Fic: Competing Notions on Old-Fashioned Romances (cobb/mal)
Competing Notions on Old-Fashioned Romances
Pairing: Cobb/Mal
Words: 2160
Genre: Romance
Rating: G
Status: Complete (oneshot)
Summary: Mal is the professor's daughter, but this doesn't stop Cobb from trying.
Notes: One of the many possibilities of how these two met. Inspired by a prompt over at inception_kink
Prompt: "Love's not only blind, it’s deaf as well."
Cobb is a horrible, horrible singer, but Mal loves him anyways.
Mal sipped from her water glass, her eyes glancing in the direction of the clock on the far wall. The fluorescent hands indicated that it was a little after eleven, a fact which depressed her and made her wonder why she had even come to the bar in the first place. All she had gotten to show for it was several hastily-scrawled phone numbers from half-drunk men and a lone spot of the bar, nursing water glasses. Her girlfriends had left her earlier with the promise that they would return, but by now they were probably drowning in shot glasses in one frat house or another. And that was fine. She hadn’t felt up to it tonight.
It had been a grueling day of exams, and she just wanted to relax for a while, in an environment that wasn’t brimming with books and other banal reminders of her various responsibilities and commitments.
She took another drink, the ice cubes clinking in her glass as she sat it back on the table. Turning in her chair, she moved to pick up her cardigan when someone approached her, a mere shadow in her periphery.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Mal looked up into blue eyes and a warm smile that she instantly recognized. This recognition brought a small smile to her own lips, as she replied, “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“Worth a try,” he shrugged, motioning toward the empty chair beside her. “Can I sit here?”
“Do as you like.” Eleven was still rather early, and the seats at the bar were practically empty. Everyone else was either standing or squeezed into booths, chatting about classes and significant others and whatever else happened across their mind. “I was just about to leave,” Mal said.
She watched as he sat beside her, pushing his blond hair back. His was a face she knew well. It was a face that many young women on campus knew and many undergraduates no doubt dreamed about. He caught the eye of the bartender, nodding toward Mal. “I’ll have what she’s having,” he said, that smile ever-present.
She knew his type and what he was about, but something made her hesitate, her hand braced on the counter.
“Dominic Cobb, right?” she asked, slipping on her red cardigan and pulling her hair out at the neck so that it fell down her back in dark waves. Her arms were cold, and this way, she could make a swift exit, if necessary. It was simply a matter of grabbing her purse.
“Dom,” he said, fingers closing around his glass.
“Dom,” she repeated. “You’re in my father’s class.”
“Advanced Architectural Dream Methods,” Dom added, taking a long swallow from his glass. “So, you’ve noticed me.”
Mal arched one of her brows. “How could I not? Your classroom debates with my father are quickly becoming campus legend.”
Dom’s laugh was almost crystalline. “Is that so? I don’t do it to make a spectacle or anything.” He drew inconsequential patterns in the condensation of the glass. “I just like to push a little-to make sure that I understand. Why, what does your dad say?”
“Who said my father talks about you?”
“Does he?”
“Yes.” Mal joined him in his smile, this time.
“Does it annoy him?”
“No.” Tracing the lip of her glass, she sat back in her chair. “I think he’s impressed. He prefers nagging questions to silence.”
“You think my questions are nagging?”
Mal’s smile came out a little more humorous than she intended, as she replied, “I never said that.”
Then, an unspoken challenge seemed to begin, the only rule being don’t look away. Mal stared at him, her lips pressing together as she studied him. Dom stared back, smiling and losing a little of that seemingly-impervious confidence under her intense gaze.
“You have a girlfriend, don’t you?” inquired Mal, breaking the silence.
“No. Why?”
“I just can’t imagine someone like you not having one.”
Dom looked amused. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it as you will.”
Around them, the bar was steadily coming to life, more and more people approaching the bar and ordering drinks. Someone put a quarter in the jukebox, sending delightful pop waves throughout the establishment, and several people even started dancing. Mal’s eyes lit up with interest as they took in the continual changes.
“Listen,” said Dom, garnering her attention, “this isn’t going as I’d hoped.”
“Oh? And how did you think it would go?”
“Well, I thought I was going to come over here and ask you on a date.”
Mal couldn’t help but chuckle, covering her mouth with her hand as she did so. “Oh you did, did you? What gave you the impression I would say yes?”
