Notes: I'd like to thank BranRen7 on the Kacchako Discord for giving me the idea for this chapter, which has now spawned ideas for the next two at the least. Is this...a plot? Wow, I didn't know that existed for this fic.

Thanks to Agents Midoriya and Iida taking the last few shifts, Uraraka had been given a much needed break from Bakugou. It wasn't that she didn't like being around him. No, she'd come to realize that she enjoyed being around him too much. Especially after that last shift when she had accompanied him out of the safehouse. She was fully aware that sometimes there was too much of a good thing, but it was hard to wrap her mind around the fact that her "good thing" was also too much of a bad thing too.

Sheesh, she really needed to get out more, maybe try speed or online dating. Maybe she should just get laid, preferably by someone that was not Katsuki Bakugou.

She'd needed a break. She'd needed to get out of there. After that searing kiss to keep their covers from getting blown, the tension had grown so thick between them that even Midoriya had nearly choked upon walking into the safehouse to trade places with her. She hadn't been about to talk about what had happened and Bakugou would rather swallow his own tongue that admit to anything in front of Midoriya. He'd been a little confused, but he hadn't questioned either of them, not even when she all but bolted out of the place.

It just so happened to coincide with Iida and Midoriya taking over so that she could work on the other part of the protection. They were compiling a list of people that wanted to target Bakugou's life to keep tabs on them. Needless to say, it was a massive list, one that grew with every passing day. Did he have to have a finger in everything? From corrupt government officials around the entire world to the mafia to middle class citizens looking to cash in on life insurance policies, he had ties with all sorts of people that would want him dead before he could talk.

This was definitely a great reminder of why getting involved with him any more than she'd already fallen was not only a terrible idea but a life-threatening one. It was the wake up call that she'd needed. When she went back to the safe house tomorrow to take over Iida's shift, she'd be refreshed and ready to begin her job anew. His suggestive quips, heated gaze, and inability to remember her personal space would no longer affect her.

Rubbing her eyes, Uraraka leaned back in her wobbly chair and dropped what felt like the fiftieth file onto the steadily growing pile on her desk. She glanced at the clock and groaned when she spotted that she'd been at this for almost six hours and was still nowhere near done. There were files to comb through, plus his own statements, along with computer data. It was a mess, one that they'd spent days slogging through and compiling. It was nearing on midnight and she'd forgotten to eat dinner yet again.

A knock on her door and someone immediately following with, "Hey, Uraraka-" nearly made her fall out of her chair. "Oh, my bad!"

Uraraka snagged the edge of her desk to keep herself from tipping over. "My god, Shindo, can you warn a girl first before you barge into her office?"

Agent Shindo grinned from the threshold of her door. "I did knock." That he had, but that didn't make her feel any less embarrassed at having been caught off guard. Her cheeks were pink as she safely tipped her chair forward. "How are you doing so far?"

"How do you think?" Uraraka waved a hand at the pile on her desk and then slumped forward, leaning her arms on the stack and burying her face in them. "I'm swamped."

"Why don't you call it quits for the night?" Shindo asked. "You're the only one still on the clock in the office."

Uraraka pulled her head out of her arms. "Am I?" She peered out of the glass wall and noticed that everything else was dark except for a few lights. Even Aizawa's office was closed up for the night. Of course she was the only one still working. It was bloody midnight. "What are you still doing here then?"

Shindo held up his own files. "I've been cross-referencing the identities of the men that attacked you a while back to see who hired them." He shook his head. "I think Bakugou may have had a hand in the last election for Belgium's Prime Minister. It's absurd."

"I don't think he's too attached to politics," Uraraka mused.

"Oh?"

"He doesn't talk about them at all," Uraraka pointed out. "If anything about politics comes on the news or radio, he changes the channel."

Eyeing her curiously, Shindo said, "You seem to know him quite well."

Uraraka cleared her throat. "It's important to constantly update your profile. It can help in the most surprising of ways." She rolled her eyes. "Besides, I'm stuck with him often. He talks a lot about things he likes. Consider yourself lucky."

