Title: Words that kill.

Continuity: 'Ben Franklin.' (Season Three's 14th episode.)

Song: No you girls, by Franz Ferdinand. (Fragment.)

Feedback: Of course, reviews are highly appreciated.

Warning/Comments: Jim's POV. Slightly A/U. Drabble. I'm not exactly pleased about my job writing this chapter: it certainly could have been better, and longer. I'm sorry about that. About the song, I found it by accident and I discovered that it fitted with the situation, so I decided to use it. (And I'm glad I did, because it was inspiring as well.) Also, I used inner-battles once again – I just love how complex and deep are Jim and Pam, and it is a shame that the show doesn't let us know more about their actual feelings – those feelings are what I'm trying to write about.

No you girls never know,

oh no you girls'll never know.

No you girls never know,

how you make a boy feel…

"God, I need a boyfriend. You know Ryan, I'm totally ready to be set up with one of your business school friends. Whenever."

Twenty-three words.

He counted them.

Last time she hadn't needed so many words to hurt him.

Only two: I can't.

Those had been enough to tear him apart.

This time she needed more – three sentences, even – but the words certainly did the job. They felt like sharp needles, piercing through his heart, cutting him to the core. One second he was okay –or as okay as he could be anyways – and the next he was broken, wondering why he didn't actually bleed, when it hurt as if he'd been physically wounded.

I should've seen this coming, he thought in frustration. Didn't I learn anything from Casino Night? All she needs is a handful of words and that's it, I'm dead. How could I ever forget that?

As he watched her walking out of the room, he tried to remain calm – no one was supposed to know she could virtually reduce him to ashes so easily, especially Karen – and to forget about what she had said. Needless to say it was completely pointless: he couldn't stop replaying her words in his mind, the way her back was turned on him when she said she needed a boyfriend, the way she didn't even once look at him directly and the anger he felt towards Ryan at the thought of one of his friends going out with Pam.

I shouldn't feel this bad, he reminded himself, because a) she has a right to date anyone she wants, b) she didn't mean to hurt me in any way and c) I have a girlfriend I should care about instead.

The reasons he came up with to get over that awful moment didn't do much; – even considering that at least they helped covering up his real feelings from everybody else - they ended up making everything worse, because deep down inside he started feeling unsure about whether she had or hadn't meant to hurt him. He started changing his mind all the time throughout the day, unable to simply forget about it.

She hates me. She's trying to make me miserable. And she's good at it.

No, she's not. She's a good person and she'd never do that. She's just trying to move on, and she has a right to it –

Yeah, a right to 'move on' and rub it on my face just so I can see it and die right there in front of her. What kind of friend does that? How can she not know the way it makes me feel?

I don't think she was doing that on purpose. She can't know how I feel if I don't talk to her anymore.

At the end of the day he felt so confused and exhausted of thinking things over, that even when his head hit the pillow that night he was restless. Every time he closed his eyelids, he'd start re-living the events of that day, and he'd hear her words again, and God, the pain would reemerge as if it had never gone away at all.

And I highly doubt it is ever going to disappear, he sadly concluded before he finally drifted off to sleep.