An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
There are like 300 of us who play DS on tumblr and it's literally 3 people who carry the Heartman and Deadman fanart and fanfics on their shoulders, especially the Heartsam ship and the Deadsam ship, so this is my contribution.
The fic focuses on Heartman and his relationship with Sam, although I don't know yet if it's going to include the relationship with Deadman or not, it's a work in progress.
Summary:
Heartman scans Sam's face and from him jumps to Deadman looking at him as he paces. At times Heartman wonders if Sam will be overwhelmed by all that they asked and expected of him; the preppers to make trips from one end to the other, the distribution centres to be able to carry hundreds of kilos through valleys and mountains in sun, rain, snow and BTs, overwhelmed by what President Strand and Amelie expected of him, and what Die-Hardman demanded of him. Of what he himself, Heartman, and Deadman asked of him... –he looks back at Sam– wanted from him.
So @biblichor and I have been working on a Higgs-focused Death Stranding roleplay for a few months, and we’ve reached a point where we thought we’d like to share the story with some other Higgs fans.
Our premise is that Higgs stranded himself on the beach after being unable to go through with pointing Fragile’s gun at himself. Sam, after reading Peter Englert’s diaries some weeks later, decided he couldn’t just be left to rot so went back with Fragile’s help to get him. Higgs is weakened, despondent, and not wholly convinced he wants to be back in the land of the living at all.
Warnings for a suicidal Higgs and we do seriously go down exploring that route, but there’s also reconciliation, second chances, and lots of h/c. We want Higgs to realise someone might actually care for him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“Same book. The one that Jemma gave to me; she read it during her pregnancy with Alya. Said it was very interesting,” His eyes continue to skim across the page.
“The one about Cosmos? Are you pregnant? Should I be expecting-“
“Haha, very funny,” Daniel snaps the book closed, placing it on his desk. Kora is faintly humming to some song from a band she’s become mildly obsessed with in the pilot’s seat.
“But no, sorry Johnson. We might have to head back home to brush up on your human biology if that’s your thought process,” Daniel says, not without copious amounts of cheek.
Home. It’s a funny thought to think of Earth as home. It’s a planet, home to trillions of different organisms. Daisy used to think of the team as home. Now that they’ve gone their separate ways, she’s beginning to consider Daniel her home. She wonders if he feels the same way.
“I’m well versed on that, thank you very much,” she says, only with mild undertones of a sexual nature. Daniel relaxes in his chair, which Daisy takes an invitation to sit gently on his lap.
“Landing in T-minus twenty!” Kora yells over her absurdly loud radio.
“Love you,” Daniel whispers into Daisy’s ear, and her stomach flutters.
“Love you too,” she whispers, leaning her head back into him. Home. It’s a funny thing. Daisy’s come to know that for most, it’s a place. But only because of the people that the place reminds them of. She’s decided that no ship or planet or house will ever feel as safe as him.
The pair sits in silence, both grateful for someone who will catch them when they run into walls.
So I did art of Higgs with more than just the Higgs equations on his forehead a while ago but the concept still wouldn’t leave me so I wanted to explore it in more detail. Higgs/OC technically, but it’s not really what the fic is about. It’s about a wordplay loving physicist being stupidly self indulgent nothing to see here.
Summary: Higgs is the Particle of God, but it takes a physicist to write the equations of his heart on his human skin.
(AO3)
—
"Not only God knows. I know. And by the end [of this] you will know." — Sidney Coleman, theoretical physicist
Since the 1970s, research has considered the possibility that the Higgs field occupies a metastable state and that a lower vacuum energy is available to it, thus allowing for the spontaneous occurrence of a vacuum decay event with dire consequences for the universe. The timescale over which such a catastrophe may trigger is long, so long that it should be far beyond concern for any human lifetime, but there is also the possibility that certain cosmological circumstances may enhance this decay rate. One such seed is the presence of a microscopic black hole.
—
Black sands and rolling waves are no Elysian Fields. Perhaps that's what comes after.
Higgs will never know. His own field is…less than stable.
They stand in the aftermath of rain, he and her, air dense, tears brimming, heavy under gravity's pull. The masks are shed first and then the hoods. Gold falls to earth to be followed by discarded equipment—an odradek, a BB pod, and then time-proofed leather slips from narrow shoulders, armour undone, and Higgs stands bared to the skin.