"Oh, I do." Shindo wasn't a part of the team watching over Bakugou. He was relegated to the field office where he was stuck doing a lot of the grunt work and research. In fact, he didn't even know where the safe house was located. They'd kept that in a tight knight circle and only on a need-to-know basis. There had been plenty of times when their positions had been and he had been the one protecting the asset, so he didn't complain. He looked around her office. "You forgot to eat dinner again, didn't you?"

"How can you tell?" Uraraka asked as she stood up and stretched her back.

"The lack of takeout boxes that usually permeate your office," Shindo pointed out.

Uraraka laughed. "Okay, you've got me there." She loved takeout, but hadn't had it in a while. It wasn't like she could order it while at the safehouse. No, she'd survived on either bringing food or, surprisingly, Bakugou's cooking. He was an excellent cook - said it made him good lover material since the best way to a person's heart was through their stomach. She wasn't sure if he was thinking about gutting a person or wooing them into bed. "I just got so wrapped up in the work and then I saw the clock…"

"There's always that twenty-four hour diner around the corner," Shindo offered.

"You don't have to accompany me out of pity," Uraraka told him as she grabbed her jacket and slipped into it. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

"I'm not questioning that," Shindo told her, his tone light and amused. "Can't I just want to enjoy your company?"

"You've got poor taste then," Uraraka said as she stored the files in a cabinet and locked them up. She should've organized them better instead of essentially dumping in the drawer, but she'd gone through them already and put them in the computer. "I'm terrible company."

Shindo smirked. "Bakugou finds you charming enough."

Her heart skipped a beat and her eyes narrowed as she crossed the room to the door. With one hand, she turned off the light of her office and, with the other, she poked him in the side, which made him jerk away and laugh. "That's not funny."

"Midoriya mentioned how enamored he seems to be with you," Shindo teased. She was going to have to wallop Midoriya upside the head the next time she saw him. He didn't mean any harm by it, but spreading talk like that about the office was going to make the guys think that she could be of use in other ways during operations. She was not the femme fatale kind, no matter what Bakugou thought of her. "It's apparently made him much more cooperative."

"Ha ha," Uraraka deadpanned as they walked down the darkened hallway for the door. "Just for that comment, you have to buy my food."

Shindo winked. "I was planning on it."

He was lucky that she liked working with him. He was friendly and good-natured, but he was a good agent too. Sometimes he came off as too light and goofy, but underneath that smile was a sharpshooter and an intensity that came with the job. He'd been a Marshal before joining the FBI, which was part of why he was so good at this job now. They'd been butting heads with the Marshals since Bakugou had basically turned himself into them. Normally they would handle a case like this, but he'd refused to work with anyone but the FBI. He didn't like Marshals.

Correction: he wasn't fond of law enforcement period, but he'd been adamantly against them. He thought witsec was a joke. Of course he should know that since he allegedly had a few witsec hits under his belt. Again, see, a great reason why he was bad news and she shouldn't be attracted to him. Incredible kiss, intelligence, and undeniable power aside, he had killed a lot of people. Sleeping with a killer was never a good idea.

"You're putting yourself on the line for this case, aren't you?" Shindo said as they stepped out of the building. There was a chill in the air that made her pull on her jacket tighter.

"Aren't we all?" Uraraka asked. "This is a massive case. It spans the globe."

"Of course, this has the chance of toppling governments," Shindo agreed passively. He cast her a sideways look, the glow of the streetlamps ahead of them casting a strange shadow on his face. "But I mean… You were there when that first attack happened. You've gotten involved in this much more than anyone else. Not to mention the level of trust Bakugou has in you…"

Uraraka scoffed and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "He doesn't trust me."

He just wants to sleep with me, she thought. You don't have to trust someone to want that.

"You've made much more headway with him than Midoriya or Iida," Shindo told her without any judgement in his voice. She glanced at him. He didn't look like he was mocking her for doing so simply because she was a woman. No, he knew that she was damn good at her job. This was just a special case. "Shinsou and I are on the outside, but even we know that if we had to trust one person with Bakugou, it would be you. He'll listen to you."

"He doesn't listen to anyone," Uraraka laughed.

