<|endoftext|> as she can.
"What do you want?" The question is first directed to her blond classmate before falling on her other peers, Kareem's narrowing, questioning eyes glued to her as her voice travels through the silent room. She grits her teeth for another couple of seconds to ground herself before breathing a shallow, arid inhale. "What do you all want?"
Ben stands just a bit taller, the remote flying from his hand to the sofa where it creates a dull thump that echoes around them. The sound gravitates her attention back to him, and her mind screams at her to not let this entire situation intimidate her—fear feels like her biggest enemy. Fear and herself.
And there's absolutely no use in crying over spilled milk.
She gets up, the hardwood floor cool against the bottom of her feet as she makes the small trek to her blond classmate. She sees surprise in his sapphire eyes, possibly from the tightly reigned control she's gripped upon herself since the lack of hope overcoming her still tightly wounded system, but she dismisses it.
Anna's well-being first, yourself second, her mind reminds albeit futilely.
She walks until she's standing at the back of the sofa, her palm landing at the top of it and feeling the smooth rough combination of the fabric. Her eyes are locked with the blond's, her own searching—questioning. She reads confusion in Ben's expression, latches on it because she'll take any sign of weakness over arrogant confidence especially coming from him.
She's at least learned a few things about her tall classmate from the past couple of weeks while working with him: he's insufferable when he doesn't get what he wants, he'll complain like a petulant child at any misgiving, and he's one to drive straight to the point without tiptoeing the subject.
The sofa bends under her fisted palm.
"What do you want?" she repeats, her inquiry louder, firmer.
Sapphires narrow infinitesimally under her strong glare. She stops paying attention to the others—she'll get to that road when she's reached a dead end on this one. Something tells her everything else will be easy in comparison…
She breathes a calming air, expels her mind of the activity that's flourished and buzzed it since the garbage that could be called newscasting started, and stares at Ben resolutely.
"What can I do to make it so this doesn't leave the room?"
Same questions. Same line of questioning. A different person. Elsa gulps the gnawing anxiety down a roadblock lodged throat, willing her heart to slow, please, so she can concentrate.
The smirk that greets her question doesn't make her feel better about the situation, but she doesn't allow it to show. Stoicism is her only friend right now. Her jaw merely locks in place, the gritting of her teeth echoing in the recess of her eardrums.
"You really feel you're in any position to a terms of agreement?" Ben asks, rather impudently, his smirk turning into a grin that shows even white teeth up to the barring of canines.
Elsa blinks once, brows stitching as she tilts her head a bit to the side, and comes up with a smile of her own. She's instantly relieved at how that wipes the grin off of her classmate's face.
"I feel like I'm giving you the long end of a very short stick," she replies, squaring her shoulders and balling both hands into fists.
His sardonic laughter tumbles around the room, blue eyes narrowing as he steps a foot forward until his knees are touching the sofa seat. The blonde notes how Andrew follows him, wary eyes trained on the space between them: two and a half feet.
It's so close and so silent that she can hear Ben's uneven breaths and she wonders briefly if it's from excitement, dread, or adrenaline. She wills her own to be slower—appearing calmer even though she's anything but.
"I'm the one on a short stick?" comes the rhetoric question, followed by a lavish and sarcastic flourish of hands. "Seriously, Elsa? You literally have no leg to stand on…and I'm the one being given the long end of a short stick?"
"This is what you know Ben. I'll arrange it for you in a neat, single filed line so that there's no confusion between us. Between all of us." The blonde gives a quick sweep around the room, eyeing all of her classmates, Kareem included, before setting a hard gaze back at her tall, male classmate. "You know who Anna is and how she's related to me. You know that we're in an unconventional relationship. You know that