Work Text:
Kenny knows his boundaries with his parents— where he stood in their list of priorities. Where all their three kids stood on their list of priorities, for that matter. Their relationship was abnormal, if the sayings of his friends where anything to go by. Those were the only other parent-kid relationships he had to go off of. Just off-handed comments like when Stan had complained about his father going over the top and growing a whole new marijuana strain that was supposed to magically cure any mental disorder for him after he had been diagnosed with depression. Or Kyle groaning about how much his mother coddled him and forced him to stay in bed whenever he so much as sniffled. Cartman was the only one who never made comments like these, creating a sort of unspoken and likely one-sides solidarity between them. Though Cartman was very verbal about whenever was disturbing him so Liane likely had her work cut out for her whenever he was under the weather. Kenny didn’t like to think about that, how much Liane gave Cartman whether or not he deserved it. It only made him feel worse to contemplate about all the affection his friends felt from their parents, even if Cartman was being raised under less than optimal circumstances, at least he was being raised.
Kenny’s parents never really rolled that way. He was sure they loved him and his siblings— often when she got drunk their mom would hold them all and sob about not being good enough for them, the smell of beer on her breath making the huh claustrophobic— they just weren’t really mentally there. Or physically, a lot of the time. But it was really the thought that counted. Maybe they had just entered parenthood too young and were unprepared. Maybe they will get better with time, though that was a thought that Kenny only hung on to on particularly bad nights. He didn’t let himself ride on that delusion too often lest he start actually believing it. Well, regardless, Kenny knew that he was virtually on his own. Even now as he lay curled on his left side, hugging his knees to his chest and praying to every conceivable higher being that he wasn’t sick, he was on his own.
It was 4am. He had woken up after going to sleep at 1am feeling a bit full but not nearly as uncomfortable as he did now. Definitely not as sick. And though he desperately hoped that the pain wasn’t nausea, a distinct tightness in his throat forbade a less than optimal outcome for the night.
It took 10 minutes of trying to just go back to sleep until Kenny gave up and made the walk of shame to the bathroom closest to him room. No one was awake, the house was dead-silent and gave off the ambience of some abandoned warehouse. Cold. Empty. The waves in his vision did nothing to comfort him, and he found himself relying on the support of the wall to walk himself the full way down the hall.
In the bathroom he flipped on the fluorescent light, the buzzing noise practically drowned out by the overwhelming sound of blood pumping in his ears. His stomach protested every movement vehemently as he kneeled in front of the toilet. The floor was grimy but the tiles were blessedly cold against his knees. He could overlook a little bit of grossness. He grew up here, anyway. Besides, showers exist. Though, looking down into the toilet water with his mouth ajar in expectance of vomiting, Kenny couldn’t see himself mustering the energy to shower tonight.
And it was in this position, water beginning to ripple from drops of coppery saliva, though his body making no moves to take hold of the reigns and start heaving, that Kenny was overcome with intense loneliness. That he realized just how abandoned it felt to be going through this without support. To be feeling so horrible without a support by your side. How he grew up with this as a normalized thing. If you’re sick you’re on your own. How he craved to just be coddled for once. For his parents to run their fingers through his hair and check his forehead for a fever and bring him Advil and water and hold him close and clean up if he made a mess because God knows how many times he had to clean up after himself with his head spinning from a fever that was probably in the triple digits but he didn’t know because no one cared to check and oh- there were tears falling in the toilet now and his thoughts were racing so uncontrollably fast that the added stress finally triggered his stomach to lurch. He suppressed the noise of the gag, making it come out choked, like the sound of someone breathing out ever last bit of air in their lungs. Keeping quiet definitely made throwing up hurt more, but it was better that way. He would hate to wake anyone else up.
At that thought, his body curled with another gag, this one finally successful in producing a small wave of whatever the hell he ate for dinner. Watching it meld with the water and tears and spit, Kenny found himself not in the position to ponder the specifics of what he had eaten the preceding day. Though, it had been meatloaf day at school. The memory sent him vomiting again into the bowl, a bigger wave that certainly looked like meatloaf and smelled just about the same as it did when he first ate it at school. Well, it hadn’t quite burned his nostrils earlier, but it may as well had.
Hyper-awareness of the cold sweat coating his hot body creeped in slowly, starting from the body and clawing it’s way up until he could feel the prickle of the hairs on his neck stand on end. It was horribly disorienting, the contrast of cold sweat and cold floor and cold toilet and cold dread against hot skin and burning insides. The starkness of the difference made his head throb and stomach squeeze. But nothing more came out.
Kenny sat there expectantly for a few more seconds before dabbing his mouth with a square of toilet paper and flushing it all down. God— he would kill for some water. But they didn’t have any at the moment. He never owned a water bottle and the cups were all being washed and sure— he could position his mouth under the faucet and drink the tap (they were a mountain town, the tap was as clean as it gets) but that was too much work and he’d much rather go back in bed and hug his pillow and pretend that it was someone who cared. Someone who would grab water for him and fuss about hydration. And so he went and did just that.
Unfortunately, even though his stomach had refused to throw up anymore when he was still in the right postion, back in bed his nausea immediately spiked. The thought of walking back the the bathroom was disheartening, especially since the trek had already been made once. But his stomach didn’t seem keen on relenting anytime soon, so he dragged himself back up and to the bathroom. Keeping his eyes shut against the cruelty of the world and the way it seemed to target him now, he moved purely by muscle memory. Eventually he found himself in the same position as only moment before. His body spared him the prologue this time, however, and immediately skipped to purging itself of every last thing Kenny had in his body. It was horrible. His face was red with strain and his vision was blurred with tears and his heart squeezed in tandem with his gut but not because of nausea. It felt like all the hope he had mustered to get him through the days were being purged along with the contents of his stomach and he felt purely empty as he sat back against the wall. In the metaphorical and literal way.
Emotionally he was drained. Tired, wrecked, both things that he was currently feeling the affects of physically as well. With soreness added on. It felt almost like he had been hit by a truck. Not quite as extreme, he knew that, but definitely reaching that level of pain with the aching in his worn gut. He closed his eyes and leaned his back against the wall, swallowing against the dryness in his mouth. It took a minute of breathing for him to muster up the strength to lean forward and spit the remaining bile from his mouth, wipe his lips and the spots on his face that had been the target of splash-back, and flush the toilet.
He walked back to his bed for the final time that morning feeling like a feather. Numb and halfway gone. It was at least better than feeling present. Than being fully cognizant of the crippling sensation of abandonment that lingered like old coals in the back of his mind, ready to blaze with fire once given the proper attention. But it was easier to think of nothing. To ignore it. Even if he ignored it mentally, though, his chest still clenched with the pain and agony of the truth. And it was focusing on that abnormal feeling— the only thing he could feel besides the pillow pressed against his stomach— that he fell asleep.