Set directly after Sherlock's 'fall'. There's much more to come!

Thanks to anita999 for Beta reading, and my sister who, despite being a hardcore JohnLock shipper still enjoys reading my Sherlolly stuff. It's worth writing it just for your reactions

Chapter 1 - Sherlock, Deceased

Molly was worrying her fingers, her hands twisting and tugging at one another while she stood staring at the door. A number of half-formed tears had collected in her eyes.

Poor John. Oh god, poor John.

She had stayed to watch from the window just long enough to see Sherlock take his place on the concrete; to see the blood poured correctly; to see John break into pieces when he felt no pulse in his companion's veins.

She couldn't watch after that.

He must have known.

"I want you to stay inside. No deviation."

"Sherlock..."

"Stay inside!"

They were the last words he had said to her before heading up to the roof and she had been breathing around a blockage in her throat ever since, even though she had seen him bounce to safety; even though he had looked up to give her the briefest nod.

The nod had been her cue. She was to head down to the morgue, ready to receive him, but in that moment she was cement - she couldn't take her eyes off the scene that was being set up. It was played out with such precision, such incredible timing and acting, and just thinking about Sherlock's face covered in that blood, John's face growing paler and his eyes more distant with every second...

She closed her eyes against the memory.

A tear fell down her cheek.

The squeak of wheels and rush of feet approaching made her brush it away. She sniffed, hard, and rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck right and left.

She turned to face the doors, stepping back further and further as the sounds grew closer until they finally burst in, the stretcher leading the way so that it was his hair, matted with blood, that she saw first.

"What's going on?" she asked, her voice high-pitched.

The porters who were wheeling the stretcher forward were ones she recognised from the hospital. That didn't mean they weren't in on the plan, but even if they were...

"No one can know, Molly. You have to act like it's real."

She hadn't been sure she could do it. But it wasn't so hard. Not when he looked like that. Not when she thought about John.

Oh John...I'm so, so sorry.

"Is that..." she stammered. "It's not..."

"He jumped. From the roof."

"He...sorry, he did...what?" she took a deep breath because her nerves were catching up with her and her voice was starting to shake. "He can't have."

"He did. Doctors said to bring him straight down."

They were both looking at her, waiting for direction. She pointed to an empty bed, the furthest from the door, and followed them as they wheeled him over.

"Are you alright, Miss?" the younger of the two said. Both his eyebrows raised as he took her in. "Did you know him?"

"Yes. Yes I, uh...not well. Just..."

"I thought I'd seen him around," the man grunted as they adjusted the stretcher height and rolled Sherlock's perfectly still, heavy form unceremoniously onto the metal top. "He's that Detective, in he? Something Holmes?"

"Yeah, been in the papers a lot," the older man went on as they threw the straps across the stretcher and adjusted the height back down. "That case about the crown jewels and that. Jumped up twat. Seen him waltzing round here like he's lord of the friggin' manor. Pompous git, if you ask me."

Her fists were shaking at her sides.

"Well I think I can take it from here."

"You sure, Doc? You look a bit shaken up." The younger again. He looked ready to close the distance between them. She thought, perhaps, he looked interested.

She breathed deeply, enough to make her voice loud and strong. "I'm fine. Thank you."

The older porter grabbed him by the arm, spinning him towards the door. He looked back as he left but she gave him less than a second before turning her attention to the broken looking man on the slab.

His eyes were closed now. Someone must have had the sense to do that for him; he had done too good a job of faking the death on the pavement, leaving his eyes wide and vacant. Even the great Sherlock Holmes wouldn't have been able to sustain that.

She was waiting for him to move, to speak, but he was all stillness.

Her hand skittered an inch from his arm.

"Sherlock," she whispered.

No answer.

"Sshh...Sherlock...?"

A small change in his expression was the only indication he was alive, his breathing entirely undetectable to the naked ear. The expression was...unimpressed.

"Sherlock. There's no one here. You can..."

"The door...is open."

He said it so quietly, with so slight a movement of his lips that she could well have imagined it.

"It's...I know. If I lock it they'll wonder...I'm not allowed..."

"Mol-ly."

There was a hint of the desperate in the way he forced out her name through his sealed lips.

She walked back to the doors and turned the lock, her eyes penetrating as far down the corridor as the tint in the small windows would allow. There was no one around.

"Coast is clear," she said turning back round. He was already up, his legs dangling off the end of the slab, his coat discarded on the floor, hands at his shirt, unbuttoning...

"Do you want me to leave?"

His response was a look that said 'Don't be an idiot,' so she hovered by the iceboxes, watching but not watching until he was down to his trousers which was when she remembered she needed to text her aunt to let her know she wouldn't be able to meet for their coffee this weekend.

She kept her head down after sending the text and waited until she heard the hiss from his lips as he settled his flesh on the metal.

The soft ruffle of fabric told her it was safe to look.

He lay, still once more, under the standard hospital blue blanket but his skin was goose pimpled and his nipples peaked.

She walked over, replacing her phone in her lab coat pocket.

"This isn't going to work," she said and he opened his eyes to glare at her. "I mean you can't lie like that for the next few hours. You'll freeze to the table."

"I'll be fine."

"You'll lose your skin."

She looked around, expecting a solution to slap her in the face.

"You need to unlock the door. It's been too long already."

"It's been less than 5 minutes," she replied as she walked around the room, trying to find something, anything that would help. Why hadn't she thought about this already?

There was a drawer of spare linens. If she folded them over...

She grabbed three of the long, blue blankets and sped back to the slab.

"Up you get."

He scowled at her. "You're wasting time."

"So are you. Up."

He did as she said and she tried not to let the flashes of his naked flesh perturb her.

She lay the blankets out, folding them over once, twice.

"Aren't you done yet?"

She folded the last one and stood back to let him hoist himself back up, his own blanket scrunched in his hand.

"It won't keep the cold out for long but..."

He was silent as he lowered himself down. She couldn't not look this time. He was entirely naked and utterly beautiful and...

"You're staring."

"I...I'll go and open the door."

He grabbed her wrist.

"Thank you, Molly."

She nodded and he let go, throwing the blanket over his form with a flourish, hiding his body and schooling his expression effortlessly to become Sherlock Holmes, deceased, once more.