Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to the Office. I don't own anything. Just borrowing the characters and I will take good care of them. :)
Knight in Rusted Armor
Jim stared at his shoes as he recalled the events of the past hour or so. He wasn’t the type of guy to get in… physical altercations. But the whole thing happened so fast, he couldn’t think of anything he could have done differently.
“You know those days where you get up in the morning and you think something bad is going to happen, but you ignore it and go on about your day like you never got the feeling?” Jim asked, still looking at the floor.
“Jim, we work at Dunder Mifflin. That’s how I feel every weekday morning when I get up,” Pam answered from the kitchen. “You never know when Michael might get us all fired.”
“Well I felt like that today. Even though we didn’t have to get up for work. I feel like today should have been one of those days where we didn’t do anything that involved socializing with people outside of this room,” Jim continued. “I woke up this morning with that gut feeling and I ignored it, and look where it got us.”
“No way you could have known,” Pam pointed out. “Before your neighbor started acting like a jerk things were going really well.”
Pam’s reassurance put a small smile on Jim’s face. She was right. Before things got out of hand, the day was going okay.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a backyard barbeque quite like this before,” Jim said, motioning toward the group of people gathering outside. “Usually I’m a pretty unpopular guy.”
Pam swatted him gently. “Oh, you are not. If you’re usually pretty unpopular, then why did all these people show up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe now that I have a girlfriend they like me better. I get it, it’s cool. They’re all just here for you,” Jim teased. “They’ll soon forget I exist and come over looking to hang out with you. It’s fine, I’ve accepted it and moved on. Things will change a little, but it’s okay.”
“Me? That’s doubtful. They don’t even know me,” Pam replied, pouring some more potato chips into a bowl.
“Yeah, you’re right. They don’t know you, but they do know your potato salad. It’s world famous,” he smirked.
Pam stopped what she was doing and crossed her arms. “World famous? Good or bad, world famous?”
Jim shrugged. “They didn’t say. Huh. I mean, I always assume it’s something good, but…”
“You’re so mean,” Pam giggled, picking up the bowl of potato chips and placing it behind her.
Jim winced as Pam placed a ziploc baggie of ice on his cheek, interrupting his thoughts. “Here, hold that there. That should help.”
He held the icepack to his face in silence as the whole ordeal kept flashing through his head. He wasn’t sure what Pam was thinking about the whole situation. She’d never seen that side of him. In fact, he rarely saw that side of himself. It wasn’t like he was ashamed… well, maybe embarrassed was the better word, but he certainly didn’t want to continue re-living what happened.
“You know, this is why my first and last fight was in the sixth grade,” he finally said, breaking the awkward silence that hung in the air.
Pam giggled. “Oh, really? Your first and last, huh?”
“Yep. Well, at least until tonight, that is,” he clarified, leaning back and trying to get comfortable.
“How’d that one happen?” Pam asked, taking a seat next to Jim on the couch.
“Well, the school bully decided to call me ‘Chicken Legs’ for three months, before I finally told him to stop. We exchanged words. I believe they were something like me saying, ‘stop it’, him saying, ‘make me’, and me going, ‘yeah, I’ll make you, and you’ll be sorry!’ and then there was silence,” Jim recalled, providing voices for each party involved in the altercation.
Pam raised her eyebrows. “You knocked him out? That kind of silence?”
Jim hesitated for a moment. “Well, it was more like us staring angrily at each other, and then him knocking me out after a few long and painful moments of standing there waiting for something to happen.”
“Well, this fight wasn’t that much different, was it?” Pam asked. “I mean, there was talking, there was… punching… and it was over pretty quickly.”
He sighed. Pam was right; it was over pretty quickly. But he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to forget it as fast, since the bruise that was likely forming on his face wasn’t going away for a few days. Jim had the image of the guy forever burned into his brain.
Jim took a sip of his beer and scanned the area to see if anyone needed anything else. He saw Pam standing by a patio chair, shifting her weight uncomfortably as she spoke to someone he’d never seen before. She kept tucking her hair behind her ear… it was that nervous habit thing she always did when someone was making her uncomfortable or a situation was becoming too much for her to handle. He made his way over to the two of them, hoping to rescue Pam from what seemed from far away like a forced and generally awkward conversation. As Jim got closer, he got a better look at who Pam was talking to.
The guy was just a little shorter than Jim, and he was wearing one of those tight t-shirts that automatically screamed ‘jerk’... like the ones Simon Cowell wore on American Idol that Jim and Pam mocked mercilessly. He tried to remember if this was the guy who had moved in next door, or if this was just some random person who showed up to the party. He didn’t think much of it, and decided to introduce himself. Maybe that way, he could give Pam a chance to escape.
