Title: From the Heart
Universe: Kyou Kara Maou
Theme/Topic: The Joy of Cooking
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: lightly ConradxYuuri, Jennifer (guest appearance by Anissina)
Warnings/Spoilers: None I can imagine.
Word Count: 2,450
Summary: Yuuri's mother shows him how to infuse his food with love.
Dedication: pyrefly's holiday gift fic request!
A/N: This idea seemed like it was going to be a lot shorter than it actually turned out. Haha but I suppose that's the nature of my writing! XD
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.

"Why is this necessary again?" Yuuri asked, and looked rather lost as he stood in his kitchen holding a large mixing bowl and wearing one of his mother's favorite yellow frilly aprons.

"Because, Yuu-chan," she began, and brandished an egg beater at him for emphasis, "one of a bride's many jobs is to cook for those we love!"

"Oh," Yuuri said, and then blinked. "Hey! I'm not… I mean…" he trailed off, blushing. "You're a really weird mom, you know that?"

She simply beamed at him. "The cookies will be wonderful, as long as you bake them with love!" And then she grabbed him and pulled him over to the counter cheerfully. "Mama will show you exactly how!"

He sighed. And then stopped short when he realized something. "Hey, how come you're not showing Shori how to do this too?!" he asked after a moment, already afraid of the answer.

Jennifer laughed at the inquiry, sweetly and dismissively. "Sho-chan's bride can do it for him when he gets married!" she told him breezily, before expertly cracking two eggs into Yuuri's mixing bowl. "Next, sugar!"

"Wait, what exactly are you trying to say about me?!" Yuuri asked, and the two pink spots on his cheeks from earlier blossomed beet red when his own mind filled in the blanks for him.

In lieu of answering, his mother dumped a cup of sugar into the bowl and then smiled and kissed his cheek, "for extra sweetness."

Yuuri thought that it was like he was four and she was somehow dressing him up in skirts all over again, except without the actual skirts. Though the frilly apron thing wasn't too far removed, he supposed.

"And now, we add the butter and flour! Yuu-chan, you pour it in, ne? Ne? Isn't that fun?"

"Tons," he sighed in resignation, and even mustered up a watery smile (if only for the fact that she seemed so excited by the prospect of their baking together). As for him, it was the first time in a long while that he kind of missed hearing Gunter drone on proudly about random historical things like the internal drainage systems of Shin Makoku as devised by the third great maou and then improved upon vastly by the fifth two generations later. At least in Von Christ's lessons the young king could catch quick catnaps while his adjutant pranced around the room using the loftiest words he could come up with at the spur of any one particular moment, in an attempt to properly convey the absolute and unquestionable grandeur that was the history of Shin Makoku (drainage systems and all).

A light rap to his temple ripped him out of his nostalgia.

"Yuu-chan! Pay attention! Stirring with love is a very important part of the cookie-making process!" his mother chastised after catching his glazed over expression. Clenching a fist in front of her face, she put one hand on her hip and struck a very convincing power pose. He could practically see her eyes blazing fire. "If you don't do it with love, the cookies won't taste as good! It would be like buying cookies from a store!"

"Store cookies taste pretty good though," Yuuri said, reasonably. On her look, he quickly hunched a little lower over the bowl and murmured, "Right. With love."

"With love!" she repeated, more fervently than he. "Think of those people who are important to you when you make it! Then the effort is worth it! Then it's no real effort at all, because you'll be bringing sweetness and joy into the lives of your precious people with your love-filled food! Their appreciation for what you do for them will make this all worth it in the end!" She looked dreamy then, putting her hands on her cheeks and sparkling to herself. "When I cook, I usually think of Sho-chan and Yuu-chan and Uma-chan and that cute young man from that drama your father and I watched last week and…"

Luckily (sometimes anyway), one of the things his mother and Gunter had in common was their love of long lists, and Yuuri happily tuned her out for the time being as she went on and on about how much she adored all these various actors and actresses and pop stars and movie stars she'd seen recently (which apparently piled on the love when it came to her cooking) and instead, the young maou wondered how things were going back at the castle, how everyone was doing without him.

