A.N.: My entry for the Seeking Symmetry contest at the Poirot Cafe Forums. Not the most original thing I've ever come up with. Also, this was not intended to be as slashy as it ended up. Whoops.

There were many ways Edogawa Conan – no, Kudo Shinichi again, he needed to get that straight before someone else caught on, because Sonoko figuring it out had been bad enough – many ways Kudo Shinichi did not like to be woken up.

By snoring, for one. He was glad to no longer be sharing a room with Mouri; the man had practically been a sawmill when he'd been drinking. Sun in his eyes, that was another. He'd forgotten that his room at the Kudo manor had east facing windows; a rather unpleasant surprise the first time he'd tried to sleep in. Or with a headache; caffeine withdrawal was horrid now that he was an age where he could get enough to get addicted without having to sneak it behind Ran's back.

But captive was probably the worst way to wake up. That he'd found, anyway.

So, of course.

"Hey."

Shinichi forced one bleary eye open – huh, still dark. He closed it again. He was not getting up early.

"Hey."

Where was his blanket? He flopped his hand around him and didn't find it. He didn't find his wall or nightstand either. He must've moved in his sleep.

"Hey!"

"Five more minutes," he groaned.

"So you are alive over there," said the voice, sounding somewhat relieved. "I was beginning to worry."

Shinichi rolled over – off of the futon. And onto a cold, clean hardwood floor that was most definitely not his own.

And it all hit him at once – missing blanket, missing wall, strangely dark, mysterious voice – and he shot awake.

"What the – where am I?" He looked around, one hand habitually scrambling for the glasses he didn't need anymore. The room was dark, no windows, no visible lights – the only source of light was that coming in around the edges of a door frame across the room. He couldn't tell how big the room was – maybe later, when his eyes adjusted – and all he could feel was the cool hardwood beneath his bare feet. But even in the low light, he could see the thin shadows of something criss-crossing the air, metal glinting in what little light it could catch.

He was a prisoner.

"Your guess is as good as mine," the voice drawled. "Good to see you awake, though."

"Who -" He turned to see a figure standing across the room in the low light. Male silhouette to match the voice, about his height. Really messy bedhead. "Who are you?"

"Kuroba Kaito. You?"

"Kudo Shinichi." He swallowed hard. "Any idea how we got here?"

"Woke up here." The man strolled over to the corner and kicked a marginally lighter spot on the floor – a futon, Shinichi realized from the dull thump it made. "My guess? We were drugged. Last thing I remember, I was at the park. I don't have a concussion, as far as I can tell – so it must've been drugs."

Shinichi thought back. "I was... I was on my way home from school." Alone, of course, because he had enough make up work to last him a year. (It would've been two years, but luckily he'd solved the murder of his teacher's husband's cousin's best friend since getting back, so she had mercy.) "I don't feel an injection site."

"Aerosol. Chloroform, I think; you reeked like rotten fruit when he first dumped you in here. Must've been a pretty large dose."

Ergh. He hated chloroform. With any luck he'd slept enough of it off that his blood pressure had returned to normal; he wasn't looking forward to fainting again if he tried to stand. "You saw our captor?"

"As much as I could, in this light. I was pretending to still be asleep." Kuroba shrugged, the movement only visible in silhouette. "Big guy. Probably benches dumpsters in his spare time."

"Just him?"

"Only one while I've been awake," Kuroba answered with another shrug. "I've been listening, though. There were two sets of footsteps downstairs, though I haven't heard one for a while. The other person sounded lighter than Big-Guy-san, but I'm not exactly a detective."

"That's okay," Shinichi answered, unsteadily getting to his feet. "I am."

"Oh – you're that Kudo Shinichi? The one that brought down that secret organization thing?"

"Yeah." (And he was going to kill the reporter that found that out. He'd brought most of it down, and he didn't need the rest knowing his name. So of course half of Tokyo knew it.) "You noticed anything about this place?"

"Mm. So far? We're in separate cells. Just chicken wire, but whoever put them together knew what they were doing – the links are screwed into the floor and ceiling. I can't pull them out with my bare hands. It goes all the way up, no gaps. Weak point might be the door. I was checking the hinges when you woke up – doesn't look like there's anything I can do with them without making enough noise to get Big-Guy-san back up here. The lock would be pickable, if I had a tool. Which I don't." He paused. "I was... pretty thoroughly searched."