"Are you forgetting that the safehouse is bugged?" Shindo asked with a slightly teasing smile. No she had not. It humiliated her on a constant basis, seeing as how Bakugou was absolutely shameless about what he said to her and liked to provoke her into saying things that made her blush later. Shinsou listened to those recordings. Thank everything he'd never said anything to her about what Bakugou said to her, but she'd caught him raising his eyebrows and shaking his head a few times.

The idea that Shindo knew as well…

Uraraka groaned. "How much have you heard?"

"Enough to know that you're one step away from living a steamy romance novel," Shindo joked.

That just made her hide her face in her hands and groan all over again as he laughed. Honestly, she could've punched him in this moment if it wasn't for the fact that she was really hungry and wanted him to buy her food. Damn her stomach for always taking precedence to her pride. It was how she'd survived off shitty takeout for years despite any of her stakeout partners gawking at her as if they'd never seen a woman consume so much lo mein in their lives.

"Can we burn those tapes?" Uraraka asked, her voice muffled in her hands.

"I'm afraid they're evidence now," Shindo answered.

Evidence of her humiliation. She had known that before asking the question - and she was very adamantly against destroying evidence - but it had to be said. Nothing of what they'd talked about would be interest to the court, but it gave insight to Bakugou's profile. Was he not taking this as seriously as he should? Was he truly this flippant? She didn't think so. With all the kill notches on his bedpost, Bakugou was not a careless person. He was much smarter than he looked and used that to his advantage. He was the type of person that went all in the moment that he'd been dealt a good hand.

Despite his better judgement, his interest in her seemed genuine and not a distraction at all.

She didn't like it. She didn't want it.

"He likes you," Shindo said, sounding oddly distant.

Uraraka blushed. "You make it sound like a middle school crush."

A grin stretched across his face. "I can be lewder, if you like."

"Ugh, no, I'm good." Uraraka huddled in on herself. The wind was just strong enough to be annoying, but they'd be at the diner soon. "You can always take my place, if you want."

"Hm, no thanks, I'd prefer to stay behind the scenes for this," Shindo replied.

"Oh, pish posh, you love the spotlight," Uraraka countered. She glanced at him and tilted her head. "You requested your position, didn't you? This is a high profile case. I would've expected you to want to be front and center. Iida's mentioned that this is the kind of case that could propel are careers."

Shindo gave her a smile. "I read Bakugou's profile. We'd be more toxic than him and Midoriya. You are by far the most compatible with him."

"Compatible," Uraraka replied dryly, "is fancy talk for saying that I have the right equipment."

Instead of knowing when to shut up, Shindo bumped into her with his hip. "You certainly do."

"Listen here, buddy," Uraraka replied in a threatening tone. "I've basically been shacking up with who could possibly be considered the world's greatest hitman since the Ice Man. It wouldn't be that difficult for me to find out the best way to get rid of a body."

"You know it's that kind of talk that gets under a man's skin, right?"

Uraraka huffed and stormed ahead of him. "I really will kill the lot of you! Especially Midoriya for opening his big mouth and Shinsou for letting you hear those tapes."

It was embarrassing enough knowing that the others knew the way Bakugou spoke to her, but she did not like the idea that they knew how much he affected her as well. Shindo was getting under her skin at this point. She wasn't necessarily upset about it. The thing was, well, none of them had ever really seen her as a woman before. She'd been an agent and she'd liked it that way. It meant that they didn't question her nearly as much as she'd seen other female agents get grilled across the board.

"I understand what Bakugou sees in you though," Shindo said a few steps behind her. "You've always been special, Uraraka, always had a way with assets. It's an incredible skill."

"It's just a part of the job," Uraraka insisted, eyes locked on the glowing diner ahead of them. She could smell the cheap coffee already that would keep her awake long enough to eat and then get home. It was better than the stuff that they had at the office, which was a crime, truly, when Aizawa ran off of the stuff.

"No, it isn't." Shindo sighed. "Gods, I really wish it hadn't been you."

Uraraka halted and furrowed her brow. Yeah, she was exhausted and starving and her mind felt a little scrambled, but that comment didn't make any sense. Maybe she'd heard him wrong. It was late, after all. Hadn't been her what? Had he actually wanted to be on the protective detail?

