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Pears in Brandy

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Title: Pears in Brandy
Fandom: LOTR
Characters/Pairing: Berilac and Meriadoc Brandybuck
Rating: G/PG
Based on: General post-Troubles milieu

"Good, then?" Beri asked, smiling as he watched Merry's head tip back against the chair behind him, heard his sighing hum of pleased contentment. "All you wished?"

"And more yet," Merry murmured with his own bright smile. "A fine dish of brandied pears indeed." As Merry moaned happily round another spoonful, Beri glanced to the window half-unwillingly, gaze drawn out through the slanting grey rain to the bare wet stump below. In past years the grand old pear which had borne the fruit Merry now ate would have fluttered its blooms below the window, cheery even in the rain, but the Ruffians had sawn it down for firewood and troublemaking this October past, a few short weeks before the Travelers' return.

Behind him Beri heard the clink of spoon on bowl, heard Merry sigh again. And then he heard, in tones quiet but stirring like a horn-call, so that he could no more have not turned than not breathed, "Beri, when I was gone, were you cross with me?"

Merry sat, still and quiet with his bowl in his lap, and his brow was smooth but his eyes glinted keen as steel. "I didn't know we'd be so long, nor that such darkness would come here meanwhile, but even so I should have gone. I couldn't've let Frodo go alone, and Pippin and I, we could not have led a battle as we were before. And, so."

Beri, belatedly realizing his mouth had dropped open, swallowed and nodded, and nodded again. "This is the last fruit from the courtyard pear." Whence Merry had just seen Beri looking; he spoke like Beri's cousin again, but though his voice had faded soft and small, his chin was still up, his eyes still fixed on Beri's. "If you're cross with me I am sorry, for I'd never hoped to grieve you, but I can't be sorry I went."

What might Beri say to that? He held out his hand, hardly knowing why he reached, and Merry reached up to take and squeeze it. "I'm not cross," he said, knowing in that moment it was true. "I was never cross with you, cousin."

"Thank you." Merry squeezed Beri's hand again, and Beri could feel his new strength, the different shape of his callouses; Merry's sleeve pulled back a touch, showing thready white scars lacing his skin. "I was glad to know Buckland had you here."

Then Merry let go, and raised his spoon again, but he held his next spoonful up to Beri's mouth. They indeed were fine pears.