s not you, it’s her. She’s a magician with this stuff.
Then, her least favorite part. She asks for a volunteer, just for a moment, just for a prompt. We can’t theorize our way into making art. We gotta do it. All the energy that had built up and the excitement on the kids’ faces fizzle. She’ll give it a few seconds and look at the adults in the room rather than the kids, half-pleading, half-resigned, then laugh like that was expected, like she asked them to skydive with no parachute.
She’ll let off steam about it later, when they’re in the car, when they’re back in her suite at the Library of Congress. How hard is it to set an example? They introduce me like I’m Nelson fucking Mandela but as soon as I ask them to engage for the sake of their kids, crickets.
Mattie, Johnny’ll say, it’s not that—
It’s because they don’t take this seriously. All this talk about how important artistic outlets are, but God forbid you have to do that art yourself. Because that’s not serious, that’s not real. She lets her bag hit the ground harder than necessary and runs her hands over her face before ripping open her beat-up laptop, mumbling to herself. It’s fine. It’s about the kids, it’s about the kids.
Bill’ll send a get a load of this guy eyebrow around to the other three, but Joe usually finds himself nodding in agreement with Mattie. Poet Laureate is quite a title, but it doesn’t mean anything when no one’s listening. People should listen.
So, on this particular Friday as Tyler, who reminds Joe of Bull—well-built and curly blonde—takes the awkward silence to look at him and the rest of the agents rather than his teachers or Mattie, Joe decides that it changes today. He knows the answers to her prompts already—think of a fruit, apple; think of a color that’s not also the color of an apple, purple. A four-man detail has one redundant agent and all entrances and exits have been secured; the other three can spare him for a while.
He pushes off the eastern wall or the room and half-raises a hand before fully raising it when he sees Mattie’s eyes light up upon realizing what he’s doing. He answers her questions only slightly disquieted by the sudden amount of eyes on him, but as she starts her poem building exercise with a thankful wink, he feels pretty good about it. He’s doing the thing, making art instead of theorizing, setting the example.
More like sitting the example. In his two months with Mattie, he forgot that making art could mean… y’know, making it, not just writing it down. It’s the whole point of the exercise, actually. Ten minutes of silent work, discussion, ten minutes of work with light conversation—Mattie’s the queen of light conversation, then presentations from anyone who wants to. The only rules are that you have to make something, whether it be using the poem prompt she walks them through or something from the classroom supplies at your teacher’s discretion.
The kids who wanted to write set off with their paper and pencils and Mattie walks around for a bit before settling into an empty chair and fiddling with the paper clips a girl is using crafts. Tyler wanders by first, then two of his friends, next a few of their friends, and soon, there’s a bundle of 7th graders watching Mattie make a paper clip ring. And of course, they want to make one too and of course, Mattie needs a model for show because if all of the kids are making one and she’s teaching, then who’s driving the boat? And of course Joe gets pulled in because he volunteered so nicely before.
The circle of children parts like the Red Sea and he’s face-to-face with Mattie again as she wraps the ring around his finger, her hands working around his to fit the metal securely. She’s full of focus, eyes locked on where their skin meets, still in her shoulders and steady in her breathing in the way she only ever is when she’s in the zone. He wants to laugh at the dedication to this tiny strip of wire, but he won’t, not in present company; he can’t have them think he’s laughing at her.
Maybe you don’t have to have volunteers, Johnny offers after their third visit with no adult participation.
Mattie sighs. It’s about the principle of the thing.
Oh, Bill snarks, the principle of the thing.
The kids don’t need to follow the teachers, they follow you just fine, Bull says from his spot at the door.
Johnny nods sagely. Yeah, monkey see, monkey do.
Well, Mattie says, tilting her head in sad consideration, maybe I’d hoped there’d be better monkeys.
Joe is being a better monkey, so no laughing. Instead, he looks from her face to their hands, wondering as always what she sees and how she sees it. It’s not just metal and space to her because nothing is ever just anything to her.
Her brain’s wired different than ours, as Bill says. And Johnny says, your brain isn’t wired at all.