“That’s just the thing. I didn’t know what you’d say. But I figured it was worth a shot.”
Mal wondered how many other women he had charmed with the gentle timbre of his voice and with that face. She suddenly found herself on the defense. “Doesn’t it bother you, that I’m the professor’s daughter?”
“No.” He leaned his arm on the counter, angling his body toward her. “Should it?”
“Perhaps it should. There are certain stigmas, certain expectations associated with my position-one being that I don’t date fellow classmates.”
Dom gave her a long look, his smile growing with every second. “You don’t strike me as the type to worry about stigmas, or expectations, for that matter.”
She propped her arm on the counter, mirroring him. “And what type do I strike you as, Dom?”
Dom flustered then, and Mal thought, Finally, watching as he pursed his lips and picked a few invisible lint balls from his pant leg. “It has nothing to do with type,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I just like you, Mal.”
That was the first time he had said her name. It sounded nice from his lips, low. There was something about the way he said it. Mal. His self-assurance was almost endearing. His embarrassment was definitely cute. Mal couldn’t deny this as she watched Dom struggle to maintain his cool composure, clearing his throat and running a hand through his hair.
“How could you possibly like me?” she asked, shaking her head and realizing, idly, that their knees were touching. “This is the first time that we’ve spoken.”
“Wrong. We debated quantum physics.”
“Quantum-“ She tapped her lips, eyes widening slightly as a thought manifested in her mind. “Yes, that was you.”
“That was me.”
“That was what? Two-three years ago?”
“Four,” Dom offered. “It was our sophomore year of undergrad.”
“Right. Yes, I remember. You were trying to argue something…some appalling notion about particles.”
“Yes,” Dom smiled, finishing his water, “that it is possible to know the position and the momentum of a particle-given the right equation.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I remember now,” she said, pinning him with a small grin. “You were quite adamant.”
“And you were equally adamant, to the contrary.” Dom’s smile had a captivating quality; Mal would give him that.
“If I recall, you did not back down. It was…intriguing. I was surprised.” She smiled a little more at the memory. “I am surprised,” she murmured, glancing at her muddled reflection in the table-top varnish. “Everyone else lets me win.”
“I’m not everyone else.”
Mal’s eyes lifted back toward him, and she crossed her arms. “You are-what do they say? A smooth talker.”
“Well, I’m trying,” Dom said, shrugging and looking altogether too handsome. “I mean, I’m trying to impress you, but I’m not trying to overdo it.”
“Mmhmm,” Mal smiled, laughing a little. “Tell me, Dom: Have you liked me since then?”
“Since when?”
“Since quantum physics.”
Dom blushed, scratching his neck, and Mal realized that she hadn’t laughed so much in a long time. “No,” he eventually replied. “I mean, yes-Maybe-I don’t know. Maybe it started then, and then…”
“And then?”
“And then, it just…became this.” Mal decided that that as much as Dom impressed her during his verbal bouts with her father, he was absolutely endearing as he was now-stuttering and inarticulate. “Listen,” he proceeded, “this has nothing to do with your looks, either. I mean, you’re beautiful-gorgeous, but it’s not about that. It’s about your mind and the way you think. That’s what I find beautiful,” he said, finishing quietly. He tapped his finger on his glass, looking anywhere but Mal’s eyes, and suddenly she wanted him to look at her.
“Dom,” she said, her lips curving up at the corners as their eyes met. “Why are you so persistent? We might be all wrong for each other.”
Dom looked at her then, his confidence renewed in his sparkling eyes and in his accompanying smile. “We don’t know that yet,” he said, face tilting slightly. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll grow old together.”
Mal was the one to blush this time, and she attempted to hide it by pressing her face into her hands with an airy sigh. Her father would never approve. Or would he? Or did that even matter, the way her heart was beating faster than she ever remembered it beating.
Someone grabbed a microphone, plugging it in and sending a blaring screech throughout the room. Mal looked up and listened as the bar owner announced that it was karaoke night, beckoning some unlucky soul to begin the festivities. Everyone looked around, but no one wanted to volunteer, the patrons whispering amongst themselves and volunteering each other in the hopes that they would be saved the mortifying embarrassment that comes with being the first to sing.
“I dare you.”