Shinichi fumbled through a quick inventory of his own. No belt, no watch, no shoes, no glasses – of course no glasses, he needed to stop thinking that. No phone; both the Conan phone and the Shinichi phone had been taken. His pockets had been turned out, as had the cuffs of his shirt, strangely enough. Nothing beyond that, that he could tell – he was still in his school uniform, minus jacket and tie, and there was none of the aching that a cavity search would have left behind.

"...I don't think I have anything either," he admitted. "Thoroughly?"

"These are not my clothes."

Shinichi paused. "These are mine. Why'd they take your clothes, then?"

"Ah... Hana-chan probably popped out and scared them."

"Hana-chan?"

"One of my doves."

"...You have doves."

"I'm a magician."

That explained why he classified the lock as pickable, then. "Escape artist?"

"Mmm. Not too fond of escape tricks, actually. But I can, if I have to."

"So if I get you a wire of some kind, can you pick that lock?"

"Can and will. Is there something over on your side?"

"Not that I've found." He started moving around the edge of the chain link on his hands and knees. "I had some stuff that would help, but we'd have to convince our captors to give it back." Wire in his shoes and the dart from the watch; together they'd be a pretty effective makeshift lockpick.

"If you can convince him to give you anything back, I have a set of actual lockpicks in my shoe."

"...Good to know."

Shinichi's investigation of the floor at the edge of the cell was interrupted by a sound like an elephant climbing a staircase. The door flew open, and both he and Kuroba winced at the brightness. Late afternoon sun, west facing window, but his eyes were too blown out to see anything other than the enormous silhouette of their kidnapper in the doorway.

Kuroba hadn't been kidding when he said this guy benched dumpsters. His arms were thicker than Shinichi's head, trapezius so huge that he seemed to have no neck. Hair cropped short, and a sleeveless tank top that showed off everything.

And he looked somewhat upset.

"Alright, you two," he growled. "I know one of you knows why you're here."

Shinichi glanced over to Kuroba, who shrugged again. "Um."

"Don't give me that! You're a couple of dirty cheaters, both of you."

"And what gives you that idea?" Kuroba asked.

"I know," the man growled, "that one of you's been out with my girl. I'm not stupid, I found out!"

Shinichi pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the rush of black in his head from the blood pressure drop. His eyes were finally starting to adjust, and he was picking up more of the details of the man's appearance – no tattoos, no identifying features other than his size. Big, calloused hands, with rough skin along the palm that spoke of heavy work – construction? Maybe. There was a tan line on his head where a hard hat would go, and another along his wrists suggesting gloves. But that didn't help anything now. "One of us?"

"Yeah," the man growled. "Either you or the weirdo with scarves in his underwear. I have pictures."

"...If you have pictures," Shinichi asked slowly, "Then why don't you know which one?"

"Don't get smart, cheater," the man snarled. "Figures she'd pick a guy with a freaking twin!"

"...Twin?" Shinichi and Kuroba said in unison. Then Shinichi turned to look at the other captive.

And met a pair of blue eyes in his own face.

Both of them jerked back. Shinichi lost his balance and nearly fell, grabbing a handful of chicken wire to keep himself standing. Kuroba recovered a bit faster, and surged forwards.

"Hello!" he said, with a huge grin entirely inappropriate for the situation. "You look like me!"

"You look like me!" Shinichi retorted. "Is that some kind of mask?"

"Nope!" Kuroba's grin was just getting wider. "I always wanted a twin! Hey, there's this cool trick that requires a double that I've really been wanting to pull – would you mind..."

"Quiet, both of you!" Their captor didn't look pleased at being ignored. "I have a bone to pick with at least one of you. Since you're both cheaters."

Shinichi tore his eyes away from the grinning mirror-image. "Ah... Sorry, but what makes you think I'm a cheater? I mean, other than this apparent photograph."

"Your phone," the man spit. "Phones, plural." He glared at Shinichi. "Two identical phones. I'm not stupid. I know that means you have something to hide."

