A/N: A new story idea grabbed me. I can't shake it.

Despite the setting and the first chapter title, this isn't a Christmas story.

Patriot Tours:

Adventures in Babysitting

Chapter One: Christmas Break

December 22

Chuck Bartowski sat down in one of the front seats of the tour bus and shook his head, keeping the gesture small, private. He sighed but not audibly, glancing out the window at the Smithsonian.

Behind him sat the ten teenagers, aged thirteen to sixteen, who were part of the tour he was guiding.

It was crucial that he not let them sense any weakness, not let them see the toll they were taking on him. He had made that mistake in the morning and regretted it.

He had only now gotten them under tolerable control.

Show no weakness, don't bleed in the water. They're circling like sharks. One mistake and you're chum.

He dreaded the rest of the day.

Earlier

Chuck had decided — idiotically — that he would apply for a job as a tour guide in Washington DC for the holiday break.

His sister was going to be out of town, visiting her new boyfriend's family in Northern California. She was his only family. Their parents were both deceased, his mother died of a heart attack when he was fifteen and his sister eighteen, and his father died of a broken heart just two years later. Since there was no one at home in LA, his options were to spend the holiday there anyway, alone, or to remain on campus at Stanford, alone, while everyone else was at home. The Christmas of his junior year was approaching. He idly stopped by the campus employment service a couple of weeks before the term ended — on November 22nd, to be exact, a month ago — vaguely thinking that he might find a holiday job in Palo Alto, but what he found instead was a glossy brochure touting the advantages of working as a tour guide for a DC-based company, Patriot Tours, that provided tours of DC.

The pay was great, given the time required, and the company was willing to pay the plane fare, there and back, and to supply him with a place to live for the time he would work. Chuck applied on a whim, not so much because of the money but because he did not want to be alone in Palo Alto or alone in LA — and because he had never left the state of California, and because he had always wanted to see the sights of DC himself. It was his country's capital, after all.

He applied for a couple of jobs in Palo Alto, waiter jobs, and he applied to Patriot Tours.

He had not expected a response from the company after he pressed 'send' and sent his application, but he did the very next day. Patriot Tours was impressed. They were impressed by his academic credentials: he was a straight 'A' student at Stanford, on full scholarship, a National Merit Scholar. They were impressed by his extracurricular activities: he volunteered as a Big Brother, and read to small children at a local orphanage — the loss of his parents made him eager to help others. They were even impressed by his success at his summer job at the Burbank Buy More: he served as Assistant-to-the-Manager there during the summer months. (His Buy More boss, Big Mike, the wider-than-tall Manager of the Buy More, had given Chuck a glowing recommendation.) So the company called and made him an offer.

The job was simple, at least by description. Each weekday, he would lead a group of ten students to and through various sights. Two groups would be assigned to each tour bus, so each bus would have two leaders. The students would arrive at the Patriot Tours office at 8 am, and the bus would depart at 9 am after the students had been briefed on the do's and don'ts of the tour and gotten a chance to meet their leader. An hour was set aside for a boxed lunch, provided by Patriot, and the students were expected to eat it at the Smithsonian, in a commons room provided by the museum. The Smithsonian was the primary morning stop. The afternoons included stops at the US Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and (after a snack served on the bus) the Lincoln Memorial. The bus returned to the Patriot Tours office at 5 pm and students were to be picked up by 5:30 pm.

Most of the students would be from schools in the poorer neighborhoods of DC. Patriot Tours was supported by a number of charities that provided grants enabling these students to take the tour even if their families could not afford it. The students applied for grants by writing essays on patriotic themes, and the winning essayists were awarded a grant.

"If you take the job," the woman on the phone — Tammy — said, "we'll expect you to spend the next couple of weeks memorizing our materials. We'll email you what is basically a script to follow when you lead the tours of the Capitol Building, the Monument, and the Memorial. At the Smithsonian, you are off the hook, since the museum supplies its own guides. Would that be a problem? It's about 12 pages of material."

"No," Chuck said, meaning it, "I'm really adept at memorization."

Tammy laughed. "That's what your recommenders say, your professor, Dr. Fleming, and your boss, Michael Tucker."

"That's kind of them."

"Your recommendations were all glowing, Chuck, if I may use your first name…"

"Sure, everyone calls me Chuck."

"Your recommenders did. We noticed that no one called you Charles or Charlie."

Chuck winced. "Yeah, I don't like either of those. Only my dad called me 'Charles' — and after he died, that name did too."

