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exciting case would help break the pattern he was establishing. He thought if he could absent Holmes from temptation, from the unhealthy routines he had established in their home, the problem would fade away. He is a dreamer, my Watson.
    Watson and Holmes were invited out to the country home of Colonel Hayter, an old army patient of Watson’s from Afghanistan. Holmes was naturally resistant to go, “but when Holmes understood that the establishment was a bachelor one,” he became willing. I told you Watson would have missed it if one of the soldiers surrounding him during the fight was a member of the club, so to speak, and Colonel Hayter is proof of that. It never occurred to Watson why Hayter kept inviting him to come round, and it also didn’t occur to him that when the invitation was extended to Holmes as well, it was Hayter’s way of recognizing them as a pair, and of giving up his pursuit of Watson with grace.
    Alas Hayter and Watson were the only gentlemen in the room. When Holmes arrived, and he and Hayter began to get along as Watson hoped they might, Holmes started making himself more than comfortable. He draped himself over the Colonel’s couch as Hayter and Watson talked guns (and no man is ever innocent of double entendre when talking about guns), Holmes smirked all the while, quite enjoying himself in languid repose, until Hayter brought up a local mystery that perked him from his snide little reverie.
    Watson threw a wet blanket over his excitement; Holmes was wrung out from work and recreation, and he was forbidden from involving himself in the matter. However; it is unwise to leave Sherlock Holmes with idle hands. He didn’t turn to cocaine that night (he didn’t have the solution with him is all) but he did find something else to do.
    Colonel Hayter had already complimented Holmes on his most recent European endeavor, and he had witnessed my tender Watson mothering Holmes on the subject of work and relaxation. The Colonel was an independent man himself; no wife, no children, certainly no one tsking at him when he overexerted himself. He had a measure of sympathy for Holmes, and when the detective cast a wry look at Hayter while Watson shook his finger and said, “You are here for a rest, my dear fellow,” Colonel Hayter smiled back at him, and even dared to wink, or so Watson now swears he saw.
    There must have been some kind of signal that passed between Holmes and Hayter, because they rather connected later that night. Sherlock Holmes was not and is not a man you can curb. Watson was trying to be his doctor, his lover, and his friend; a triple threat to Holmes’s autonomy that he was not going to tolerate. If Watson was going to act like his wife, then Holmes would treat him with the complete disregard he has for women. After all their years together, and knowing what Watson assumed about their mutual fidelity, Holmes was sure to be indiscreet in his flirtation with Hayter. This was so much less about the Colonel than it was meant to hurt Watson, and hurt him it did.
    Watson told me what he saw. He didn’t like how chummy things were getting, and the way Holmes kept smirking at him made him nervous; those shifting gray eyes, chameleons of his mood, there was something lurking in them, something premeditated. Watson thought he would try to lead the men to bed by yawning, stretching, and retiring at a reasonable hour. But he only managed to force himself away early, leaving Holmes and Hayter sitting beneath the mantle with night caps they were both careful not to finish too quickly. Watson is cursed with an emotional divining rod, an unsatisfying tool when compared to Holmes’s deductive lens; Watson can sense disturbances, but he can’t identify them. He has to have every situation play out before his very eyes.
    Watson knew something was brewing in the room he’d left, so he staked himself in the hallway, peeking around occasionally to see whether his suspicions would be confirmed. He did not