Holnnes on tumblr made this post: I feel like the people going "HAAAAH SHERLOLLY ISN'T GOING TO BE CANON MOFFAT SAID SO" don't really have much experience with Sherlolly shippers. Even before we got a kiss and a crime solving 'date', we were fully prepared to keep shipping no matter what happened. I'm pretty sure Sherlock could be sent to Jupiter on a case and Molly could lead a fleet of submarines on the search for Atlantis and at least one of us would find a way to reunite them just as an excuse to write some smut.

Courtesy of that wonderful post and Benedicted-Cumberbatched's encouragement, I present a cracky tail (yes I said t-a-i-l not t-a-l-e) of intergalactic romance!

Commander Molly Hooper of the British Navy stared around in wonder at the sight that met her eyes. The sky was filled with planets - no, moons; she recognized Ganymede and Europa, Io and Callisto as they ghosted through the dark sky. One minute she'd been in her submarine, the HMS Baker Street, and then the whirlpool had taken them down, down, to death, she thought...was this, then, the afterlife? Heaven or Hell, Purgatory or some other state of being? Or was she simply dying, delusional?

She pinched herself, wincing at the pain. No, not dead, unless being dead meant you felt exactly the same as you did when you were alive. She was still breathing, could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest, the warmth of the sand beneath her feet and the coolness of the night breeze on her face.

So where, then, was she? The evidence in the sky proclaimed Jupiter, but the sand beneath her bare feet – where had her boots and uniform gone, why was she wearing only a sheer wisp of fabric round her hips? –and tranquil turquoise ocean proclaimed somewhere less otherworldly. Tahiti, perhaps, or Hawaii.

No matter which option she chose, both were equally impossible. She'd been sailing the north Atlantic, not the Pacific, and the last thing she remembered before waking up here was the sound of the navigator, Anderson, calling out a desperate SOS while the alarm claxon sounded and the instrumentation on the Baker Street suddenly went berserk.

"Lovely, isn't it."

Molly gasped and turned, hand automatically groping for a sidearm that wasn't there. The man standing before her was a stranger, not one of her crew, but someone she recognized nonetheless. "Sherlock Holmes?" she said, staring in disbelief.

He gave a slight, mocking bow. "Very impressive, Commander Hooper, got it in one."

Ignoring the fact that he knew her name in spite of them never having actually met before – and her not wearing a uniform to give her rank away – she plowed on. "How can you be here? The Hudson and its crew vanished into space two years ago!"

She noted the sudden expression of consternation on his face, swiftly hidden behind a mask of assumed boredom. "Two years? Huh. It literally feels like no time at all has passed since the Hudson crashed into a special anomaly and I woke up here, dressed as you currently see me." He waved his hands down the length of his torso and the tops of his legs in dramatic 'look at me' fashion.

It was an odd coincidence, that they'd been literally across the solar system from one another and yet still found themselves apparently stranded on Jupiter after unexplained phenomena took out their vessels. She said as much, although she stubbornly refused to ask how he'd known her name and rank. "Captain Holmes," she began, only to be interrupted by the infuriating man.

"Oh, do call me Sherlock, Molly," he said with a sniff. "No need to stand on formality. Although it's heartening to know that my legend lives on after my supposed demise in the darkness of space."

"'Legend?' Hardly," Molly scoffed. "Infamy, more like!"

"Infamy," he repeated with a raised eyebrow. Molly noted the way those lovely blue-green orbs – so similar in hue to the gentle waves rolling onto shore behind them both – narrowed as he raked his gaze over her. "I hardly think I deserve so harsh a reckoning in history's books as that!"

"You stole a spaceship, hijacked the crew, and set off to wreak havoc among the stars," she pointed out tartly, wishing her face didn't feel quite so hot – or that her heart would slow its gallop to a more sedate pace.