"Right," Tammy said, clearly unsure how to respond to something so personal. "So, what do you think? Will you accept our offer? If so, we will need you in DC no later than December 2nd for a couple of days of training, and then you will work from December 6th to the 23rd."

"That sounds good…" Chuck responded, trying to sound excited but non-committal. "Would there be any chance of me staying in my room over Christmas, not going home until, say, December 30th?" Ellie, his sister, was supposed to be back from Northern California for the New Year.

Tammy hesitated, but only for a moment. "If that's a deal-maker, fine."

"It is. If I can do that, then, yes, I accept."

And so Chuck took the job. He called Ellie right away. She was pleased, if a bit hesitant about Chuck traveling so far. But she had been feeling guilty about leaving Chuck at Christmas, and his new job seemed to assuage her guilt. Later that night, the 12 pages of tour material arrived by email, and Chuck spent the next two weeks using the little free time that end-of-term assignments and finals prep and his quick Thanksgiving trip back to Burbank left him to memorize it.

Professor Fleming's exam was Chuck's last exam of the Fall, technically scheduled for December 2, but when Chuck explained what he was hoping to do, Fleming was happy to allow Chuck to take the exam early.

December 1st found Chuck in DC, exhausted but excited. Patriot Tours had put him up in a motel within walking distance of the office. The motel was not part of any chain, it was locally owned and operated. Capitol Fountain. The woman at the front desk, middle-aged, Her rose-framed reading glasses perched on her snub nose beneath a badly fitted wig, had given him a long look when as checked in, then read him a long list of motel rules, which she required him to sign and date before she slid him a room card.

She glared at him over her half lenses, unimpressed by his Stanford sweatshirt showing through his unzipped jacket. "No parties, Mr. Bartowski. Remember that. No parties. Of course, you don't look like the sort around whom parties happen." She sniffed and pushed up the reading glasses. "If you need clean towels, call the desk and we'll bring them to you. But only two a day."

Chuck nodded and smiled, zipped his jacket, and pulled his suitcase into the cold. Chuck's room was on the second floor, the top floor. All the rooms faced the central courtyard, and in the center of the courtyard was a fountain. But no water bubbled from it. The December DC cold had taken the fountain prisoner, encasing the fountainhead in ice and turning the water basin into a tiny frozen pond. Chuck paused to look at the fountain, surprised by it, since it resembled the one outside the apartment in Burbank he shared with Ellie.

The fountain was at once familiar and strange. Uncanny.

Chuck shivered in the cold and hurried up the stairs (there was no elevator) to his room, 212. It was on the corner of the building. The balcony came to an end just past his room's door, the stairs leading up to it. That was nice because it meant a shorter walk, but it also meant that anyone else on the second floor would have to troup past his door, coming up or going down. Of course, the motel did not seem to be at anything approaching full occupancy, so maybe the poor location would not matter.

Inside, he parked his suitcase, closed the door, and looked around. He found the room warmer and nicer than the woman at the desk or the icy fountain led him to expect.

The room was large. In the front of the room, next to the large window, a brown loveseat was stationed beside a wooden coffee table. On the other side of the coffee table stood a matching armchair. Beyond that seating area was the queen bed, its headboard against one wall. Opposite the foot of the bed, against the other wall, was a low chest of drawers with a large TV atop it. To the far side of the chest of drawers was a desk, a rolling desk chair shoved beneath it.

Beyond that was a long tile counter with two sinks. A mirror was attached to the wall above the counter. It was as big a mirror as Chuck could remember seeing, and he found himself shying away from it a bit as he finished exploring the room.

He'd never been narcissistic enough to like mirrors, and, although he was not superstitious about them, the uncanniness of the fountain outside seemed to migrate to the mirror. It spooked him.

To the side of the counter was a door, open, that led into the bathroom proper.

Chuck clicked on the light, the dull daylight from the window not enough to penetrate so far into the room. Inside, in the back, was a bathtub with the obligatory opaque white shower curtain, and in front of the tub and curtain, a toilet.

Luckily, there was no mirror there.

Chuck clicked off the bathroom light and took off his coat and cap, throwing both onto the bed. He returned to his suitcase and pulled it to the desk, lifted it up on it, and opened it. He spent the next ten minutes unpacking, carefully refolding his sweaters, shirts, and jeans before putting them away. He was more reckless with his socks and underwear, tossing them quickly into the top drawer. Despite Ellie's attempt to habituate him, he refused to fold his briefs.