“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met,” Jim said, extending his hand. “Jim Halpert. Do you live next door? I heard we were getting a new neighbor, but I wasn’t sure if anyone had moved in yet.”
The man ignored Jim and returned his attention to Pam. “So, what do you say? Come on, coffee can’t hurt,” he said, running his hand through his curly blonde hair as though he was trying to show it off.
“I’m flattered, but, no thanks. Jim’s actually my boyfriend,” Pam explained with a polite smile, motioning toward Jim as she spoke.
The man snorted. “Right. Okay. Come on over here, let me grab you some food.” He reached out toward Pam’s arm and started to walk toward the table that Jim and Pam had set up earlier in the afternoon.
On instinct, Jim reached his arm in front of the other man’s hand before he had a chance to grab Pam. “Whoa, whoa, okay. Let’s just stay here and talk for a minute.”
The next thing Jim knew, he was on the ground, holding the left side of his face as he processed what just happened.
“Well, my skills have apparently improved since last time,” Jim acknowledged, taking a look at his swollen right hand. “I didn’t even take a swing back then. He knocked me out in one punch.”
Pam looked to the ground, stifling a laugh. “Right. Well, I have to admit, you at least made contact this time. With… his shoulder…”
“Hey! Don’t make fun of me, okay? I’m pretty sure there’s an anti-making fun of the chivalrous boyfriend rule in the knight in shining armor handbook,” Jim insisted, attempting to look serious. “And there was definitely contact with his jaw at one point or another.”
Pam tried to mirror his mock-serious expression. “Yes, you’re right. Although, I’m not sure your armor is so shiny. I mean, your work shirts are always wrinkled… so…”
Jim looked to the ground and sighed. “I don’t know, Pam, I just… I’m not the kind of guy who does this stuff. I don’t go around... well, you know.”
“Jim, it’s fine, I really appreciate you trying to help,” Pam said, taking Jim’s hand in hers. “He was getting really creepy. He was acting as if the awkward ‘what’s your sign’ pickup line didn’t die out after the first person to ever use it failed miserably. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, trying to help being the key words here, Pam. I didn’t really do anything overly special. I didn’t even throw the first punch.”
“The situation didn’t require you to be some… macho guy who goes around threatening to bash people’s faces in,” Pam reassured him. “You did what you had to do. The guy was pretty plastered, and you tried to step in and diffuse the situation, but he wanted to fight.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess… well, you were used to having a guy who was really… well built, for a long time. I just want you to feel safe, you know? Like I could protect you if something bad happened. You know, I didn’t exactly win that fight tonight.”
“Jim,” Pam started. “I feel safe with you. It’s not about who you can punch out, you know? Yes, Roy was strong. But feeling safe isn’t about knowing that you could re-enact a scene from Fight Club on cue if I needed you to.”
“Fight Club? Really?” Jim replied, shaking his head.
“I don’t know,” Pam giggled. “It was the first movie I could think of that didn’t have Russell Crowe in some sort of suit of armor in medieval times, or Keanu Reeves doing slow motion flips in the air. But you get my point,” Pam insisted.
“The first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about it,” Jim teased. “You should know better, Beesly.”
“Jim, I’m being serious,” Pam replied. “Look, you’re obviously concerned about being able to protect me, or whatever. I just want to make you feel better about this whole thing, since obviously you’re stressing out about it.”
“I just want you to feel like if there’s something wrong, you can count on me to take care of it.”
“I can,” Pam replied without hesitation.
“No, I mean, really take care of it,” Jim continued.
Pam raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean, take care of it?”
“I guess just… be there to protect you in case something happens. If something bad happened, I’d want you to feel like I could take care of you and defend you,” Jim explained.
“This kind of weird stuff doesn’t happen every day. If you walked out of the house every day looking for stuff to protect me from, you’d be like Dwight. And you and I both know that the chances of getting attacked by a bear, strangled in our sleep by rattlesnakes, or stung to death by an army of angry bees is slim to none. Especially in Scranton.”
Jim chuckled. “An army of angry bees? I think I missed that one.”
“This was about two weeks ago,” Pam started. “I had some specific brand of honey in my tea, whatever you got me that day at the grocery store when we saw that old lady with the curlers in her hair fighting with the store clerk over toilet paper.”
“She was a very, very scary woman,” Jim recalled, smirking. “I was intimidated.”