He'd left just as Greta had been learning how to plant flowers from Cheri in the garden (amidst Anissina's new and improved fertilizer formula lectures), and as Gwendal was putting the final touches on his latest furry creature (Yuuri held that it looked like a dog, but Gwendal insisted that it was a koala), and if the young king recalled correctly, Gunter had just gotten his first hair cut in twenty something odd years (after getting himself in quite a tangle with a shrubbery in the yard) and had been fussy and irritable and fishing for praise about it from everyone he came across (Yuuri in particular). Not only that, but the maou also remembered that as he'd left, Yozak had been very proudly showing off his latest cosplay (that was one thing Yuuri would never understand about the other man), and Murata had been very diligently chronicling and archiving some of their more notable adventures for future generations of mazoku to look back upon and hopefully, learn something from. Conrad had been recovering from a broken rib and some hefty bruising he'd incurred during a scuffle with some horse thieves that had taken a particular liking to the royal horses (they were all rather magnificent beasts, Yuuri could admit), and the young king hoped that the man who had given him his name was resting up appropriately and not trying to lend an odd hand around the castle when he was supposed to be confined to his room and healing properly as per the maou's specific orders.

Recalling the incident made Yuuri very vaguely guilty, if only because Conrad had known how attached the young king was to his steed and had risked life and limb (perhaps unnecessarily) to return Ao to his rightful master. Conrad of course, had assured Yuuri that it was all well worth the effort if it kept his liege from being saddened unnecessarily, though the big idiot neglected to remember the fact that Conrad being hurt in any capacity also saddened Yuuri.

Conrad had looked sheepish when Yuuri reminded him of that and quickly and sincerely apologized, though Yuuri wasn't sure that that was punishment enough for causing him so much distress and upon his return, meant to personally enforce the orders he had given to the older soldier regarding confinement and bed rest until his full recovery.

Though Yuuri had to admit to himself that he might have some ulterior motives to having Conrad confined while he healed, if only for the fact that he thought it would be a nice opportunity for Conrad to let Yuuri do something for him for a change.

Maybe (if they didn't turn out too horribly), he could bring Conrad back some of the cookies he was making with his mother today. He would of course, test them out on Shori first, just to make sure they were edible and didn't end up killing anyone.

"That's perfect, Yuu-chan!!" his mother exclaimed suddenly, and jolted him out of his thoughts by clapping her hands together gleefully enough that he actually jumped a little bit at the noise. "Mama can see just the right amount of love on your face to make these the yummiest cookies ever!"

He stared at her. "Eh?"

She beamed at him, looking absolutely like a proud parent about to give her son (daughter?) away at his-or-her wedding. "Oh I'm so happy that Yuu-chan finally understands this," she sniffled, and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with a definite sense of finality. "Ne, ne, what were you thinking just now? Or should I say…who were you thinking of?"

"Nothing! Er, I mean, no one!" he balked quickly, and felt the blood rushing back to his face all over again. "I was just stirring!" He tipped the bowl towards her to show her. "See? Stirring…"

She giggled. "Uh huh. The chocolate chips can feel your tender thoughts! Mama can tell these things, you know."

He blinked. Well. That was weird enough to make him almost forget his current mortification.

"Right. Um. Can we put in the nuts now?" he asked, quickly.

"Oh right, the nuts!" she exclaimed, and went to the cutting board to retrieve them, thankfully forgetting her inquiry for the time being.

Yuuri made sure to be very interested in her techniques for cookie baking for the rest of the afternoon, if only to save himself some interrogation.

Two slightly-burned-but-still-very-edible cookie trays and a toilet flush later and Yuuri found himself back in Shin Makoku's garden fountain, just in time to watch the entire plot where Cheri planted being refitted for Anissina's revolutionary new fertilization process. Yuuri suspected that in his absence, she'd gotten positive enough results that it would be made an official technique in one of the textbooks sometime within the month.

Anissina, upon seeing his rather unglamorous return to his kingdom, grinned (he wouldn't say shark-like exactly) and pulled him up out of the fountain with an overly cheerful, "heika! Perfect timing! Shall I explain to you what is going on here?"