Oh. Well, yes, he had had something to hide – but now the Conan phone was just handy to keep track of all the numbers he had no reason to know yet as Shinichi. Like Nakamori-keibu. Or Akai. Or the Kaitou Kid.

Why the Kaitou Kid even had a phone number, he would never know. Not that it hadn't come in handy.

"And don't you start denying it either," the man continued, turning his glare to Kuroba. "Because I pulled two phones off of you too."

"Those are for a trick," Kuroba said innocently. "I could show you, if you give them back."

"Fat chance. You're not getting anything. I'm not searching you twice, weirdo."

"You didn't have to search me once," Kuroba remarked. "What do you really think I can do with scarves?"

"I'm not stupid. I don't want to know what you could do with the scarves." The man crossed his arms. "But neither of you are going anywhere until I figure out which one of you she's seeing."

Shinichi sighed. "Look, I hardly have time for my girlfriend. I'm not after yours."

"I don't have time for any girlfriends," offered Kuroba. "But if I did have time for one, I probably wouldn't pick yours." He paused. "Unless Aoko is your girlfriend, which I don't think she is."

The man snorted. "Like I believe that. It's one of you. And if you won't tell me, I'm gonna figure it out."

"Maybe one of us would recognize her if you had a photo of her?" Shinichi said. "Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding and she's not cheating on you at all."

"You think I'm stupid?" the man asked.

"No," Kuroba interrupted. "This whole kidnapping thing is pretty clever. But I don't see how you expect us to know if we've been cheating with your girlfriend if we don't know who your girlfriend is."

The man just stared at him for a moment. "Akane."

"Don't know any Akane's," Kuroba remarked, looking to Shinichi. "You?"

"Not that I can think of? Unless it was on a case."

"A... case," the man repeated.

"He's a detective." Kuroba explained flatly. "Kudo Shinichi, detective of the east? The Heisei Holmes? Nearly caught the Kaitou Kid once?"

Nearly caught the Kaitou Kid way more than once, but not like he could own up to that. He nodded, though, and watched the man pale a bit.

"You're a detective," the man repeated. "You know cops."

"Tons of cops," Shinichi confirmed. "Mostly section one, though I do have a few friends in sections two and three."

There was a pause.

"I take it back," Kuroba remarked. "When I said this kidnapping thing was pretty clever. Maybe not so much."

"Shut up," the man snarled. "I don't care who you are or who you know. You're cheaters and I'm going to figure it out." He stepped back to the doorway. "No funny business, you two. I'll be back."

He headed out, thumping down the stairs. Shinichi watched him go, then examined the window in the hall for a moment. He couldn't spot any easily recognizable landmarks; most of the view was taken up by the white-walled house next door. Two stories tall, plus an attic – so this building was probably the same, then. Still, though, without more information he could hardly determine which district they were in...

"So, um, about that trick." Kuroba was halfway to grinning again. "It's pretty simple, actually – supposed to be a teleportation trick. I can do a pretty impressive teleport trick by myself, but with your help, I could..."

"Not really a good time," Shinichi interrupted.

"...Guess not, no." Kuroba shrugged again. "Trying to figure out where we are?"

"Yeah." He paused, thinking. "I don't even see shadows of skyscrapers."

Kuroba leaned against the chicken wire, making it creak as he tried to get a better look out the doorway. "That... might be the Bell Tree hotel? Off to the left, behind that tree?"

"No," Shinichi said. "The roof is wrong."

"Huh. Yeah. Okay." He squinted. "Looks right from this angle."

Shinichi tilted his head. "...Maybe?"

Kuroba was silent for a moment. "So. I know I'm not the one he's looking for, but somehow I doubt you are either."

"I'd like to see this picture he supposedly has," Shinichi grumbled. "What are the odds of a third person running around Tokyo with this face?"

"Well, if it's not you, and it's not me... Pretty good, I'd say." He paused. "Hey, if we find the third one, that would make for a really impressive teleportation trick!"

"Can you please drop it?"

Whatever Kuroba might have said next was cut off as their captor thumped up the stairs again. He loomed in the doorway, blocking their view of the window.

"Welcome back!" Kuroba said cheerfully.

"Shut up," he growled. "You. Detective."

"Yes?" Shinichi said.