Mal looked over at Cobb as if he was crazy, even when his expression only proved just how serious he was. She wanted to flat-out refuse him, but the thrill of it all intrigued her. There was a challenge in his eyes-a four year old challenge. The same challenge that was in his eyes whenever he raised his hand in her father’s class. The same challenge that was in his eyes when he had first approached her at the bar, and it meant, I’m not going to give up. And how could she back down? Despite her quiet nature, she was competitive, and Dom made her want to compete like no one else ever had.
“I will if you will,” she said, smirking.
Dom mirrored her expression. “Deal.”
As much as she had not expected him to march on up there and grab the microphone, she had also expected nothing less from him. Everyone began clapping and gathering around him as the bar owner turned on a monitor, displaying the lyrics on the back wall. Dom looked at her and waved, and she could only shake her head as the music for “I Will Survive” began blaring, and Dom cleared his throat so that he could begin.
How he managed to keep a smile on his face the entire time was beyond Mal, because he was horrendous. Absolutely atrocious. He sang completely off-key and had half the words in the wrong place, but he had this huge grin on his face through it all, such that everyone in the bar could only laugh and cheer him on with several, thunderous rounds of applause. Mal shaded her face behind her hand a few times-she was embarrassed for him-but in truth, she was glad to know him and surprisingly delighted to know that he would be returning to her side when he was done.
And he did, receiving numerous high-fives and fist pounds as he eased his way back to the bar. As she watched him approach, Mal had an idea that this would be the one-this would be it-like one of those funny little premonitions one has that turns out to be right.
“How was I?” he asked, grinning from ear to ear as he collapsed on his bar stool.
“Terrible,” Mal admitted with a smile.
Dom sighed, raising his hands. “I tried.”
“Yes,” she agreed, drumming her fingernails on the table. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Dom’s flabbergasted expression was priceless, and it would become one of the many, many expressions that Mal would grow to love over the years, even when his singing never improved and she could only shake her head at him with a small smile, saying, “Love’s not only blind, it’s deaf as well, darling.”
“Only if you let me buy you a drink,” said Dom, once he had recovered. “And then you have to get up there and sing. Deal?” he extended his hand, lips curved in a striking smile.
He was not going to let her off easily. She liked that.
Mal liked him, she realized, smiling to both herself and Dom as she clasped his hand firmly, feeling giddy with the rush of newfound emotions and the promise of tomorrow, whatever it held.
It was worth a try.
“Deal,” she said.
Pairing: Cobb/Mal
Words: 2160
Genre: Romance
Rating: G
Status: Complete (oneshot)
Summary: Mal is the professor's daughter, but this doesn't stop Cobb from trying.
Notes: One of the many possibilities of how these two met. Inspired by a prompt over at inception_kink
Prompt: "Love's not only blind, it’s deaf as well."
Cobb is a horrible, horrible singer, but Mal loves him anyways.
Mal sipped from her water glass, her eyes glancing in the direction of the clock on the far wall. The fluorescent hands indicated that it was a little after eleven, a fact which depressed her and made her wonder why she had even come to the bar in the first place. All she had gotten to show for it was several hastily-scrawled phone numbers from half-drunk men and a lone spot of the bar, nursing water glasses. Her girlfriends had left her earlier with the promise that they would return, but by now they were probably drowning in shot glasses in one frat house or another. And that was fine. She hadn’t felt up to it tonight.
It had been a grueling day of exams, and she just wanted to relax for a while, in an environment that wasn’t brimming with books and other banal reminders of her various responsibilities and commitments.
She took another drink, the ice cubes clinking in her glass as she sat it back on the table. Turning in her chair, she moved to pick up her cardigan when someone approached her, a mere shadow in her periphery.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Mal looked up into blue eyes and a warm smile that she instantly recognized. This recognition brought a small smile to her own lips, as she replied, “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
“Worth a try,” he shrugged, motioning toward the empty chair beside her. “Can I sit here?”
“Do as you like.” Eleven was still rather early, and the seats at the bar were practically empty. Everyone else was either standing or squeezed into booths, chatting about classes and significant others and whatever else happened across their mind. “I was just about to leave,” Mal said.
She watched as he sat beside her, pushing his blond hair back. His was a face she knew well. It was a face that many young women on campus knew and many undergraduates no doubt dreamed about. He caught the eye of the bartender, nodding toward Mal. “I’ll have what she’s having,” he said, that smile ever-present.
She knew his type and what he was about, but something made her hesitate, her hand braced on the counter.
