John is a traitor.
They have committed many wrongs against one another in the course of their relationship. Some were necessary. Others sprung from their respective flaws. But the way John has attempted to kill him tonight, Sherlock cannot forgive.
"This is your fault." Curled up defensively in the back of a cab, Sherlock wraps his arms around his middle and groans, wondering whether he'll split open on the way up the steps to the flat. "You trapped me." There are words one does not say to a paternal Italian chef if one wishes to escape alive. 'Sherlock hasn't eaten in three days. Feed him up, would you?' are at the very top of that list.
John and those round damned eyes of his, brimming with that murky, melancholy weariness that grants him command of grannies, young children, and women who like small dogs. "You tricked me," Sherlock accuses. "You said you didn't want to go to Angelo's." He doesn't dare raise his voice. He might vomit. Or explode.
"Yes, well, if you'd listened to me, we wouldn't have gone to Angelo's, would we?" John replies comfortably, settling down into his slightly snugger-than-usual jumper, which looks like it may have the magical power to ease the pain of an overstuffed belly. Sherlock covets it.
Angelo proclaimed, "You will eat like kings!" and then fed them like Henry VIII, laying forth a bounty of experimental Italian cookery: dishes he'd been meaning to test, newly mastered techniques, beloved Tuscan dishes from his childhood that are too…Italian for most Londoners to appreciate. He fed them like they were his own sons recently returned from a political prison in Sri Lanka, and there was no saying no to it. Angelo, when he wants to be, is a force of nature; a hurricane redolent of basil. He was born to be someone's grandmother.
They reach the staircase at Baker Street, and stare upward, somewhat more daunted than if they were facing down a hardened murderer.
"One step at a time," John mumbles to himself, and suits action to word, laying a hand on the banister and tackling the risers with all the gritty determination of a Sir Edmund Hillary.
"I feel like a hobbit," Sherlock grumbles, following him with what he's aggravatingly aware is less than his usual grace.
John jerks back toward him. "You know what a hobbit is?"
"No, John, I have no idea, but television advertisements inform me that they waddle after feedings."
At the top, blessedly, there is a sofa. A fantastic wonderland of sprawling cushions where Sherlock can arrange himself just so and then lie as still as possible until his digestive processes come to rescue him from his purgatory.
John makes tea, and hands him a mug. Sherlock stares at it. "Are you insane?"
"Drink it, Sherlock." He rolls his eyes. "It'll make you feel better. Trust me."
"The last time I trusted you, I was nearly murdered by a cook who's supposed to be on my side."
John shoves Sherlock's feet a little back, and then sits on them, settling back into the sofa's padding with a relieved sigh. "No. That would be the last time I asked you to do something, and you pointedly did the exact opposite. I can hardly be blamed for your being a contrary bastard. Drink your tea."
Sherlock scowls at it—it's black, yet another violence against his person—and then drinks his tea.
It does help.
Perhaps he'll forgive John eventually. The lampredotto was admittedly astounding. And Sherlock's feet are marvellously warm where they're tucked under John's thighs.