"This is your phone, right?" He held up the Conan phone, complete with soccer ball charm. "Unlock it."

"Um, okay." He punched in the code and handed the phone back. "There's nothing on there."

"I'll decide that," the man declared. He flicked through the entries in the phone book, narrowing his eyes. "You really do know a lot of cops."

"I told you," Shinichi said, exasperated.

"But that doesn't mean you're not a cheater." He narrowed his eyes. "There. That one. That your girlfriend?"

"What one?"

"Jodie."

"Er, no," he said. "Jodie-sensei is FBI."

The man stared at him for a moment.

"I'm not kidding."

"I don't believe you," the man grumbled, but didn't dial the number. Thank goodness. Jodie had never gotten the Conan-is-Shinichi memo, and he did not need her showing up to rescue a first grader and finding a highschooler. "This one."

"Haibara Ai? No, she's a first grader that lives with my next door neighbor."

"Dang." The man grumbled. "Who is your girlfriend, then?"

"Er." Oh, this was embarassing. "That one."

"...Neechan."

"It's a long story, really, don't ask."

In the other cell, Kuroba was trying very hard not to laugh.

"What's her name?"

"Mouri Ran."

"Mouri?" Kuroba asked pointedly. "Like Mouri Kogoro, the famous sleeping detective?"

"...Yes."

"Oh you're kidding," their kidnapper said. "Is he in here too?"

"Uh, yeah. He's under Mouri-san." Because thank goodness he'd remembered to change that when he got the antidote. Explaining Kogoro-no-ojisan would've had Kuroba laughing outright.

"Hm." Their captor narrowed his eyes, and scrolled through the list again. "What about these weird names, then? These the girls you're seeing on the side?"

"What? No!"

"This one, then. Zero."

"Oh. Uh, secret police."

"Kir."

"CIA."

"Vermouth."

"A psychopath who continues to evade police capture."

They all let that one sink in.

"You're kidding," said Kuroba.

"I'm not kidding," he said quickly, then turned back to their captor. "And if you call that number she'll probably burn your house down." The man just glared at him, as if expecting him to crack under the force of the expression. "I'm not lying! What the heck are you even looking for?"

"I'm going to find your secret girlfriends," he said slowly. "I'm not stupid; I know you got 'em. Then I'm gonna make you call 'em. And then you're gonna say bye before I kill you."

"I thought this was about your girlfriend," remarked Kuroba.

"It is!" the man said. "So one of you is bound to have her number!"

"Look, neither one of us is cheating," Shinichi said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Or at least, I'm not. I know the whole phone thing looks suspicious, and I can't explain it, because you'd never believe me. But I personally know more cops than you've ever seen in your life. The charges for kidnapping aren't great, but they beat the heck out of murder charges. If you kill us, you ruin your life, and you don't even get the guy you wanted."

"I get two cheaters," the guy said, shrugging. "Sides, I got an alibi. My girl thinks I'm out with some of my buddies, and they'll vouch for me."

Shinichi fought the urge to beat his head against the back wall.

"Why are you so preoccupied with that phone, anyway?" asked Kuroba.

"Other one wasn't locked. No cheater's that dumb."

"And why aren't you after his?" Shinichi asked.

"Because I can't even read his." The man pulled another phone out of his pocket, and turned the screen on. The characters were in romanji, with several accents Shinichi didn't normally see. "It's in like, English or something."

"French, actually."

"Yeah, that helps." The man stuffed Kuroba's phone back into his pocket. "So he's next. But I'm starting with you."

"Fine. Look for the number." Shinichi sighed. "But just so you know, call one wrong name and there's a good chance you're dialing a police officer."

"Fine. Whatever." He scrolled through one last time. "Alright. Last of the weird names then, and I'll bother him." He pointed to one about halfway down the list. "Magician?"

...Oh.

That was the Kaitou Kid.

That could be their way out of here. He'd be smart enough to figure out what happened, and Shinichi had no doubt he could find them. He could get Nakamori-keibu, at the very least, and the task force had some big enough officers to take this guy down. Or he could just pick the lock himself and be gone before this guy even knew what happened.

But he'd hesitated while thinking just there. Their captor was watching his face, and had noticed the pause. Not good.