“Dominic Cobb, right?” she asked, slipping on her red cardigan and pulling her hair out at the neck so that it fell down her back in dark waves. Her arms were cold, and this way, she could make a swift exit, if necessary. It was simply a matter of grabbing her purse.
“Dom,” he said, fingers closing around his glass.
“Dom,” she repeated. “You’re in my father’s class.”
“Advanced Architectural Dream Methods,” Dom added, taking a long swallow from his glass. “So, you’ve noticed me.”
Mal arched one of her brows. “How could I not? Your classroom debates with my father are quickly becoming campus legend.”
Dom’s laugh was almost crystalline. “Is that so? I don’t do it to make a spectacle or anything.” He drew inconsequential patterns in the condensation of the glass. “I just like to push a little-to make sure that I understand. Why, what does your dad say?”
“Who said my father talks about you?”
“Does he?”
“Yes.” Mal joined him in his smile, this time.
“Does it annoy him?”
“No.” Tracing the lip of her glass, she sat back in her chair. “I think he’s impressed. He prefers nagging questions to silence.”
“You think my questions are nagging?”
Mal’s smile came out a little more humorous than she intended, as she replied, “I never said that.”
Then, an unspoken challenge seemed to begin, the only rule being don’t look away. Mal stared at him, her lips pressing together as she studied him. Dom stared back, smiling and losing a little of that seemingly-impervious confidence under her intense gaze.
“You have a girlfriend, don’t you?” inquired Mal, breaking the silence.
“No. Why?”
“I just can’t imagine someone like you not having one.”
Dom looked amused. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it as you will.”
Around them, the bar was steadily coming to life, more and more people approaching the bar and ordering drinks. Someone put a quarter in the jukebox, sending delightful pop waves throughout the establishment, and several people even started dancing. Mal’s eyes lit up with interest as they took in the continual changes.
“Listen,” said Dom, garnering her attention, “this isn’t going as I’d hoped.”
“Oh? And how did you think it would go?”
“Well, I thought I was going to come over here and ask you on a date.”
Mal couldn’t help but chuckle, covering her mouth with her hand as she did so. “Oh you did, did you? What gave you the impression I would say yes?”
“That’s just the thing. I didn’t know what you’d say. But I figured it was worth a shot.”
Mal wondered how many other women he had charmed with the gentle timbre of his voice and with that face. She suddenly found herself on the defense. “Doesn’t it bother you, that I’m the professor’s daughter?”
“No.” He leaned his arm on the counter, angling his body toward her. “Should it?”
“Perhaps it should. There are certain stigmas, certain expectations associated with my position-one being that I don’t date fellow classmates.”
Dom gave her a long look, his smile growing with every second. “You don’t strike me as the type to worry about stigmas, or expectations, for that matter.”
She propped her arm on the counter, mirroring him. “And what type do I strike you as, Dom?”
Dom flustered then, and Mal thought, Finally, watching as he pursed his lips and picked a few invisible lint balls from his pant leg. “It has nothing to do with type,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I just like you, Mal.”
That was the first time he had said her name. It sounded nice from his lips, low. There was something about the way he said it. Mal. His self-assurance was almost endearing. His embarrassment was definitely cute. Mal couldn’t deny this as she watched Dom struggle to maintain his cool composure, clearing his throat and running a hand through his hair.
“How could you possibly like me?” she asked, shaking her head and realizing, idly, that their knees were touching. “This is the first time that we’ve spoken.”
“Wrong. We debated quantum physics.”
“Quantum-“ She tapped her lips, eyes widening slightly as a thought manifested in her mind. “Yes, that was you.”
“That was me.”
“That was what? Two-three years ago?”
“Four,” Dom offered. “It was our sophomore year of undergrad.”
“Right. Yes, I remember. You were trying to argue something…some appalling notion about particles.”
“Yes,” Dom smiled, finishing his water, “that it is possible to know the position and the momentum of a particle-given the right equation.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I remember now,” she said, pinning him with a small grin. “You were quite adamant.”
“And you were equally adamant, to the contrary.” Dom’s smile had a captivating quality; Mal would give him that.
“If I recall, you did not back down. It was…intriguing. I was surprised.” She smiled a little more at the memory. “I am surprised,” she murmured, glancing at her muddled reflection in the table-top varnish. “Everyone else lets me win.”
“I’m not everyone else.”
Mal’s eyes lifted back toward him, and she crossed her arms. “You are-what do they say? A smooth talker.”
