Invisible String| WinTeam

CHAPTER-23

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of binge-eating and anxiety.

Team pulls his jacket closer to his body as he slightly shivers. Five minutes ago, he was in the warmth of his car but currently, he was buying loads of junk food from the grocery story close to his apartment. He was standing in the line of the grocery store as he tried not too think too much about anything because overthinking made him anxious and anxiety sucked.

Sometimes, it was hard to decide if you were a victim or a perpetrator. Maybe, you were both or maybe you were what you thought would protect you the best but sometimes, the truth slipped out just like that. You could be getting ready for another day at work and suddenly you think about the worst thing you ever did in your entire life. You looked over your shoulder a hundred times just to make sure no one was watching even though you were not doing anything wrong.

it was out of habit for him to check things like those. Usually being defensive and jumpy made you seem like a guilty person but for the billionth time in his life, Team reminded himself that he was, indeed, guilty.

As he finally made his way to his warm car, Team realised that he wasn't shivering just because of the cold but also because of the panic that had now settled into him. It was the same feeling when he had an anxiety attack under water but it wasn't an anxiety attack. It was a feeling that lasted for a second but left so much impact that it was all he could think about for a few more minutes. He didn't even want to drive but he did because he had to. Most of the things he did, he didn't even want to do them.

Soon enough, he reached his own apartment and instead of going into a certain someone's apartment, he settled on his own bed and looked at his own surroundings. He always wanted to be a neat and tidy person like Win but the truth was, his room was kind of dirty and he had no intention of cleaning it.

Sometimes, Team felt that he needed to be sad even when nothing was wrong. Sometimes, even happy things made him sad because when he was happy, he would think about the fact that the joyous moment he was living through would end and he would end up being sad again.

Recently, he had been very happy with his relationship and with everything else going in his life but then he had to go back to his home and now he was back to being gloomy. Being rude to his boyfriend made him feel worse than it should have. Team was being mean to his boyfriend and even when he wanted to stop, he couldn't stop. The fact that Team only stopped when Win cried said a lot about the kind of person Team was.

Team was left even more hurt when Win cried. Of course, he wouldn't say that to Win. It was a good thing that Win could open up to him and Team should have been happy about that but it only made Team realised that he could hurt Win in a million little ways because he always messed up everything. Until he thought that Win cared but not enough, Team was fine but when he realised that their relationship meant that much to Win, that he meant that much to Win, he went into a mode of panic.

All that made Team realise that he was a pretty terrible person. In his defense, at least he was self aware.

He looked at the pile of snacks he had just bought and opened a box of candies as he started to munch them. He knew that usually people drank alcohol when faced with such problems but with Team, things were different. He had a habit of binge eating every time something really, really bad happened. For him, he felt even worse binge eating than getting drunk. Something about eating until you were sick to your stomach was the best indirect approach for Team to punish himself using something he liked a lot - food.

In fifteen more minutes, the room was filled with plastic and wrappers of all the things he had bought and eaten.

In five more minutes, he was lying on his bed- now shivering more than he had been a few hours ago.

Another five minutes later, he heard someone enter his apartment which he had accidentally left unlocked.

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A/N: Just wanted to clarify that in the original novel, Team has sleeping problems because he was about to drown in water when he was young. I found that kind of boring so I changed the plot of this book. In this book, Team's older brother actually died as a result of drowning and even though Team has mentioned a few details of what had happened to Win, he has loooooots of explaining to do and it also has something to do with Team not replying to Win's texts.