Thanks for the reviews, and it's great to know there are some fellow angstophiles out there! Fair warning, this one contains its fair share of ouch. But the payoff is here too, and you'll like where we're headed. Read and review to let me know what you think.

Pam had been trying to get Roy's attention for several minutes to no avail. A few drinks in, he always got louder and rougher and even less attuned to her than usual, which was saying quite a lot. She suddenly couldn't bear to sit there for one minute longer. Wrapping both hands around his thick bicep, she yanked as hard as she could. The maneuver caught him unaware, and his elbow slipped off the edge of the table, making him slosh beer onto the tabletop.

"Roy!" she shouted at the same time.

"What the fuck, Pam?" he snapped, and for just a second she thought he was going to slap her, audience be damned. Darryl would probably step in, Darryl was a good guy, but the damage would be done. She was proud of herself for not flinching, even if her next words came out rather unsteady.

"I want to go home," she said.

He fixed her with a contemptuous glare that set her teeth on edge. Where did he get off showing contempt? "Come on," he said, shaking his head dismissively as if she were a 4-year-old with an unreasonable demand. "It's early still." He turned back to his brother, ready to pick up the story she'd cut in on, but Pam wasn't done.

"Give me the keys, Roy." This time her voice was surer, stronger.

"Jesus, Pam, what is your problem?" he demanded.

"I want to go home," she said. "You shouldn't be driving anyway."

"I'm not leaving."

"Fine, that's your choice. But I am." She held her hand out. "Car keys. Now."

"How am I supposed to get home if you take the truck?"

"Get a ride from one of these guys. Darryl, you'll drive Roy home, won't you?"

Darryl shrugged in agreement, looking casually amused by the argument. Roy, not so much. He shoved his chair back, the scraping screech of wood against tile sounding harsh in the quiet that had fallen over their previously boisterous group.

"That's right, Anderson, listen to your lady," one of the guys taunted under his breath. "Else there's gonna be trouble when you get home."

Roy's cheeks flushed a dangerous shade of crimson as his eyes flashed from his chuckling friends to Pam. He was furious, she noted with a growing knot of dread in her belly.

"Pam, can I talk to you outside?" he asked in a tone that let everyone know he wasn't really asking.

She shrugged into her coat and stood up to walk out in front of him, but he wasn't even going to allow her that small dignity. He gripped her by the arm and towed her behind him through the crowded bar. Once outside, he turned on her.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "Are you trying to make me look like a little bitch in front of the guys? Is this your way of getting back at me?"

"No! Roy, I just want to go home. I'm tired, I don't feel well, I—"

"Oh, poor, poor Pammy!" he cut in viciously. "So you have to ruin my night too. Why can't you ever just suck it up and let me do what I want to do for a change?"

She couldn't help it—she laughed. It was a short, dry, utterly humorless sound, but it shut him up momentarily and she let loose with her own tirade. "You've got to be kidding me, Roy, you? Have never done anything but what you want to do. You do what you want to do, when you want to do it, as much as you want to do it, and you expect everyone in your life to go along with it. And God help them if they don't! You never give a second thought to how anyone else feels. I mean, God, Roy, you beg me to take you back and then you screw it all up the first chance you get."

He rolled his eyes—there was that contempt, again—and then waited impatiently as a group of people walked past them into the bar. When the door closed behind them, he seemed to have calmed down marginally. "Look, baby, if you feel bad, I'll take you home."

"And then you'll come back."

"Yeah I'll come back; I'm having a good time!"

"And that's the difference between us, Roy. This is not my idea of a good time."

"Don't start in with that shit," he said.

"What, the fact that we're very different people who enjoy very different things?"

"No, the shit where you think you're better than me."

She opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it. He always brought this up when they fought, how she thought she was smarter and more classy and cultured than he was, how she thought she was doing him a favor by giving him the time of day when really, he would argue, it was he who had paired down, way back in high school when he was a varsity football star and she was a nobody.

"I don't think it, Roy, I know it."

He froze. "What did you say?"

"You heard me."

"When did you turn into such a little bitch?"

"Oh, I don't know, about the time you turned into an abusive stereotype." She held her hand out. "Give me the keys."