"That one's it, isn't it," he growled. "That one's your secret girlfriend."

...And if it got him out of here? To heck with dignity.

"Yep. You got me. Secret lover, right there. Magician, because, y'know, magic hands."

"Thought so," the man said. "Knew you had to have at least one."

"Hey, like you've been saying, you're not stupid." Shinichi tried not to grin. This guy'd only fall for it if he could convince him he was right. "I mean, two phones? Totally suspicious."

"You meet with her a lot then, yeah? Your real girlfriend know about her?"

"No clue," Shinichi answered. And that was totally true. Which was why it wasn't on the Shinichi phone. "I've been living a double life for almost a year now."

"I knew it." The man grinned wickedly. "Alright. We'll call her, then." He paused. "But if this is a cop..."

"You kill me. Yeah. Got it."

"Um, wait," Kuroba said from the other cell. If Shinichi'd been paying more attention, he might've noticed that some of the cheerful bravado had vanished. "I thought you said it wasn't the girlfriend, so really, what's the point of..."

The man hit dial.

There was a pause as the network picked up, then another as it dialed. Everyone's eyes were glued to the phone.

Then the phone in the pocket started ringing.

It was a Two-Mix song, of all things, bright and cheerful and fast, sounding more appropriate for a middle school girl than for the huge man in front of them. He whipped out Kuroba's phone again, and Shinichi got a look at the name on the screen.

The letters were Romanji, but he could still read them.

Tantei-kun.

"Um," he said. He looked to Kuroba. "What?"

Kuroba had his hands over his face.

"It... that's... what?" His brain finally caught up to his mouth, and processed what had just happened. "You're... Seriously? Seriously? You?"

Kuroba wasn't paying any attention. His hands were still firmly stuck over his eyes, as if by not looking he could pretend this wasn't happening. "You're kidding," he said, almost hysterically. "You are kidding. This can't be happening." His voice rose in both volume and pitch. "This is what gets me?"

Shinichi stared for a moment longer. Then, he turned on his heel, strode to the back of his cell, and started hitting his head against the wall.

Brain damage couldn't make this make any less sense. So why not?

"Wait. Wait. What just happened?" asked their captor, drawing them both out of it. He was still staring at Kuroba's phone, which had stopped ringing. It looked like it had gone to voice mail. "You said that was your girlfriend, but then his phone... rang..." The man trailed off for a moment. "Uh..."

"Y'know?" Kuroba said, managing to recover enough to peer out from behind one hand. "He never did say secret girlfriend."

"He said... You two are... Seriously?" A pause. "You're like, twins!"

"We're not actually related," Kuroba said, dropping his hands and grinning. "I've checked."

"So... you're..." The man's voice faltered. "You've been..."

"What?" Kuroba asked innocently. "Like you've never wanted to make out with yourself."

The only way Shinichi could think to respond was to hit his head against the wall again.

Several times. Hard.

"But... you acted like you'd never met before!"

"Oh, of course we'd met," Kuroba reasoned. "But we'd never been introduced, really. See, there was this party, thrown by a friend of his... Ah, who was it, Suzuki-san?"

...That was close enough to true. "Yep," he croaked.

"And we met during one of the party games – see, the lights were down low..." Because Kaitou Kid had cut the power. "And we saw each other there, and he looked at me with such love in his eyes..." Because Kid had been dressed as Ran. "And then we snuck off to the electrical closet together..." To unmask the Kid, and for no other reason. "And then, well, I don't want to go into too much detail, but I did misplace my underwear. I think he took it home." Ran's stolen underwear. Just a part of Kid's disguise. Which Shinichi had somehow managed to avoid thinking about until now.

Shinichi hit his head against the wall again.

Their captor, behind him, made a strangled sort of noise. "So... you're..." He managed to recover a bit. "You two... at a party? Without knowing each other's names?"

"Yep!" answered Kuroba – Kid – cheerfully. "So, thanks for formally introducing us! I'm hoping he'll make an honest woman out of me."

"But you're... you... I..." The man fell silent. Shinichi could only imagine Kuroba's unnerving Kid grin that was keeping him that way. For a moment, the only sound was the thin creak of floorboards downstairs.

