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minami97 · 1 year ago

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More Chinese S/O representation

Homemade Dumplings Modern Aemond Targaryen

✧.* word count: 2.8k ✧.* genre: Modern domestic fluff ✧.* warnings: the reader is coded to be Chinese/grew up in Chinese culture

Aemond Targaryen grew up filthy rich, which means he didn't have to worry about doing any of the menial day-to-day stuff you seem to like so much. That includes cooking and buying groceries.

Short A/n before you start, the reader is coded to be Chinese by ethnicity (and they can lightly speak it lmao), their nationality isn’t necessary nor is it mentioned in the story. Despite this, it isn’t a big part of the story which means that anyone can read it, just ignore a small amount of the dialogue.

“Where are you off to this early in the morning?” Aemond poked his head out of the bathroom when he heard you shuffling in the bedroom.

Your head perked up at his voice before going back to packing your bag for a trip to the market.

“Just heading out to the farmer’s market downtown, I need to buy some chives, spices, and baby bok choy from the old Chinese ladies there. They have the freshest Chinese vegs and they always run out if I’m not there early.”

Aemond quirked his brows a little bit at your statement, he was used to being the early riser in your relationship. Sometimes he even woke up before the sun rose to go for a jog or go to the gym. But here you were now, awake and dressed, ready to go while he had just finished his shower after his morning workout.

“Did you have breakfast already?” He queried.

“Yep, I woke up not long after you left. I wanted to make some dumplings so I need to buy some ingredients.”

“Hm,” he hummed in response. “May I join you?”

“Of course, you don’t even have to ask, baby.” You stated before going over to him and pecking him lighting on his cheek.

Aemond’s stomach fluttered at that, weirdly still getting giddy at the prospect of being with you. He quickly dressed himself and off the two of you went to the farmer’s market.

When the two of you got there, Aemond mostly followed you around. You would’ve laughed at how adorable he looked, with long platinum hair in a bun, looking very casual in just a t-shirt and sweats. But you were too busy trying to look at every bunch of chive and baby bok choys to find which ones are the best.

Your eyes observed the array of Chinese vegetables in front of you. Aemond watched as you picked one up and rotated it in your hand, your face twisting in your focus, all before putting it back down with a slight shake of your head. He watched you repeat this a few more times before finding the bok choy you like and putting it in your basket.

“How can you tell which one to take?” He asked chuckling slightly, he thought it was kind of entertaining that it took you this long to find a vegetable you liked.

You perked up before picking up one bundle of bok choys.

“You see this one?” He nodded, “There are slightly yellow and brown splotches on the stem, it means it’s past its prime.” You pointed it out.

“And this one,” you picked another one up, “The green leaves don’t look as fresh, there’s some holes here and there, not to mention it’s slightly floppy. When you’re looking for bok choy you want the stem to be white and the leaves to be stiff and fresh. You’ll get the one with the longest shelf life that way.”

Aemond surprisingly nodded along, not realising that there was this much thought to be put into vegetables. You lightly laughed at his furrowed brows as he looked at the difference between the bunches of bok choys in front of the two of you.

You had prompted Aemond to pick a few more bok choys, the first few he picked you pointed out the slight blemishes in the leaves. But by the third one, he picked a good and fresh-looking one, causing a bright smile to appear on your face.

Aemond had grown up spoiled, well, that might be understating it. He grew up filthy rich and he still is, meaning he didn’t have to worry about picking the freshest produce or cooking his food. But now that he lived with you, he found that he quite enjoyed learning new and domestic things with you. Things that you learnt through your upbringing.

On the other hand, you quite enjoyed teaching him. Aemond put a lot of work into learning new things and he stubbornly wanted to be good at the things he put his mind to do. So, everything came almost naturally to him. Even the smallest things like finding the best veggies, something you had to learn through the light scolding of your mother when you were a child every time you’d pick a ‘bad’ one.

Once you’ve paid the kind old man for your bok choys, the two of you moved on to a cart filled with fresh spices.

The market was slowly getting busier, which made you realise you should move through the area quicker. As you still had baby bok choys, chives, and homemade dumpling skin to buy. And to be quite frank, the crowd was getting annoying. So, you grabbed onto Aemond’s hand and started practically dragging him along the market to get what you needed.

When you finally got to the cart with the dumpling skin, Aemond’s heart swelled at the sight of your face brightening at the realisation that the old lady running the cart hadn’t sold out on all her homemade dumpling skin yet. He watched as you adorably conversed with the grandma before asking for two packs of dumpling skin.