He kicked off his boots and sat down, sighing, relieved to be no longer in motion, to feel, sort of located again. He let himself fall back onto the bed, his stocking feet still on the floor, and he closed his eyes.

He had almost drifted off when there was a knock at his door. He sat up and shook his head. After another knock, he stood and walked to the door. He did not open it. "Hello?" he asked through the door.

"Hi! Are you Bartowski? The woman at the desk mentioned you to me. I'm Jill Roberts. I go to Scripps in Claremont. You go to Stanford, right? That's what the woman thinks. I'm here as a guide for Patriot Tours too. I wanted to meet you."

Chuck unlocked the door and opened it.

Jill Roberts was pretty. She had dark hair, long, and straight. She had on black earmuffs and a black pea coat. Her blouse beneath the coat was white. She had on blue jeans and black boots. Her bright brown eyes forced the dark rims of her glasses into the background, and her red lips parted in a smile, showing teeth as white as her blouse.

Chuck was rendered mute for a second. Jill's smile grew as the second elongated. "Chuck?" she asked finally.

"Sorry," Chuck offered with a blush, "come in."

Jill entered as Chuck stepped aside, pulling off ear muffs as she did. "Hey, your room's the same as mine, except your mirror's way bigger."

Chuck nodded and smiled. "I know, that thing seems less like a mirror and more like a gateway to another world."

Jill laughed. "Like mirrors in Mordant's Need," Jill noted, turning from the mirror to Chuck, and lifting an eyebrow as if she were testing him.

Chuck stared at her for a moment. "You read Stephen Donaldson? Fantasy novels?"

She shrugged, the gesture small and cute, winning. "Sure, the good ones, anyway. You too?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding too eagerly and then catching himself at it, stopping, "Yeah, I do. I love Donaldson and all sorts of fantasy novels. You say you go to Scripps?" Chuck gestured to the seating area.

She walked to the loveseat and sat down, putting her hat on the coffee table. Chuck sat down in the armchair.

"Yes, Scripps. I'm a senior with a bad case of early senioritis. My parents are on a Christmas cruise but I get seasick. Long story short, I ended up here, just to have someplace to be and something to do. I needed a break from school and this seemed good. I grew up in DC before my dad got a new job and moved us to Colorado. That's still where we live. Was the woman at the desk right?" Jill pointed at Chuck's sweatshirt, smiling, "Do you go to Stanford or are you just a sidewalk fan?"

"I go to Stanford. Engineering and Computer Science. What about you?"

"Psychology," Jill answered. "My parents wanted me to do hard science, say, physics, or biology, not soft science. My dad likes those terms — and he's always asking me how my soft science studies are going." She frowned, then smiled. "But I was more interested in people than atoms or cells. I wanted to study things that are actual size — if you know what I mean."

She grinned when he grinned at her comment, understanding. Their eyes met.

An awkward silence claimed the room for a beat and then she went on. "So, did your dad chase you into Engineering and Computer Science?"

Chuck smiled, trying to keep any of the sudden sadness he felt from showing. "No, he didn't chase me. I guess he led me. He worked in Computer Science and he got me interested when I was a boy. I never really thought about doing anything else."

"Bartowski and Sons, Incorporated?" She asked, joking, smiling her even, white smile.

Chuck shrugged. "Something like that. So, have you got the tour script memorized?"

Jill blushed a little. "To be honest, no. What about you?"

"Yes, I think I've got it down. Mostly, anyway."

"Do you think we could work on it together, maybe later? We could have dinner together first." She smiled again.

Chuck liked the sound of that. He had dated some at Stanford, but not since his sophomore year. Not that Jill had asked him out, but her smile had seemed to carry a more-than-business suggestion.

"That'd be great since I don't know anyone here, except that lady at the desk. And I mean, except you too. You know, now."

Jill chuckled at his stammering. "Let's order a pizza. One with black olives?" She shot Chuck a glance and he nodded his okay. "Some place near here must deliver."

She took her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, then took off her coat arm by arm, switching the phone from hand to hand as she thumbed through options on it.

"Here's a place," she said, handing him her phone.

He took it and his hand touched hers inadvertently. He started to apologize but that smile was back on her face, so he accepted the accident without apology, happily.

He made himself look at the phone, the pizza place whose website was displayed.

"Terrific," he said, not entirely sure if he was talking about the pizza place or about the plan.

Christmas break was looking up.