The deep dive of a Wiggly ship

I suspect that something gets lost when many a vanilla Sherlockian first encounters the hurdle that is the explicit sex found in much Sherlock fan fiction. And that makes sense, because sex is a very loud trumpet to the human brain, drowning out some of the subtler instruments in the band. But if you can leap over the big SEX hedge like a reader version of National Velvet, there are fertile fields to explore.

(Too many metaphors in one intro? Maybe.)

This thought occurred this morning after reading ol' Doc Smirk's latest tale of sudden relationship, "The Least He Can Do." A brief and unlikely coupling of Molly Hooper and Wiggins from BBC Sherlock might seem like just a quickie on the surface, but the core conflict it brings up runs so deep that it's apt to have you pondering it for some time after.

I mean, Molly and Wiggins? Molly loves Sherlock, we know, and the difference between the Brilliant One and the skeezy pharmaceutical artist is pretty huge. And yet, like all good relationship fic does, the pairing says something to us about both characters and leads into room to explore.

Wiggins is not a strong man, and life just sort of happens to him. One almost feels like he just stumbled into the drug trade because it was just there at the moment.

Molly might seem meek on the surface, but she's holding back some very strong emotions. And one of those emotions is her hatred of what drugs can to to a brilliant mind.

And since Molly can't do a damned thing about Sherlock Holmes, as much as she wants to, it makes sense that she might want to take it all out on a puppet who represents Sherlock's drug problem, something she hates, hates, hates in a man she finds herself hopelessly drawn to.

Smirk's tale comes at you quickly and then is done, leaving a very strong question of "Where does this go from here?" My own thought that it had hints of an unhealthy dom/sub relationship, where Molly went on taking out her anger on Wiggins in increasingly abusive scenarios and hating herself for it the whole time. (One hates to think what followed that final episode phone call, in a Wiggly universe.)

The greatest strength of fan fiction has always been relationship exploration, and proposing a rare pair like Wiggly (best ship name ever, by the way) can really lead down a rabbit hole with a lot of depth for further digging. Hopefully this one will find its way into one of the 221B Con panels this year.