---

North Bend Library Writing Contest

For Your Kiss, I’d Die; For Your Love, I’d Go to Hell

By Christina F.

His name was Seth Brown, and he was the average American male. He lived in the suburbs, finding it a nice change of pace from the busy city in which he worked as an accountant, and he drove a rather beaten down black truck. He was a fairly good driver, only having incurred one ticket and one slightly broken bumper over the ten years he had been behind the wheel.

Also, he was rather fond of baseball. He thought it was the greatest game to ever be invented -- soccer did come in at a close second, though. He liked playing video games and eating pizza and drinking beer. He had a large group of friends, some even from high school but most from college and his workplace, and often went out to restaurants with them or to the park to play Ultimate Frisbee.

His greatest passion in life, however, was not accounting. Or Ultimate Frisbee. Or baseball.

His greatest passion in life was a man by the name of Mark Dallas.

...

It was a beautiful day for a wedding, Seth mused as he watched one of his dearest friends, Kelly Avila, become Kelly Johnson and the wife of the only man she had ever truly loved.

The sun was shining, and the entire world seemed happy as the two young lovers came together in front of their friends, family, and the state to become one. Kelly had never looked so radiant, and it had absolutely nothing to do with her dress. Her glow came from the love she felt for the man she was exchanging vows with, from the freedom that came from that love. Seth hadn't stopped smiling since he had woken up. He was immeasurably happy for them.

His happiness couldn't even be dampened by what enviousness he harbored in his heart that someone else was so happy and he wasn't. That didn't even matter at the moment. All that mattered was that Kelly was getting married and she would be joyful for the rest of her life. Seth had to blink back tears as the husband and wife walked back down the aisle together.

Seth walked with the other guests to the reception area -- twenty or thirty tables out in the open air several yards off -- and nearly had to bite and claw his way through the crowd that flocked to the couple to finally get to see Kelly face-to-face.

"Seth!" she said excitedly, throwing her arms around her longtime friend.

"Kell-bell," he murmured into her hair as he returned the embrace. "Congratulations; I wish you all of the joy and happiness you deserve for the rest of your life."

"Thank you," Kelly replied with a soft smile as she stole a glance at her new husband.

"But," Seth continued with a smirk, "if he ever hurts you, I'll kick his butt."

Kelly giggled and kissed her friend's cheek before she was whisked away by her old sorority sisters. Seth merely laughed and walked back to his table. Again, his happiness was not dampened, even though he was surrounded entirely by strangers. He took his seat and reached for the glass of champagne in front of him. Sure, it'd probably be better to save it for the toasts, but it'd be a while. Besides, he was incredibly thirsty. The hot sun was great for a lot of things -- getting seratonin, making flowers grow, illuminating the earth -- but it was not good for one's hydration level.

And maybe his decision to wear a black shirt hadn't been the greatest of his life thus far.

Therefore, Seth took a long sip. The stranger sitting next to him suddenly rose to his feet. In the process, the stranger's hand bumped his arm, and Seth was greeted with the sensation of a cold beverage staining his front.

"Oh, no, I am so sorry," the stranger said, looking horrified. "I am so sorry."

"No, no, it's not a big deal," Seth hurried to reassure the other man with a smile. "Accidents happen, after all."

"I suppose," the stranger responded reluctantly. "I really am so sorry. I feel like a complete idiot," he remarked with a slight chuckle.

"Hey, no harm, no foul," Seth said with a shrug. He merely brushed off the excess liquid from his front and turned slightly so the sun was hitting the wet spot directly. Sure, he'd smell like champagne, but so would everyone. Like he had said -- no harm, no foul.

The stranger eventually nodded and sat back down in his chair, either forgetting that he had ever intended to go anywhere or deciding that it wasn't worth it if more mishaps like this one were in his future.

"I'm Seth, by the way," was the only other comment Seth could get in before the servers arrived carrying loaded trays of chicken, beef, or a vegetarian dish and doled them out by matching the plate to what the person sitting in the seat had ordered.