In perfect symmetry, she stands opposite.
What was her name again?
"Kohlman," she answers, reading the question in his eyes. "And you are Higgs."
"Particle of God," he finishes, voice a whisper, and holds his breath as she draws near. "Will you pray to me?"
A blackened fingertip rises to sweep a gentle arc across his eyelid. In her other hand, a pen—Egyptian kohl brush or tattooist's tarred needle? Left hand, right hand? It doesn't matter. His face will be transformed.
"I'll pray that you fulfil your potential," she murmurs, and makes her first mark.
Lagrangian. Covariant.
Symbols carved into his brow. They move in space together. Change in time.
Mass coupling. Self coupling.
They couple. A doublet beneath the grey skies.
The particle of God and she knows him, inscribes his secrets on human skin still soft and susceptible to time and decay. Her lips brush his cheek, tasting black tears. "Is this what you wanted, Higgs?" A scratch of the pen at his throat. "To unite everything in mass extinction?"
"I'll give you mass, but I'm not the extinction."
"No, you're the seed." A lie told standing in the killing field. Her hand trails down his neck, moves to settle on the left side of his chest. (The right side, matching the chirality of his heart.) The sharp nib of the pen again begins to trace, smarting pain, blood springing to the surface. "We've already waited so long. Where's the black hole that will end us all? In here?"
She flattens her palm over the equations, feels his heartbeat underneath like the lap of waves on a far-off shore.
"I'll fix the UCA problem, but decay takes time," he answers, either with a snarl or a chuckle. It sounds the same. "No time on the beach except imaginary, and I've done plenty of imagining what I'll do."
Her hand lingers, his pulse counting out the seconds in a steady rhythm, timefall-impervious beneath the veil of his skin. "I thought you favoured the nuclear option? End everything in an instant?"
"That is my preferred solution." With a sigh, he lets his head fall forward, black-and-blood-smeared forehead coming to rest on her bare shoulder as she retrieves the cloak to drape him.
She touches his back, works at a knot between his scapulae. He’s growing tenser. "Come on, you're done. The tattoos will take."
"Not yet." He stays leaning on her several moments longer before straightening up, rejecting the hood she tries to pull over his head. "You might want to think about putting yours on, sweetheart."
Clear skies or no, it's wise to heed his words.
Kohlman tugs her own hood and armour back into place and watches as Higgs steps back, throwing out his arms as though in invitation as he turns his eyes to the heavens. There's no warning, nor thunder, nor blip even from the abandoned odradek as the first of the raindrops fall.
A hiss of steam on bare skin. The fall is a drizzle, almost a mist, but for the span of time her mind calls seconds and her biology would call days, she watches as the water trickles over Higgs' exposed face and chest and evaporates into nothing. The narrow streaks of red among the black wash away. Weeks of healing compressed into moments, and the fresh marks lose their redness, rough edges smooth over, leaving behind sharp symbols and glossy ink of which she's proud.
Higgs tilts his head forward and at last pulls up his hood as a shield. From beneath its peak she sees piercing blue eyes gaze out, narrow lips stretched in a grin across a face that will never recognise its twin in the mirror again.
Symmetric time flow and parity ought to exist in nature, yet her marks upon his forehead have turned him chiral; thoroughly broken the symmetry of both. He seems pleased.
The Higgs field is invariant under conformal transformations.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 8/8
Fandom: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Higgs Monaghan, Sam Porter Bridges, Heartman (Death Stranding)
Additional Tags: Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation, Suicidal Thoughts, Healing, Angst, Second Chances, Forgiveness, Higgs Monaghan Needs a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:
After reading Peter Englert's diaries, Sam's convinced leaving Higgs to rot on Amelie's beach is a mistake. Higgs is the one who still has to be convinced to return to the land of the living.
A/N: Collab with @biblichor. I’ve now released all the chapters, so it’s complete if people want to check it out.
Does nyone have a copy of Brooklinegirl's 'They Eat Pizza Don't they?'
I was halfway through reading it on my browser when it crashed. When I reopened it came up with an error page that it had been permanently been taken down/the website it was on was permanently down (happyfriendbox page). I can't find it on her AO3 account (only 2 DS fics) and her other blogs only have links to the happyfriendbox.tripod page.
