January 10th is Sarah Shahi's birthday (Shaw). January 21st is Ken Leung's (Leon). I really should've thought to upload this earlier this month, but oh well.

Being a babysitter was not what Shaw had signed up for, but Harold cajoled her into doing it anyway, because he had to go teach class, and Reese had to go chase bad guys, and apparently their charge couldn't be trusted to have "the normal level of self-preservation" and they no longer had a library in which to stash him.

Fine. It beat spraying perfume all day.

Her mood did not improve when Harold handed over a rather nervous-looking twerp, and Shaw recognized him as the guy who'd stabbed her with a syringe in the back of an ambulance.

So, okay, she'd been strangling him at the time, all her survival instincts kicking in, and it was at least a little impressive that he'd managed to dose her while choking to death. And, fine, he'd saved her life, when by all rights she should've died on that street corner.

Didn't mean she had to be grateful right now.

The twerp was mouthy, and Shaw countered by refusing to speak a single word… until they had to order food.

Turned out they actually liked a similar level of spicy, although Leon was a bit less picky about the details.

But she'd made the mistake of going to a place with alcohol, and very nearly didn't catch Leon getting his hands on a bottle of vodka. Luckily, she was able to intervene; if this were him at normal, she didn't want to learn what he was like once his inhibitions got impaired. She paid for the food to go, and bullied him on out of there before he could do anything stupider.

With at least a few hours left before John could be expected to give the all-clear, Shaw picked up Bear from Fusco. It turned out that not only was Leon great friends with the dog, but they'd known each other longer than she'd known Bear, and Shaw had to do her best to restrain the impulse to bark some attack command, just to pay Leon back for being this annoying at everything.

She wanted to break something. More than normal.

Instead, she struggled to remember that she was working for a higher standard now. Annoying or not, Leon was her charge today; she was going to see to his safety, for as long as was necessary, and then she was going to see him back to a place of safety and familiarity, and hope that they never crossed paths again.

So, already sick of wandering the city kinda aimlessly (mostly just keeping Leon away from his normal stomping grounds), she took him to a safe house.

A few hours later, Shaw was feeling a little better. She'd spent half an hour kicking his ass at Mortal Kombat, and then come back from a foray in the kitchen to find Leon passed out on the couch, one arm dangling over the arm rest as he lightly snored. When she checked the time, she found that it was nearly four a.m., and John still hadn't called the all-clear.

A quick check revealed that that wasn't a fluke: The rest of the team was still working on not only the threat against Leon, but also some additional threats that had cropped up alongside it. When Shaw got ready to join them, Harold countermanded her in the strongest terms.

She bristled.

But, as got explained to her a little too thoroughly over the next couple of minutes, their aliases worked only so long as Samaritan couldn't pick up on patterns that connected them, and having Shaw join in on any of their current work would be putting this all at risk. Besides, Harold was beginning to wonder if there wasn't something a little deeper to Leon's excursion this time… something that he'd triggered that was more than the average level of danger even for a guy this prone to attracting it.

Looking down at Leon and the pile of drool accumulating under his chin, Shaw sighed. She could put up with him for another day.

And she probably wouldn't even break his arm or anything.

By the way, Enrico Colantoni (Elias) was born in February—right on Valentine's Day. (February also hosts the birthdays for Jessica Arndt, Claire Mahoney, and the fake Jordan Hester who drugged Finch.) In case you'd like a prompt for February, there you go.