To which he responded with a quick, "No, thank you," and asked immediately about Conrad's health.

She smirked at him. "Confined to his room as ordered, heika."

Well, that was a relief. "Um, I'm going to go check on him then," the young king told her, and beat a hasty retreat with the promise to listen to her new findings just as soon as he had time.

When he reached the castle he also managed to dodge Gunter with a well placed, "I think your hair looks great," and pulled out a small Tupperware container (the only thing he could think of that might help his cookies survive the underwater journey to Shin Makoku intact) from his pocket. He hoped that Conrad didn't hold the fact that there were cute yellow duckies printed all over it against him. Not that he honestly expected the older man would, but you never knew with these horribly embarrassing things one's mother subjected one to.

Knocking softly on the door, he was answered with a familiarly gentle, "Come in," a moment later, and opened the portal just enough to slip quietly through.

There he found Conrad in bed reading, chest still bandaged but looking decidedly less bruised than he'd been when Yuuri had left.

He brightened upon seeing the young king. "Yuuri," he greeted, and put his book down, moving to get up.

"Ah…stay there," Yuuri told him quickly, and made his way over to crouch at the older man's bedside. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better," Conrad told him. "Though I admit that being bound by your majesty's word to stay in my room has been a bit trying over the past few days."

Yuuri couldn't help but smile at that. "Well tough. That's what happens when you're reckless."

Despite the fact that he was very clearly being chastised by his king (again), Conrad smiled back. "I suppose so. I apologize."

Yuuri cleared his throat then, a bit shyly. "Well, uh… to show there aren't any hard feelings… here," he thrust the duck-covered container towards the soldier. "I brought you something." He paused then, and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Cookies, I mean. I brought you cookies. Um, that I made. Well, I helped make. My mom showed me how."

Conrad blinked down at the unexpected container, and Yuuri told himself to bear the cheerful yellow water fowl print with as much dignity as he could. He was a king, after all.

And then Conrad looked up, and the expression on his face was warm enough that Yuuri forgot about the duckies completely. "Thank you."

Yuuri chuckled, nervously. "Well, don't thank me yet, you haven't tasted them."

Conrad answered with quiet laughter of his own, and opened the lid. "I'll remedy that immediately, your highness."

Yuuri fought the urge to roll his eyes at the purposefully utilized title. "Right well, let me explain…"

Conrad held up one of the cookies before he could. "Are these…"

"Yeah," Yuuri sighed, and smiled in a sort of exasperated way that let the soldier know this had probably been entirely his mother's idea. "Swords. She said shapes were a sign of love too, or something."

Conrad's eyebrows arched a little at that.

"I MEAN," Yuuri began, hastily, "that when we cook for people we um, we care about, a little extra effort needs to be put in! Is what she said. Er…so… swords."

Conrad's lips twitched in mild amusement. "The effort is very much appreciated," he assured the teen, and then bit into his cookie.

Yuuri looked at his hands in his lap and hoped fervently that the cookies weren't horrible. Sure, they were a bit burnt, but he'd thought they'd tasted okay. Though to be fair, he was a teenaged boy, and to teenaged boys, a lot of things tasted okay so long as they were food. He comforted himself (a little) with the knowledge that his mother had assured him they were perfect (which didn't make much sense to him considering they were just a little burnt, but he figured she knew more about these things than he did in the long run and trusted her judgment on the matter as best he could). Besides, they hadn't killed Shori either.

Still, Yuuri unexpectedly felt like it was something much more important than a simple case of burnt chocolate chip cookies as he sat at the older man's bedside and waited for some sort of a verdict.

He wasn't disappointed.

"I love them," Conrad said after a moment, and caught Yuuri's eyes with his own when he did. "Thank you."

Yuuri breathed a big sigh of relief when he heard that, not having realized that he'd been holding his breath the entire time. He wondered why hearing those words from Conrad suddenly meant the world to him.

Or maybe—through the convoluted logic of his surprisingly astute mother— he really already knew why.

And at that, he supposed that his mom—regardless of being kind of insane— was on to something with all this crazy "cooking with love" stuff after all.

Next time, he thought he'd try making Conrad curry.

END