He’s sure she’s watching the steel atoms bump into each other or she’s far beyond, watching the solar system spin on its galactic arm, just a blip in the rapidly approaching collision with Andromeda. Or she’s in both places at once, and here with him, too, capable of holding onto every eon and tense and time zone at once. He doesn’t understand it, not yet, where the poet ends and the person begins.
“There!” Mattie says, sitting back. Joe holds still for what seems like far too long as the kids investigate her handiwork and investigate him. Their inquisitive gazes wander from the ring to his face, some of them leaning in to squint at him, evaluative and unimpressed.
Most of them have figured what he’s doing here, with three other guys who have similar enough haircuts and stand with hands clasped at rest in front of them, plain clothed but suspiciously so. He likes kids, or at least, he’s discovered that he likes them more than he thought he would. They don’t understand that it’s some people’s job to fly under the radar. They meet his gaze as much as they meet Mattie’s instead of politely ignoring him and his fellow agents like adults know to do. And when they do look at him, they don’t care. He has to respect that.
He’s watching Mattie shape a paperclip for a kid when Tyler suddenly fills up his entire field of vision, staring wide-eyed like Joe is a fish in a tank. “Do you have a gun?”
“Okay,” Mattie says, reaching out and clapping Tyler on the shoulder, “it seems like we’re ready for presentations! Let’s take our seats.”
Joe bolts out of his chair and takes his place along the wall again as Mattie wraps up.
He doesn’t realize he still has the heart-shaped ring on until they’re back at the Library of Congress and walking into Mattie’s suite. It’s so light that he forgets he's wearing it and it’s only as she sets her bag down and the flower ring one of the girls gave her catches the sun that he remembers what sits on his finger.
He slips it off and holds it out to her. “Here.”
She takes it gently, turning it over in her decorated hands before flipping it back to him like a coin. “It’s a gift,” she says with a wink, “for being my guinea pig.”
His mouth opens to say something, anything, but the words die in his throat. Taking a moment, he studies it for the first time. It’s a delicate thing, slightly springy if he squeezes the sides, more of a square than a circle, and so very Mattie that he’d pick her if someone had him guess at the maker. The heart has been roughly colored by a red Crayola marker which she’d gotten all over a desk and apologetically wiped up and the imperfections of it—the bends that won’t come out from the original shape, the matte sheen from all the handling—makes it more beautiful.
He doesn’t know where to put it. It’ll fall right off the chain of his cross, and he can’t wear it and risk it getting snagged on something, but he wants it around. He wants to be able to see it and remember a day that was good, a day when he felt like they made a difference, that he made a difference. He hadn’t had a day like that in a long time.
It ends up in his locker at the D.C. headquarters office. Bringing it home feels too… too close, but this is a good spot, halfway between head and heart. He places it on the little shelf in the back next to his spare sunglasses and his old dog tags. He can’t seem to bring those home, either.
Johnny shakes his head as he passes on the way to his locker.
Joe pauses. “What?”
“You can’t say no to that girl.”
This is what Johnny’s amusement was about earlier in the classroom. There was nothing wrong with Joe stepping up or sitting down for a demonstration—it’s encouraged actually, especially at schools, something about giving the Service a friendlier face. Johnny’s gripe is with who Joe stepped up for and why he did it.
“No favorites, Joe.”
“You think I’m playing favorites?”
“I think you don’t understand her.”
“And you do?”
Johnny shrugs and shuts his locker. “No, but I don’t try to. You can’t let it go.”
“I think,” Joe starts as he follows the other agent down to check-out, “that if we understand her, we can understand this guy and get him.”
It’s the one thing that bothers Joe about this case. Lots of people get threats—protecting those people is eighty percent of his job—but there’s something about the ones Mattie gets that doesn’t sit right with him, hasn’t since the beginning. The letters are the one inroad that anyone has to solve this thing and as more show up with diminishing progress from the combined efforts of the Service and the FBI, he thinks it’s time to get a move on. Maybe the missing link is in the protectee and not the thing they’re protecting her from.
What’s the harm in trying? He keeps thinking about where Mattie gets stuck in her job, where she’s given status but no authority, and how she keeps returning to her painted corner with a brave smile, gracious to wait there until she gets called up to do her tricks again. People listen to poetry but they don’t understand it, she says and that’s not fair. When he looks at Mattie, he sees a girl who should be understood as completely as possible, if ever possible.