…Wait.
He listened for a moment before speaking. "...Captor-san?" he asked. "You mentioned earlier that your girlfriend thinks you're out."

"Uh." The man paused for a moment. "Yeah?"

"When is she supposed to be back?"

"...Later tonight."

"Right." Shinichi turned around to face the man, and gestured to the floor. "There are two sets of footsteps downstairs."

The man stared. "Two sets of... Hey!" He barreled out the door and down the stairs, bellowing something unintelligible. Kuroba's phone clattered to the ground in his wake, sliding over next to the door of Shinichi's cell.

Shinichi grabbed at the phone, barely able to get it through the gaps in the wire. Downstairs, there was a woman's scream, then a man's scream, then a rush of footsteps towards the door. The door slammed, then a car door slammed, then tires squealed against pavement. A moment later, another set of tires followed, with the roar of an engine accelerating.

There was a brief moment of silence.

"Hey," Kuroba said. "Phone."

Shinichi silently pushed it through the fence. Kuroba popped the case off, and pulled a wire out of the back.

"You can never have too many lockpicks," he remarked, and set to work. He pushed the phone back towards Shinichi. "Call whoever you have to call. But give me a... I dunno, a couple hours? Please?"

Shinichi pulled the phone through again. "To do what?"

"Say some goodbyes. Get a plane ticket. Change my name and flee." Kuroba bit his lip. "That kind of thing."

"I'm not gonna – that guy downstairs is probably going to murder someone," Shinichi said. "I'm setting the cops on him. Kidnapping at least." He sighed, staring at a half-entered number on the phone. "Look. I... I'm not gonna call the cops on you. I can't."

"...You can't?"

"Can't. What would I tell them? That I had Kaitou Kid's cell phone number? For months? And I didn't tell anyone? Even forgetting that it was on Conan Edogawa's phone." He shrugged. "At the point where I have to explain to a jury that I got your phone number as a first grader after I made you jump out of an exploding train to save a shrunken scientist from a man in a tear-away mask of a dead FBI agent... I'm gonna end up in a mental hospital, and you're gonna walk."

"...And it really says something about your life that that's all true," Kuroba remarked. The lock on his cell popped off, and he moved around to the door of Shinichi's to start on the next. "I see your point, though. Not even I could convince someone of that."

"Besides," Shinichi said, scrolling through Kuroba's contact list (why was Nakamori-keibu in here?), "this just isn't... not how it's supposed to go, you know? I'm not supposed to find you out because some jerk boyfriend dialed a wrong phone number. I'm supposed to outsmart you! If I catch you – when I catch you – it'll be because I finally got the better of you." He looked up and met Kuroba's eye. "But if you ever do anything worse than what you do – if you start hurting people – don't think I won't find some evidence that I can use."

"...Alright," Kuroba said finally. "But if you change your mind... Then can I have a head start?"

"Yeah. Sure. Okay." Shinichi sighed. "Just get the lock open. I'll call the police."

By the time the call connected, the lock was open, and by the time Shinichi got through to Megure-keibu they'd made it downstairs into what turned out to be a fairly nice house. No corpses, not even any blood. Kuroba recovered his dove from where she'd been trapped underneath a soup bowl.

And the photograph the guy had made so much of didn't even look that much like them.

He recounted a sanitized version of what happened to Megure-keibu (Kuroba distracted their captor until Shinichi had noticed the footsteps – no need to mention what the distraction was) and gave the location. The officer noted that there were already cars in pursuit of a man matching the description (who'd apparently been speeding, then refused to pull over), so it should be safe for the two of them to wait for officers to arrive at the scene.

And so Shinichi found himself sitting on the front step of the house next to the Kaitou Kid.

Kuroba spent a few moments messing with his phone – changing a few contact names then erasing a long voicemail that probably contained their entire conversation. That was evidence, Shinichi wanted to protest, but he couldn't honestly blame Kuroba for getting rid of it. They had enough to convict the kidnapper without it.

"So," Kuroba said, just to break the silence. "Magician, huh? I didn't realize you appreciated my magic fingers."

"Don't say anything," Shinichi said "You have Two-Mix as a ring tone."

"But she sounds just like you!"

"...Shut up."

And, for once, he did.