Danger Nights

A/N: This is the first chapter of book 3 in my Johncroft series. (Its predecessors are Promise to the Living and The Devil in Devon.) If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the first two fics, as Danger Nights features some OCs. To all those who are continuing with me in this AU: welcome back! -Deklava

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John Watson was exhausted but happy. He and Greg Lestrade had spent the afternoon and early evening at an invigorating football match (London won), and Mycroft would be back from Prague tomorrow morning. As their cab turned onto Baker Street and stopped in front of 221B, he acknowledged that life was good.

Lestrade looked over at him. "What time does Mycroft get in tomorrow?"

"Early. Five-ish." John smiled as he took out his wallet. Sunrise arrivals invariably meant that he'd wake up in Mycroft's arms. The elder Holmes would take a chauffeured car directly from the private airport to Baker Street, let himself into the flat, and slide into John's bed, sometimes fully dressed… and sometimes not. They'd kiss, touch, and make love while daylight gradually brightened the room, relishing the rare intimacy of solitude. Their respective obligations made theirs a relationship sustained by calls, texts, and stolen time, but neither complained. They were, above all else, men who understood the concept of duty.

He couldn't wait for morning.

When he paid the cabbie and exited the vehicle with Lestrade, the first thing John heard was loud music. It wasn't coming from Sherlock's violin either. Judging by the range and volume of the clamour –pulsing bass, crashing drumbeats, reedy synthesizer riffs- either a rock concert or a block party was being held in the flat. Intermittent laughter provided an underscore.

"What the hell?" He stared up at the windows, where the curtains shivered under the force of the noise.

Lestrade's expression wavered between amusement and disbelief. "Any chance Sherlock decided to sponsor a rave and not tell you first?"

John shook his head. "Not a chance." He couldn't see Alexei being behind it either. The fourteen-year-old was staying with Sherlock and John while Mycroft was playing political chess in the Czech Republic. Like his father and uncle, Alexei had an aversion to pointless social gatherings. "I spend my time playing count the idiots," he grumbled once.

Baffled and now a little worried, John ran toward the door and nearly dropped his keys twice in his haste to unlock and open it. Once he and Lestrade were inside, the music's volume nearly sent them both staggering back into the street.

"Bloody hell!" Lestrade shouted as they both covered their ears. "The neighbours will report Mrs. Hudson for a noise disturbance."

Cringing at the thought of the landlady coming home from her Brighton vacation to a court summons, John led the way upstairs.

The two men burst into the flat, which had been an ordinary –if messy- dwelling only hours before. Right now it was doing double duty as a dance bar. Half-naked bodies snogged on the furniture and gyrated to the music. Liquor bottles, most of them empty, covered the coffee table, mantle, and kitchen table, where they infiltrated Sherlock's chemistry set.

"Hey!" a male voice yelled. A beefy teenaged boy with spikey black hair and kohl-ringed eyes was waving John's army automatic around. "Finally got the box open and look what's inside!"

John pushed through the half-somnolent bodies toward him, but Lestrade was faster. The former Detective Inspector grabbed the kid's wrist with one hand and used the other to wrest the weapon away. Then he pinpointed the source of the music- a surprisingly tiny MP3 player hooked up to boulder-sized speakers- and abruptly unplugged it, plunging the flat into silence.