Stan had played riotous gigs in Berlin squats and accepted Grammys in suits that cost more than his childhood home, but nothing had prepared him for the sensory assault of Mr. Garrison's funeral. The chapel was a fever dream of sequins and narcissism. It looked like a drag brunch had collided violently with a glitter factory explosion. Hot pink sashes draped over the pews, embroidered with Slay in Peace and Bye Felicia. A fog machine in the corner wheezed rhythmically, pumping out clouds of lavender-scented mist that tasted like regret.

And the casket. It was mirror-lined. It was rotating. It was lit from beneath like a sports car at a dealership. Garrison's corpse was smiling, preserved in a layer of foundation so thick it was probably load-bearing. Stan took a pull from the flask hidden in his leather jacket, the burn of peach bourbon the only real thing in the room. He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut against the absurdity. Then he opened them, and the cynicism vanished.

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They were leaning against a faux-marble column across the aisle, wearing black like it was a weapon. For a second, the persistent gray filter that Stan saw the world through just... broke. The noise stopped. The glitter faded. It was just them. The ghost from the bench at Stark's Pond, finally rendered in high definition.

His heart hammered a rhythm that Fresh Veal had never managed to capture in a studio. Suddenly, he wasn't the "tortured artist" frontman of a generation-defining punk band. He was just the kid who had vomited on his girlfriend. He was the eighteen-year-old in a soaking wet tux, freezing to death next to the only person who made sense while the rest of their class fell apart at prom.

He moved without thinking. A fatal error.

His combat boot caught on a slick patch of fog juice near the altar. Stan flailed, his arms windmilling with zero dignity, before he caught himself on a velvet rope just inches from the rotating corpse. He smoothed his hair back, ignoring the snort that came from Cartman's direction, and forced his legs to carry him the rest of the way. He stopped next to them, smelling the ozone of the fog machine and the faint, grounding scent of their perfume.

"Hey," Stan said, his voice scratching against the silence. "This is... tasteful. Exactly what I imagined when I heard the words 'Garrison' and 'funeral' in the same sentence. You holding up?"

He watched them take in the scene, the corner of their mouth twitching. Stan felt a phantom kick in his chest.

"I mean, look at this." He gestured vaguely with his flask hand toward a hologram of Garrison in a feather boa looping above the altar. "I feel like I’m trapped in a haunted cabaret run by a demon with a Bedazzler."

He heard their laugh, and it hit him harder than the whiskey. It was the same laugh from the pond. The sound of oxygen in a vacuum.

"I wasn't sure you'd be here," he rambled, the filter between his brain and his mouth completely dissolving. "I mean, I hoped. But I also hoped that if I ever saw you again, I'd be cooler. Or taller. Or at least not almost crashing into a rotating casket in front of the entire town."

He looked at them, really looked at them, and felt the terrified, desperate ache of the Missed Connection he had written three albums about.

"I've typed out a text to you about a thousand times in the last few years," he admitted, his voice dropping low, for their ears only. "But I always deleted it. It’s easier to write songs about the ghost on the bench than it is to actually face the real thing. But... there's a lot of songs, dude. Like, a concerning amount of songs. And they aren't about being a rockstar."

He scuffed his boot against the floor, looking at the reflection of the disco ball in the mirrored casket before meeting their eyes again.

"I missed you. And I'm terrifyingly sober right now, so you know I mean it."

Stan held out his flask toward them, a crooked, nervous smile breaking through his usual apathy. "Do you want a drink, or should we try to escape before the hologram starts singing?"