Before she had time to step back, Roy had closed the distance between them. She gasped as his hands encircled her arms, thick fingers sinking into her flesh, and then felt her teeth clamp down on her bottom lip as her back collided with the brick wall of Poor Richard's.

"You're not better than me, Pammy, do you understand?"

Tears of helpless anger and pain from her bitten lip sprang to her eyes, and she just nodded.

"Say it."

"I'm not better than you," she parroted, her voice husky and barely audible. "Now let go of me or I'm going to scream."

She held his gaze and watched as the anger drained out of his eyes, replaced by something just as familiar, and twice as repellent. His grip on her arms loosened but he didn't let her go.

"Oh, God, Pam—"

"Don't. Don't you dare apologize to me."

"I didn't mean to push you, Pam, you just piss me off so bad sometimes! You know? Your lip is bleeding, here, let me—"

"Stop it, just stop. Back off!" she protested.

Then a bunch of things happened in lightning-fast succession. First, Roy released her and reached to dig through his pockets for a napkin or something he could use to dab onto her injured lip. Then, someone shouted. She thought there were words—"GETTHEFUCKAWAYFROMHER," it might have been—but it quickly ceased to matter because that's when Roy spun toward the sound and Jim's fist smashed into Roy's nose. Roy bellowed inarticulately and doubled over, both hands covering his face.

Pam screamed, as did the girl next to Jim. Jim's roommate, a few steps behind, quickly moved up to his side, placing a steadying hand on Jim's shoulder because it looked for all the world like he was just getting started. There was blood on his knuckles and Pam didn't know if it was Roy's or Jim's. She gaped in horror between the two of them, as Roy slowly regained his footing.

"Halpert!" he yelled, the word muffled behind his hands. "I'm going to kick your ass for that."

"No!" Pam yelled, tugging on his elbow. "Jim, please. Please."

Jim didn't even glance her way, just continued to eye Roy with murder in his eyes. "Better me than her," he said flatly. "She's not much of a match for you, is she, Roy? A buck ten, soaking wet? I would say pick on somebody your own size, but you're probably the biggest waste of space I know. So I'll just say that if you ever touch her again—if you touch so much as a hair on her head ever again—I'm going to make you wish you'd picked some other girl to beat up."

"You think you can take me, Halpert? You gotta be kidding." Roy tried to laugh, but Pam understood that the danger, at least from his end, was over. He might have been twice Jim's size, but he was outnumbered, and in public, and her lip was bleeding. It didn't look good for Roy at any rate.

Jim continued. "Not saying you couldn't put a normal-sized guy like me in the hospital, Roy. I'm not stupid. But trust me, I won't fight fair."

Silence settled over the little group, broken only by the sound of Roy's labored, wet breathing and, Pam imagined, the sound of her racing heart. Finally Roy threw his hands into the air as if he just didn't have time to deal with such annoyances. As he stepped deliberately toward Jim, Jim and Mark both stood up straighter and Pam held her breath. But he just shoved roughly past Jim, bumping his broad shoulder against Jim's in an almost pathetic show of machismo. Then he disappeared back inside the bar.

"Whoa." Mark summed it up for them all. "You ok, man?" he asked Jim.

Jim glanced down at his hand, at the broken skin on his bloody knuckles, and shrugged. "Totally worth it," he said.

"I have to—I'm—oh God." Pam turned and ran around the corner of the building, just barely making it out of their sight before she leaned over and puked into the shrubbery. Once, twice, three times. She sank to her knees, her breath coming in tearing sobs and her body trembling all over. A few minutes passed, and she began to wonder how she was going to get home. Then she felt a hand on her back and looked up to see him standing over her, his eyes warm and filled with concern.

He was going to ask if she was ok, she knew he was, and she was going to scream at him because how could he ask that question when nothing, nothing had ever been less ok? She waited for it as he rubbed small, gentle circles on her back.

"Come on," he said, "Let's get you home."

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. Then, suddenly remembering, "But Jim—your date."

He shook his head. "That girl?" he asked, trying to smile and aiming for his teasing tone. "Eh, she decided she liked Mark and his girl better than me. They've gone off to have a ménage à something."

"Jim." Pam's voice hitched, and she felt the flood of tears ready to break through.

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, drawing her head against his shoulder. "Shh. Shh, I know," he murmured into her ear. "I know."

TBC … review, please, or you love Roy. =)