Johnny flashes his badge at the front desk sensor and looks back at Joe. “It’s not your job to understand. It’s your job to stand there. What if something happened while you were getting your ring sized?”
Joe’s offended. “Sitting down means I’m compromised?”
“Getting involved means you’re compromised.” Johnny’s facing him now that they’re both in the exit lobby, a pensive look on his face as his bag is slung over his shoulder. “Look, Joe, they’re not paying us to think on this one. If you think something’s up, talk to Dick, otherwise, this is not the kind of work you bring home.”
Right, ‘cause Johnny’s a family man now, with a wife and a kid and a baby on the way.
“I didn’t bring it home,” Joe says.
Johnny nods but his eyes are far away. “Yeah, but you thought about it.”
Silence falls for a moment before Johnny sniffs and shoulders his bag. “Who’s on duty tonight?”
“Talbert and Grant,” Joe replies.
Johnny nods. “Make sure they take a look at the cameras, see if they can figure out why they’re down.”
“Yeah,” Joe sighs and heads out with a nod.
The drive home is quiet except for the radio and as he pulls into the parking lot, one of Mattie’s songs comes on the folk station he’s been lurking on. He sits for as long as it takes to play—eyes closed, head rested on his seat—and lets her voice wash over him. She sings like she speaks, brassy and casual, effortless, not having to reach for what she wants, alluring, magnetic in a way that gets under his skin. He listens for anything that could teach him something and he’s so caught up in the mystery of the girl and the thing that goes bump in the night, that he doesn’t listen to the lyrics until the chorus.
But I’m in so deep, she sings, you know I’m such a fool for you. You got me wrapped around your finger, oh. Do you have to let it linger?
“What the hell do you know about The Cranberries?” he asks to the air, smiling softly.
It ends too soon, but the cool night outside shocks the spell of Mattie’s voice from his system as he enters his dark apartment. His nights off-duty are more and more standard as this assignment goes on; he’ll check in with his older sister as he gets dinner ready—Mom’s arthritis is flaring worse than usual and his niece is deciding between swim and soccer camp, catch the Pirates highlights on ESPN, do the dishes, then do his readings.
He started them on a curious whim, just to see what the hype was about and ended up standing in the aisle of a Brentwood bookstore for fifteen minutes, engrossed, until the attendant asked him if he was going to be making a purchase. He bought three books, none of them very long, but he’s not a book guy so they’ve been a task to get through.
He read Letters from a Convict Child first because it’s the book that put Mattie on the map and wrote a man out of incarceration and he’s not sure that he got all of it—he’s not sure that he got any of it—but he understands her now, at least more than he did two months ago. Each poem that paints a picture of the world paints a picture of the writer, too, and sometimes he wants to look away as Mattie touches her own raw nerves to get the words out. But he stays for her, he stays because people always look away. That’s why she writes.
As of yesterday, he’s officially halfway through reading grow lemon grow poem by poem and as he finds tonight’s selection, he’s struck by the opening lines.
Wire hurts my hands, makes my fingers stink But I bend another paperclip
He underlines in his shitty pencil and reads the poem over and over again until his eyes start to droop close and he drags himself to bed wondering what Mattie’s night was like, if she offered her dinner to Tab and Chuck like she does he and Johnny, what music she played. It was Nina last week, but she’d spent the morning humming the Lumineers. Did she skip eleven songs before settling on the twelfth, or did she demand silence and curl up on the chair in the corner of her patio, legs tangled together, and write until Tab had to shuffle her to bed?
Did she make them rings despite the way the metal presses lines into the pads of her fingers? What did she say? Did either of them listen?
He jolts up in the dull gray light of morning, scrambling to shut off his alarm as his chest heaves. In the bathroom, he splashes his face with cold water until the scenes of his dreams—lemon trees, paper clip rings, the shredded and smoking hull of an armored vehicle in the desert, a shadowed figure slipping a letter under Mattie’s door—wash away with the chill. His phone dings.
From B. Guarnere: Ur on coffee duty. Hurry up