Pam nodded in agreement, continuing the story. “Well, Dwight said that bees are easily angered, and if they smelled that honey in my tea when I went outside, they would swarm me and sting me to death.”
Jim repositioned the ice pack on his cheek. “A swarm of angry bees? In Scranton. Interesting.”
“Jim, I know you aren’t the kind of guy who… you don’t like getting in physical fights or anything like that. But I know if it came down to a situation where something was wrong, and I mean seriously wrong, like life and death, grave danger, that kind of thing? You would protect me, no questions asked. Tonight wasn’t exactly pretty, but you did protect me, you know.”
“I guess I didn’t want to look like a wuss out there. I just wanted you to feel like if that kind of stuff happens again you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me,” Jim explained.
Pam shook her head. “You saw him try to grab my hand. He’s probably one of those guys who thinks he’s the most gorgeous specimen of man to walk the planet, and he can get any girl he wants. And I didn’t even need to tell you I was creeped out, you came over right away and fixed it. No, the way it was solved wasn’t ideal, but you did what needed to be done, in the long run.”
Jim shifted the ice pack on his cheek. “You were so uncomfortable, I could tell. You did everything but pull a black-and-white movie slap across the face and storm off in a huff.”
Pam giggled. “I’ve always wanted to do that. You know, is it Gone With the Wind where she slaps the guy? Casablanca? I don’t know, but you get what I’m saying, obviously.”
“I do,” Jim replied.
“Jim, just… don’t beat yourself up over this, okay?” Pam grimaced. “Okay, sorry, poor word choice, there.”
“Heartfelt words from Pam Beesly, take two,” Jim replied.
“Don’t put pressure on yourself. You did what you needed to do today, and I have no doubts that you would do it again. You don’t have to be like Chuck Norris for me to feel safe with you. Okay? I know that if my life was at stake, you’d do whatever it takes to protect me,” Pam explained.
Jim repositioned himself on the couch. “Fair enough. But I will admit, I kinda wish I would have finished out my year in karate class. Maybe I would have learned something else besides what a sensei was.”
“I got my green belt when I was a kid,” Pam interjected.
“Beesly? In karate? No way,” Jim laughed.
“I’m not kidding. My dad thought it would be good for me and my sister to try. My sister hated it, so she went straight to ballet class. I got to green belt and then decided I didn’t feel like taking the class anymore.”
“Okay, you don’t give up on stuff that easily. What happened, really?” Jim teased.
“I got bored with it,” Pam shrugged. “Kicking and punching for an hour a week took a lot out of me.”
Jim snorted. “You’re lying.”
“Fine. I… kicked a classmate in the nose by accident,” Pam admitted.
Jim refrained from laughing and simply stared at Pam, knowing there was more to the story.
“And broke it…”
“I knew you didn’t just quit!” Jim said, unable to hold back anymore as he started to laugh.
“Hey, I made contact. I didn’t get knocked out in one punch,” Pam shot back.
“You have pictures of you in your karate uniform, right?” Jim asked.
“I burned them,” Pam said, matter-of-factly.
“That’s a lie, too,” Jim replied. “I bet your mom has pictures. I’ll call her and ask,” he insisted, standing up and heading toward the kitchen.
Pam ran after him. “No, no, no, don’t. Don’t. I have some, and I’ll bring them over sometime. If you show me a picture of the kid who beat you up.”
“I don’t think I have a picture of him,” Jim said with a shrug.
“You probably do, you’re just embarrassed to admit that he kicked your butt. He was probably smaller than you or younger than you.”
“Okay, he was not smaller than me, I was tall then too,” Jim said, attempting to defend himself. “And he was in my grade. So, yeah.”
Pam shook her head. “Fine. The truth will come out. Either way, I’m glad today wasn’t a repeat of your younger years,” she said, walking toward him.
Jim pressed a kiss to Pam’s forehead and wrapped his free arm around her, still holding the ice pack to his face. “Me too. This will be tough enough to explain to Michael on Monday.”
Pam just laughed and wrapped her arms tighter around Jim.
The End
Author's Chapter Notes:
Whoa, so it's been awhile. A long while. I don't write much anymore, but I signed up for the Support Stacie Author Auction and I received a prompt from a bidder to write about Jim protecting Pam in a more physical way than normal. So, without any further delay, I present my latest story. Feels good to be back! Thanks to my wonderful bidder, for being so patient with me while I worked this out, my beta for being awesome, and thanks to you for reading!
JamJunkie14 is the author of 5 other stories.
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