“两个,” You told the woman before she nodded with a smile and handed you a bag with two packets of her homemade dumpling skins, “谢谢!”

When you turned to face Aemond he had quite the unreadable expression.

“What? You think you’re the only one who can speak another language? Sorry I don’t think Valyrian is very useful here.” You chuckled nudging him slightly.

Aemond only smiled and leaned to lightly kiss your forehead before the two of you finally escaped the crowd and went back home. Aemond helped set down the ingredients as you made your way to the kitchen and prep your working space.

Once you’ve placed down your cutting board and bowls, you quickly make your way to wash all the vegetables you bought and start cutting up the bunches of chives.

Aemond, watching from a slight distance, couldn’t help himself but tease you. He walked over towards you, your back facing him, and embraced you from behind. Letting his fingers dance around your abdomen as he pushed his chest onto your back. He watched as a grin replaced your focused expression while you stopped your cutting and leaned back into his embrace.

The two of you relished in the morning domesticity for a little bit longer. The sun that spilt into the room like pools of gold warmed the space. The air was light and Aemond didn’t think his life could get any better than this. He didn’t think he’d ever felt this at peace. All of it thanks to you.

“Wanna help?” You hummed, breaking the comfortable silence.

He hummed in acknowledgement, giving your body one last squeeze before going to wash his hands.

When he returned you’d already finished cutting up your chives and placed all of them in a large metal bowl.

“Okay, so right now I’m just cutting all the stuff for the dumpling filling, if you want you can cut up the baby bok choys, I’ve already washed how much I’ll need in that bowl over there. While I prep the minced meat.” You pointed it out and Aemond nodded.

The two of you worked in silence together, you had already placed the frozen minced beef in the fridge right after you woke up so that it would defrost. So all you had to do was open the containers up and mix them in with the chives, all the while Aemond worked very quickly on cutting the baby bok choys.

A couple of months ago you would’ve had to keep looking over your shoulder if Aemond was helping you cook. When the two of you first moved in together, he barely knew the basics of cooking. You took it upon yourself to help teach him as he always loved watching you work and he seemed genuinely interested in cooking.

Unbeknownst to you, Aemond only had the urge to learn how to cook after an offhanded comment you made after he asked you why you liked cooking so much. With a smile on your face, you said,

“My family used to say that the kitchen is the heart and soul of a home and food isn’t just for sustenance but for your soul. Good food means a happy soul.”

He saw the way you laboured to make good food, even when you were exhausted from the day. You’d still make time into your busy schedule to make something, even if it was something extremely easy and simple. The fact that you put that amount of time and effort into something you could just easily buy made the difference for him.

He wanted to share that love with you.

At first, he was rather clumsy in the kitchen. There were a lot of things that you learned through experience and watching the people around you cook, so you found it difficult to explain why you were doing certain things. But, as always, Aemond quickly got the hang of it.

“Something on my face?” Aemond’s voice cut you off from your daydreams, not realising you had been staring at him for a good minute now, you only shook your head and smiled.

“Just-” You quickly went to wash your hand so you didn’t touch his face after you touched raw meat. “Your hair’s in the way.” You reached to brush a strand of his white hair behind his ear.

A soft smile crept onto his face when your fingertips brushed against his cheek. Before you pulled your hand away he dropped the knife on the cutting board and reached to grab your hand, placing it on his cheek as he leaned into your touch. Your expression quickly matched his, lovesick smiles blooming on both your faces as your fingers lightly grazed his scar.

He hummed in appreciation of your gentle touch then turned slightly and kissed the palm of your hand. A moment later he let go of your hand and turned his attention back onto the dumpling filling.

“What next?”

You picked up the cutting board and poured the contents into the metal bowl.

“Well, all we need to do is just mix this up, season it, and then fold it into the dumpling skins. We can do that last part together.” You explained.

Aemond watched intently as you mixed up the ingredients and poured in your spices and seasonings not even bothering to measure it. That was one thing he knew he couldn’t ‘learn’ from you. How to season without using measurements, was just one of those things you learned through experience and then intuition.

Once you’ve mixed everything up, you handed him a spoon and brought out the two packets of dumpling skins along with some large plates.