“Well, I’m trying,” Dom said, shrugging and looking altogether too handsome. “I mean, I’m trying to impress you, but I’m not trying to overdo it.”
“Mmhmm,” Mal smiled, laughing a little. “Tell me, Dom: Have you liked me since then?”
“Since when?”
“Since quantum physics.”
Dom blushed, scratching his neck, and Mal realized that she hadn’t laughed so much in a long time. “No,” he eventually replied. “I mean, yes-Maybe-I don’t know. Maybe it started then, and then…”
“And then?”
“And then, it just…became this.” Mal decided that that as much as Dom impressed her during his verbal bouts with her father, he was absolutely endearing as he was now-stuttering and inarticulate. “Listen,” he proceeded, “this has nothing to do with your looks, either. I mean, you’re beautiful-gorgeous, but it’s not about that. It’s about your mind and the way you think. That’s what I find beautiful,” he said, finishing quietly. He tapped his finger on his glass, looking anywhere but Mal’s eyes, and suddenly she wanted him to look at her.
“Dom,” she said, her lips curving up at the corners as their eyes met. “Why are you so persistent? We might be all wrong for each other.”
Dom looked at her then, his confidence renewed in his sparkling eyes and in his accompanying smile. “We don’t know that yet,” he said, face tilting slightly. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll grow old together.”
Mal was the one to blush this time, and she attempted to hide it by pressing her face into her hands with an airy sigh. Her father would never approve. Or would he? Or did that even matter, the way her heart was beating faster than she ever remembered it beating.
Someone grabbed a microphone, plugging it in and sending a blaring screech throughout the room. Mal looked up and listened as the bar owner announced that it was karaoke night, beckoning some unlucky soul to begin the festivities. Everyone looked around, but no one wanted to volunteer, the patrons whispering amongst themselves and volunteering each other in the hopes that they would be saved the mortifying embarrassment that comes with being the first to sing.
“I dare you.”
Mal looked over at Cobb as if he was crazy, even when his expression only proved just how serious he was. She wanted to flat-out refuse him, but the thrill of it all intrigued her. There was a challenge in his eyes-a four year old challenge. The same challenge that was in his eyes whenever he raised his hand in her father’s class. The same challenge that was in his eyes when he had first approached her at the bar, and it meant, I’m not going to give up. And how could she back down? Despite her quiet nature, she was competitive, and Dom made her want to compete like no one else ever had.
“I will if you will,” she said, smirking.
Dom mirrored her expression. “Deal.”
As much as she had not expected him to march on up there and grab the microphone, she had also expected nothing less from him. Everyone began clapping and gathering around him as the bar owner turned on a monitor, displaying the lyrics on the back wall. Dom looked at her and waved, and she could only shake her head as the music for “I Will Survive” began blaring, and Dom cleared his throat so that he could begin.
How he managed to keep a smile on his face the entire time was beyond Mal, because he was horrendous. Absolutely atrocious. He sang completely off-key and had half the words in the wrong place, but he had this huge grin on his face through it all, such that everyone in the bar could only laugh and cheer him on with several, thunderous rounds of applause. Mal shaded her face behind her hand a few times-she was embarrassed for him-but in truth, she was glad to know him and surprisingly delighted to know that he would be returning to her side when he was done.
And he did, receiving numerous high-fives and fist pounds as he eased his way back to the bar. As she watched him approach, Mal had an idea that this would be the one-this would be it-like one of those funny little premonitions one has that turns out to be right.
“How was I?” he asked, grinning from ear to ear as he collapsed on his bar stool.
“Terrible,” Mal admitted with a smile.
Dom sighed, raising his hands. “I tried.”
“Yes,” she agreed, drumming her fingernails on the table. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Dom’s flabbergasted expression was priceless, and it would become one of the many, many expressions that Mal would grow to love over the years, even when his singing never improved and she could only shake her head at him with a small smile, saying, “Love’s not only blind, it’s deaf as well, darling.”
“Only if you let me buy you a drink,” said Dom, once he had recovered. “And then you have to get up there and sing. Deal?” he extended his hand, lips curved in a striking smile.
He was not going to let her off easily. She liked that.
Mal liked him, she realized, smiling to both herself and Dom as she clasped his hand firmly, feeling giddy with the rush of newfound emotions and the promise of tomorrow, whatever it held.
It was worth a try.
“Deal,” she said.