Captain Holmes peered over at her with a frown. "I liberated the vessel from a tyrannical ogre of a commanding officer, stranded him and anyone who wished to leave the ship at a mining colony on Mars, and gave the rest of the crew the option of joining me or joining them. Most of whom, sensibly enough, picked me and a life of adventure."

"Adventure, he says," Molly scoffed. "Hah! Thievery and banditry and who knows what else – and for what? You'd all have ended up hanged eventually!"

He sneered at her. "Oh? And searching for the lost continent of Atlantis – how is that so different than what I had in mind, hmm?"

"How did you know my mission?" she demanded, outraged, unaware of how close they'd come to one another until she found herself looking up – and up – at him from only a few feet away.

"I know everything about you, Molly Hooper," he replied in a seductive murmur, his expression turning from contempt to contemplative – as in, he looked now as if he were contemplating some very, very naughty ideas.

That flash of hunger in his eyes, surely she was imagining it? What she would give to be wearing her uniform right now! It was unfair that the man standing before her not only had a height advantage – six feet and a bit to her five feet three inches – but also that he was gorgeous, charismatic, and fully clothed as well. In, she noted, what looked like period-perfect 17th century pirate garb, right down to a cutlass and pistol thrust through the sash at his narrow waist. How appropriate.

How delicious, some wicked part of her mind noted with a purr of approval. Molly ignored it; she was a naval officer, dammit, not the heroine of some cheesy paperback romance!

While she was busy berating herself, Sherlock had moved even closer, one hand reaching out to touch her hair. "You really are quite lovely, you know," he said, his voice deep and rich as a Lindt 90% cocoa Excellence bar. "If I had to be stranded alone on Jupiter with anyone…"

Molly, who had been swaying forward and tilting her head back, lips parted, stiffened and pulled away from him. "What d'you mean, alone? Where's your crew?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Where's yours?" He looked around exaggeratedly, one hand over his brow as he peered this way and that. "I suppose they're either cavorting together on some other tropical paradise of an island, or else…" His voice trailed off and Molly swallowed. Hard. Or else they were dead, he was saying-without-saying.

"Or else they're perfectly safe back on our respective vessels wondering what the hell happened to us. Or else this is a shared delusion. Or else…well, I could go on speculating, but doing so with no facts is tantamount to spinning my mental wheels, as it were." There it was, that glint of heat flashing in his eyes as he looked at her. "Why should we waste our time, when there are far more productive things we could be doing?"

"Like figuring out a way off this island – planet – whatever – and back to Earth?" Molly asked warily, knowing what response she'd get. The same kind of response she was hoping for, actually, given her instant attraction to the dangerous man in front of her. Instant, and highly inappropriate. If she could do to him what her libido was whispering – shouting, screaming – at her to do…well, it would be conduct unbecoming an officer, and then some!

"Is that a proper ocean?" she asked once she was able get control of herself. If her first officer, Sally Donovan, could see her now! The thought of her good friend reminded her that she still had no idea as to the other woman's fate, or that of the rest of the crew, and sudden tears threatened. It was as if all her emotions were far closer to the surface than usual!

Sherlock shrugged and peered over at the waves disinterestedly and seeming unaware of her sudden emotional distress. "It looks proper enough; there's certainly a salt tang in the air, and the spray hasn't harmed me any, although I haven't gone deeper than the toes of my boots so far."

"Right. Ta." Molly grimly choked back the threatening tears. If she was going to cry over the possible deaths of the men and women with whom she'd so proudly served for the past four years, she was damn well going to do it with the ocean spray masking her tears, and not in front of this arrogant criminal. A handsome, rather delicious looking criminal, but still a criminal.

Without waiting for an answer, she dashed over to the waves and splashed into the water. It felt like heaven, warm and inviting, and she quickly dove in.

When she emerged a minute later, with Sherlock shouting anxiously at her from shore, two things had occurred to her: one, it had been a really stupid idea to jump into the water without finding out if it was safe, and two, she was now a mermaid.