“First you wet the edges of the skin with some water, then you pick a chunk of the filling with the spoon and place it in the middle of the skin, then,” you showed in front of him, “You kind of fold the edges together. It takes a lot of practice and sometimes I still mess up so don’t worry about it. If it gets too sticky then grab some of the flour or starch to dry the water.”

You instructed and watched Aemond try to copy what you were doing. Much to your dismay, Aemond actually did it perfectly the first time he tried.

“Takes a lot of practice huh?” He asked almost smugly causing you lightly swat his arm.

“Oh fuck off!”

A loud laugh left him at your little tantrum as he picked up another dumpling skin to make more.

As time slowly ticked away, the two of you quickly fell into a very comfortable focused silence. And funny enough, Aemond suddenly found it difficult to fold the dumplings as perfectly as he did the first time. On one he had put too much filling, making it difficult, on another one he had put too little making it easy to fold but clearly not going to be very tasty.

From the corner of your eyes, you could see Aemond slowly start to struggle and it took every single drop of kindness in your heart not to rub it in his face after all the annoyance you felt when he made that first one so perfectly.

Finishing up with the one in your hand, you placed the dumpling on a plate and went over towards him to help. Though he had bigger hands than you, you couldn’t help but do the most cliche thing you could think of at that moment.

You placed your own hands on top of his own and started motioning his fingers to fold the dumplings the way it was supposed to.

“The trick is to not overthink it, when you overthink it you put too much pressure on the skin and it breaks or flattens. Making it harder for you to make consistent folds.”

Once you let go of his hands he was able to finish the dumpling he was holding perfectly.

“See, easy, also I knew you had beginner’s luck on that first one.” You couldn’t help but tease him, causing him to pick up some of the filling on his finger and smear it onto your nose.

Your eyes widen, “You traitor! After I taught you how to cook?!” You lunged at him with your hands messy with starch, reaching to smear his face with your hand.

Aemond laughed as he dodged you. Laughter filled the room as the two of you tried to smear each other with flour, that is until you stopped trying to dodge Aemond and simply lunged towards him to embrace him.

With so much flour on your own hands and clothes, all of it was effectively transferred onto his black clothing.

“You’re terrible.” Aemond muttered chuckling slightly.

“Oh, don’t act like you didn’t start it.” You spoke into his chest. “Plus, you love me.”

Aemond relenting to the fact that the two of you were now dirty with flour and starch hugged you back.

“I do,” he hummed, one of his starch-laden hands reaching to your chin. Gently angling it so he could kiss them, “I really do love you.”

You smiled staring into his eye, relishing in the warmth that bloomed between the two of you. That was before he started laughing.

“What is it?!” You asked perplexed.

“You have just a little-” he wiped a part of your cheek.

“Urgh,” you rolled your eyes before pulling away from him, now actually realising how messy the both of you were.

Somehow though, the kitchen itself wasn’t as layered with flour as the two of you were. Thankfully so.

“Let’s just finish this up and we can shower?” Aemond suggested and you agreed.

The two of you finished the last of the filling and skins whilst laughing and joking around. Annoyingly, Aemond finally got the hang of folding the dumplings and made perfect-looking ones every time. Though he did make it slower than you. Something you’re sure you’re not going to be able to tease him about the next time you make dumplings again.

“Why are you making so many anyways? It takes up all the freezer space.” Aemond asked as you placed the plates in the freezer, effectively taking up almost every part of it with the copious amounts of dumplings you made.

“It’s always good to have frozen dumplings in the freezer so that you can eat it whenever you want. If I put them all in a container right now they’re going to stick together, the trick is to put them in the freezer for half and hour before combining them into one container.” You explained as he nodded.

Once the last of it was placed inside you both sighed in content and began cleaning up the space. Once that was done, the two of you sort of stood in silence, happy at all that you managed to do this early in the morning. That is until you turned to Aemond and had to stifle a peal of laughter and how ridiculous he looked.

“Come on lover boy, let’s shower. You look like you just killed a ghost.”

His black clothes were covered in flour and smeared with some filling here and there, he looked ridiculous. But as Aemond followed you to the bathroom to shower together, he didn’t think he minded getting all messy again if it meant he could hear you laugh so easily again as you cooked.

When he was growing up he didn’t think the peace of domesticity fitted him very well. Especially with how turbulent his childhood was. But now, being here with you, he realised just how much he loved it when he was with you.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #modern hotd #modern au #modern aemond targaryen x reader #modern aemond targaryen #hotd #asian y/n

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