Notes:

so uh
accidental coming out in this chapter
was not planned but it sure did happen
also some lesbophobia, quickly shut down by our main boys

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Kaito was delighted. Apparently Tantei-kun knew memes.

He was a man of culture.

And then he glanced back at the disembodied hand and thought oh, right.

He probably shouldn't start laughing.

Because they were at a murder scene.

A really gross murder scene, too.

"You should probably question the guy pretending to be her boyfriend," Kaito suggested to the room at large, mostly just to have something to say to break the awkward silence.

Conan, curiously, didn't seem to notice that the police officers had frozen in place trying to process the information, too busy going over every inch of the crime scene again in case there was something else he'd missed. Wow, that kid - wait, no, teenager, because people de-aging was a thing now, apparently - really had a chip on his shoulder about solving mysteries, didn't he.

"B-but she's so pretty!" one of the greying officers burst out, and the other one rushed to nod in agreement, like he'd just been waiting for someone to say it so he wouldn't have to. "She's too attractive to be a lesbian!"

Kaito blinked, once. Seriously? Were they actually serious? Please, please say no.

He glanced over to his dad, who was just kind of floating beside him, cape flowing in a nonexistent breeze because he was just that Extra™.

Or - had been, Kaito supposed.

It was kind of depressing, the thought that his father would disappear as soon as Kaito stopped hallucinating.

"A girl can't like girls because she's pretty?" Conan asked innocently, eyes hard and glinting, apparently having tuned back into the conversation sometime in the past thirty seconds. Great. Solid.

Kaito blinked, coming back to himself, then glanced over at Conan because there was a reason he was answering that question instead of leaving it for the 'adults' in the room.

...Actually, it was probably because the adults in the room weren't saying anything.

"Yes, what does that have to do with anything?" Kaito found himself adding, not bothering to restrain himself from folding his arms even though he knew it looked defensive.

Conan side-eyed him, and Kaito felt himself bristling, but he clamped down on that reaction tout de suite. One of his best friends was lesbian, another friend was aromantic (though he was hesitant to label Akako a friend, exactly), and he himself wasn't all that straight either.

"Well," one of the police officers said, puzzled, like he couldn't understand why Kaito was even asking, "a pretty woman can get a boyfriend easily enough. They don't need to resort to other girls."

Kaito ground his teeth together, and Conan's jaw clenched like he was doing the same.

The ghost - Sawada Hana - flinched violently, like she'd been struck, then scoffed loudly, drawing Kaito's eyes to her. He could feel Conan's piercing gaze following his line of sight and frowning when he couldn't figure out what Kaito was looking at.

Sawada folded her arms, pressing them tightly to her rib cage. "That's not how that works, jackass!" she spat, and Kaito found his lips turning up slightly at the corners in response.

"That's not how it works," he agreed, relaying her words to the officers. And then he just sort of kept going, because Kaito was not in control of his mouth when he was tired, apparently. "You can't choose who you're attracted to - she wasn't a lesbian because she 'couldn't get a man.' What the hell, dude, yeet your backwards thoughts back into the eighties where they belong. This is the twenty-first century and you're a police officer. You need to be better than that if you're going to be a good one. Good officers stop prejudice, not perpetuate it."

"Damn straight," Conan muttered under his breath.

Not quite the right words for this particular situation, Tantei-kun, Kaito thought, mildly hysterically, because he had not meant to go on that rant and also his father was being worryingly silent. Kaito rewound his words in his head, just to make sure he hadn't accidentally outed himself. He hadn't, not with words, but the way Conan was looking at him consideringly made him think that maybe his facial expression or body language had given him away.

He slammed down his Poker Face again, just in case, and waited tensely.

"Thank you, Kaito," his father said finally, placing a hand on his shoulder. Kaito could feel the pressure, neither warm nor cold, and he felt something deep inside himself ease. His father, of course, read his body language as easily as Kaito could read the relationships between people in any given room. "Kaito, of course I know about you. I may have been dead for the past ten years, but I'm still your father and I love you. Nothing you do, nothing you are, nothing could ever change that."