Eventually, the organized clamor of professional catering died down, and Seth dug into his steak. Mmm, rib-eye was always delicious, but this seemed especially so. He glanced over to the wedding party's table where Kelly was laughing at something her husband said. Life and everything in it always seemed better when people were happy. He liked that.

"I'm Mark," the stranger beside him finally said.

Seth nodded with a slight smile of politeness. "Nice to meet you."

"Yeah, you, too," Mark replied with a matching smile.

Seth had no way of knowing that that chance encounter, that one stained shirt, that coincidental movement of Fate, would direct the path of the rest of his life.

...

"What?" Mark asked, only slightly irritated. "What?"

The source of his frustration was currently rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically. Mark had never actually thought people actually rolled on the floor in fits of extreme laughter, but hey, he had been wrong before. He eventually rolled his eyes.

"Come on, Seth," he reprimanded, "aren't we friends?"

Seth tried in vain to get control of himself. He wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand and managed to force out an answer. "I don't think I can... can be friends with someone who actually hates... Christmas! You're SCROOGE! I always hated him the most!"

"It's a stupid holiday anyway," Mark huffed, taking a long draught of his beer.

"It's Christmas, dude," Seth complained as he hauled himself back onto his chair and reclaimed his beer. "How can you hate Christmas?"

"I just do, okay?" Mark said dully with a shrug. "It just annoys me. I hate the snow, and I hate the cold. My car just likes to turn into a veritable chunk of ice whenever it gets below sixty. And all of the Christmas carols grate on my nerves. There's only so many times I can hear Jingle Bells without wanting to kill myself."

Seth snickered. "Now I know what to get you for your birthday."

Mark scoffed. "Please, like you know when my birthday is."

"November seventeenth," Seth answered primly. Mark could only glare in response. "Come on, man," Seth said in a wheedling voice, "why do you hate Christmas?"

Mark let out a long-suffering sigh and then set his beer on the table and leaned back in his chair. "Okay, fine," he said. "I hate Christmas because my parents threw me out of the house two weeks before Christmas when I was nineteen. I had to live at a friend's house until spring quarter started at college so I could get a dorm, and I had to watch..." He forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. He didn't meet Seth's eyes. "I had to watch as my friend and his family had this wonderful, joyful Christmas, and all I could think of the entire time was the fact that I wasn't with my family, that they threw me out, and that Christmas was the dumbest holiday ever."

There was a long silence between the two men. Mark found something incredibly interesting at the bottom of his beer bottle and was drinking all of the alcohol to find out what it was. Seth was staring at the table, unable to find something to say for the longest time.

Finally, he conjured up a few words, a feeble gathering of letters. "Why did they throw you out?"

"I told them I was gay," Mark spat out, reaching for another beer.

Seth watched as Mark busied himself with seeing how quickly he could consume one bottle of Budweiser. He felt very, very sad; without a doubt, Mark Dallas was the best of men. For his own parents to force him out of his childhood home on the basis of such a small part of him must have been traumatizing. Something inside of him twisted and nearly came to the breaking point as he watched Mark's eyes turn red as he tried not to cry.

"I just don't get it," Mark rasped. "I think I could have murdered someone, and my parents still would have loved me. They would have still wanted the best of me. But the second they know I want to love a man instead of a woman, I'm anathema to them. I don't get it."

"I don't get it, either," Seth said as he reached over and set a hand on Mark's shoulder. "If they don't want to know you anymore because you're gay, I'd say that's their loss. I'm proud to call you my friend, Mark."

"Thanks, Seth," Mark mumbled as he lowered his head onto the cool wood of the table. His red eyes stared off into nothing, and Seth quietly busied himself with clearing away the mess of their baseball party and trying not to trip on his completely flat kitchen floor.

...

Just as autumn slowly fades into winter and winter is reborn into spring, so did something change within Seth over the next five years. Looking back over the past five years of his life, he couldn't pick out the one thing that had morphed him into what he was. Yes, his promotion had been a factor, as was his favorite team's impressive losing streak, just the same as his washer breaking down was one.

Yes, Mark Dallas had been a factor, but it was also Mark Dallas that was the change.