Turning around to face him, Uraraka started to ask, "What are-?" but was cut off when she felt a needle pierce her neck. She gasped as something cold flooded her veins and then felt a hand on the back of her neck. Instinctively, she went to pull the needle out, but then her wrist was grabbed and twisted behind her back. She tried to fight back, but found it difficult as whatever she'd been injected with began to take over her body. Panic began to swarm her mind, but there was little she could do.

"This wouldn't have been nearly as bad if it had been Midoriya or Iida," Shindo continued as she all but fell into his arms. His body was warm and solid, but she didn't feel comforted in the slightest. When she grit her teeth and tried to pull away from him, the grip on her neck tightened and he slipped an arm around her. "But you really did a number on Bakugou. I can't say that I'm surprised that you caught his interest, but not even I anticipated the extent."

Swallowing and trying to steady her breathing, Uraraka managed to say, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, Uraraka, I haven't even seen you two interact and I heard the effect you have on him," Shindo told her, his voice low as he spoke into her ear. He held her against like as if in a lover's embrace, which her mind violently revolted against, and dragged her back into an alley. No, no, this wasn't happening. The last time someone had been this close to her it had been Bakugou in that other alley. She'd felt so alive despite the fear and tension then. She'd felt elated. Not like this, not scared and angry and desperate to move. "I know what you're thinking: you're just a conquest; you're something for him to win. Well, you're wrong. You're more than that. You always have been. It just took a hit man to see that in you for others to notice."

Uraraka dug her nails into his arm weakly. "Is this...how you ask...a girl out?"

"I thought about doing that, you know," Shindo said, "before this case."

"Might be...too late for that," Uraraka said through gritted teeth.

"Ambushing and drugging a girl tends to do that," Shindo replied with a quiet, mirthless laugh. "If it's any consolation, I tried to find another way, but the location of that safehouse is kept tightly under wraps. I knew no one would give it up. So if I can't get to him…"

"It won't work," Uraraka swore. "He won't… He won't leave."

Shindo leaned his head against hers. She could feel his smile against her hair even as darkness swirled in her vision. "You see, that's where you're wrong. I saw the pictures of you two on your little outing before you gave your tail the slip." So they had been followed. She couldn't feel any sort of triumph or guilt over that when she was barely holding onto consciousness. The only reason she was still on her feet was because he was holding her up. He propped her against the cold brick of a building, but her legs felt like jello and she crumpled, dropping into his arms again. "He stayed because it suited him, but he'll leave for you."

Uraraka shook her head. "I'm just a Suit. He doesn't give a shit."

"Oh, Ochako," Shindo sighed. "Is that what you really think about yourself?"

It didn't matter what she thought. Nothing mattered. She knew that she was going to pass out and be at Shindo's mercy. Whatever his plan for her was, she knew that it wasn't good. If he was working for the other side, her only option was to find out which side that was. Seeing as how she'd just been sifting through all the people that might find a weak link in the FBI to get a hold of him, it was a fucking lot.

"Why?" Uraraka demanded as she clung to him.

Shindo picked her back up, almost carrying her entirely now. "It's not that difficult to figure out. Money talks and we get paid shit to deal with a lot of shit. That's it. Surely you can understand that with the way you grew up."

"I wouldn't sell out my friends for money," Uraraka snarled as her vision blurred and Shindo's face grew increasingly foggy.

"Yeah, but you'd sleep with a man who has at least a hundred kills under his belt," Shindo replied, his voice colder than she expected. He was angry. "So really who has the shit morals between us?"

Uraraka didn't have the chance to answer him as the drug claimed her and she fell unconscious, her last thought on Bakugou, who she screamed to not follow her Shindo could've dropped her on the ground and she wouldn't have known until she woke up in pain, but he didn't. Instead, despite her being dead weight, he easily lifted her into his arms like she weighed nothing. She could be so imposing sometimes that it was a little surprising to see just how small she was when her eyes were closed and she was limp in his grip. She was as light as his burdens.

Still, he really did wish it had been anyone but her. If only she hadn't done more that catch Bakugou's attention in a way that no one could miss.