Kaito blinked. He would not start crying. He would not.

His father patted his shoulder again. "Besides, as mine and Chikage's son, frankly I'd be disappointed if you arbitrarily limited yourself to one gender - dating or being."

Fuck.

Fuck.

He was having emotions.

"Damn, wish I had me a dad like that," Sawada commented, floating past the scene.

Which, fair.

Kaito's dad was pretty great.

"That reminds me," his father said, and Kaito could tell that his eyes were twinkling mischievously even though his father was standing - floating? - behind him. "Did I ever tell you about that time when Yuusaku and I - "

"Dad, I do not want to know about your sex life, thanks," Kaito said out loud without thinking about it. Brain bleach, he needed brain bleach, before he started actually picturing his dad and almost uncle (He wasn't exactly sure how Yuusaku was related to him, except that he knew it wasn't genetically and - oh, shit, he was Conan's dad, wasn't he? That was awkward.) together and - damn it, he was picturing it now.

His father chuckled, enjoying the chaos he was wreaking. He was a true Kuroba.

Somehow, no one except Conan had noticed his outburst, judging by the weird look he was giving Kaito. Yamamura-keibu seemed to be oblivious to the world, poking at the body. The two police officers looked like they were possibly having an existential crisis as they tried to reconcile their views on being LGBT+ and their jobs as police officers, which, honestly, good. If they hadn't, they didn't deserve to be called police officers, and Kaito probably would have found a way to get them fired, or at least demoted. They were nearing retirement age, so maybe a forced retirement? A glance over at Conan said that he was thinking something similar.

Or, actually.

Maybe he could just set Nakamori-keibu on them.

He was very protective of Aoko and her sexuality, even if he didn't really understand it, and he would have fun shouting some sense about prejudice into their heads.

But, since they were actively mulling it over now, that probably wouldn't be necessary.

Yamamura-keibu looked up from the body (the pieces of it, really) and coughed, breaking the tension in the room. Not that he knew. "How could you tell that from her fingers, though?"

...Kaito really did not want to have to explain that. A quick glance at Conan reveals that he also did not, which, honestly, fair.

Except Conan had an excuse for not mentioning the reason since he was currently six. Or maybe seven? It was hard to tell. Kaito knew intellectually that he was in first grade, but Conan was tiny.

"Oh my god, you can tell that I'm lesbian from my fingers? How the hell does that work? No, seriously, I want to know. What gave me away? What if my parents figure it out?!" The murder victim was getting more and more worked up, and it almost looked like she was about to have an asthma attack, except for the fact that even if she did it wouldn't make much difference because she didn't need to breathe.

Since she was, you know, dead.

Not that she'd realized that yet, of course.

Kaito cleared his throat and Conan looked instantly relieved, so he supposed he'd made the right choice. "Lesbians generally don't wear talon-like acrylics," he explained delicately. "They can be - painful, for their partners."

Yamamura-keibu blinked, the two statements clearly not computing in his head, but he shrugged and said, "Okay. We need to question the 'boyfriend' again, then."

Kaito was suspicious as to why his word was accepted so easily, right up until Yamamura-keibu added, "You know, you can just say that her ghost told you."

Oh.

Okay, then.

Why not.

"Her ghost told me," Kaito repeated robotically, and specifically did not look in Sawada's ghost's direction. He did not want to deal with that particular kettle of worms if he could help it.

Conan looked like he desperately wanted to roll his eyes, which Kaito thought was fair. It seemed like Yamamura-keibu was particularly gullible when it came to the supernatural, and since the supernatural didn't exist in Conan's world...

Except for the part where it did. Unless Kaito was hallucinating.

Which was, unfortunately, a distinct possibility.

He really needed to take a nap.

Yamamura-keibu told the two beat cops to make sure no one gets into the crime scene, then did nothing to prevent Kaito and Conan from following him as he pulled the distraught boyfriend into the kitchen, which was currently the only private place in the cafe that wasn't also part of an active crime scene.

"Takayama Sensui-san?" Yamamura-keibu asked, and then continued without preamble at Takayama's shaky nod. "Were you aware that Sawada-san was lesbian?"

Takayama blinked, brow creasing with concern. "I - yes, why - how did you - ?"

"If you knew she liked women, then why did you say that you're her boyfriend?" Conan interrupted pointedly, in that weird innocent little kid voice of his.

Takayama's eyes darted from the tiny child to the police detective, then to Kaito who was just sort of standing off to the side and watching. They weren't particularly intimidating - and Kaito would know - but Takayama caved almost instantly.

"Look, I was her beard and I - I like men, okay? It wasn't just that I was her beard - she was mine, too. We were going to pretend to date until we both got stable jobs, and then we were going to come out to our parents together..." Takayama choked on the words, eyes watering as he tried to compose himself. "We - I - it was just easier that way, you know?"

"Understandable, have a great day," Kaito muttered under his breath. Conan shot him a piercing glance and you know what? Kaito was getting kind of tired of that.

"...What's a 'beard,' in this context?" Yamamura-keibu asked, blinking rapidly. He probably hadn't expected to get answers so quickly.

"A fake dating AU except neither one will ever fall in love with the other because their sexualities are incompatible," Kaito replied.

Even Conan looked at him blankly at that.

Huh. Kaito guessed they didn't read much fanfiction about their alter-egos. Yamamura-keibu, he could understand, but Conan? Kaito knew for a fact that there was an absurd amount of fanfiction involving Kudou Shinichi. Some of it also involved him-as-KID, which was...interesting, considering the fact that Kaito was fairly certain that they'd never met each other while Conan was Shinichi and Kaito was KID.

"A guy who likes guys pretends to date a girl so that he looks straight, or a girl who likes girls pretends to date a guy so that people think she's straight, or any variations thereupon," Kaito elaborated.

"Huh. Neat," said Yamamura-keibu, not bothering to ask anymore questions, and Kaito was starting to wonder how he'd ever risen through the ranks. He had a feeling that Conan probably had something to do with it.

...He could probably take the way Conan was looking at Yamamura-keibu as confirmation of his theory.

(Kaito was resolutely not looking at the blurry shadow hanging around behind Conan, because he was already teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown as it was and thinking too hard about that would definitely make him overbalance. Sure, he was an acrobat and could probably flip through some mental hoops to end up back on the wire, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was a good idea.)

(Therapy. He needed all the therapy.)

(Conan could probably use some, too.)

"Right, so, that story the waitress - Ayuzawa-san - told us about you breaking up with her over text was inaccurate?" Yamamura-keibu asked, because apparently Kaito had missed something in his state of constant panic.

Takayama blinked, then waved his hands wildly. "No, no, of course not! Why would I - we're in a mutually beneficial agreement with mutually assured destruction - why would I end that?" He fumbled with something in his pocket, yanking out his phone and almost dropping it a few times while he unlocked it and tapped on the messaging app. He brandished the screen towards them - well, mainly towards Yamamura-keibu, who was nominally in charge of the investigation, and Conan, who just so happened to be standing near enough to see.

"It's...just memes," Conan said blankly, after staring at the screen for a long moment.

Takayama nodded violently. "Yes, exactly! Why on earth would I want to murder my best source for memes?"

"Oh, that's a big mood," Kaito and the ghost, who'd apparently drifted through the wall at some point while he'd been distracted, said at the same time. He blinked, then exchanged a glance with the ghost who promptly realized that he could see her and damn it this was going to bite him in the ass, wasn't it.

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Notes:

tmq is not abandoned
i just had a weird burst of inspiration for this fic
im like halfway through the next tmq chapter IT IS HAPPENING

also the next chapter is up on ao3