Their friendship was light and easy. It wasn't bogged down by jealousy or resentment or intimidation. It was just friendship, but it had also become an anchor. There was nothing he could say to Mark's face that would faze the man. There was nothing he could do that couldn't be forgiven with an apology and a handshake. There was nothing, no darkness, no sickness, within him that could make Mark recoil. In turn, Seth was the cheer, the vitality, the laughter in Mark's life. There wasn't judgment, there wasn't hate, and there wasn't fear. It was friendship.

But it had started with a feeling, a mere flash of something, when Seth watched as Mark burnt his mouth on some too-hot coffee and lunged for the nearest sink to soothe his tongue with cold water. Seth didn't know what it was, behind his raucous laughter, as he watched Mark turn his head to the side and stick his tongue into the stream of water from the tap.

Within seconds, it was a tenderly nurtured speck of hope in the very back of his heart. But there were some things that Seth couldn't admit, not even to himself, so that brief flash of whatever-it-was would be forgotten for a time.

...

"You crazy son of a bitch!" Mark snapped as he paced in Seth's hospital room.

Seth, exhausted, terrified, and in a lot of pain, wasn't exactly. "I'm not even in the mood for this right now, Mark, just go if you're going to keep being angry," he snapped in return. "You could even leave me a voicemail of all of the expletives you choose and all of the lovely grains of accusations, and I'll get back to you about it when I'm not in the hospital anymore because of a broken arm!"

Mark's eyes had gone wide at Seth's yelling, and he lowered himself quietly into the only chair in the room. He looked quite docile, and so Seth relaxed into the bed and took deep breaths, hoping for sleep to numb him. He heard a slight shuffling and the annoying sound of chair legs on the floor, and he opened his eyes.

Mark was sliding the chair as close as he could to the bed.

"I'm sorry, Seth," he mumbled as he set a hand on his friend's shoulder. "You just freaked me out."

"Well, I'll be sure to remember that next time I get hit by another car," Seth responded acidly, but he didn't resist Mark's hand on him. The flash of whatever-it-was was back, but it wasn't the striking almost-pain in his gut. He felt warm, and it had nothing to do with the cheap, thin hospital blankets.

"I'm glad you're okay," Mark added tentatively.

Seth gave Mark a slight smile. "You're my slave until I get the hang of the whole being-left-handed thing."

"You've got yourself a deal," Mark said, his voice less tight and strained than it had been before.

It was with that, the warmth, the comforting words, Mark, that Seth finally could fall asleep.

...

That gentle hope in the back of Seth's heart was slowly morphing into a private thought, one he wouldn't even share with Mark. It wasn't a dirty little secret; it was just something he didn't understand well enough to talk about. It didn't make any sense. Mark was his best friend, had been for six whole years. If he had been going to be attracted to Mark, one would think it would have blossomed earlier.

But he couldn't deny it: he was attracted to Mark Dallas.

But it wasn't just that. The attraction was only a small part of this private thought that had developed over the past several months.

Seth had always known Mark was one of the most intelligent men he had ever met. He was a freelance writer, a painter, an actor, and he was one of the top businessmen in the city during the day. He was wickedly funny and deceptively gentle. He could be angry and bitter, but he was a good man. He was charitable and kind to others. He wasn't selfish, either. Over all, he was just a good man, one of the best.

Mark had a way of understanding what Seth meant before he could even verbalize his feelings. Not that they talked about their feelings a lot, but Mark wasn't afraid of Seth's emotions, of his dark hatred for the world, of his cynicism. There wasn't any fear between them.

And Seth... he just wanted to get to know Mark better. They had been friends for six years, and Seth wanted to understand all of him.

But still, it was a private thought. Nothing more.

...

"Ah, I love it when it's this quiet," Mark commented as the two friends sat on a lone park bench as the sun was setting. "I finally feel like I'm alone."

Seth snickered. "You're a depressing person, Mark."

"No, no, not depressing. Deep and introspective," Mark responded smoothly.

"Yeah, whatever," Seth said as he rolled his eyes. He let out a long sigh and leaned back on the bench. "It really is nice out this time of day. Today was great; I love Ultimate Frisbee."

Mark grinned. "It was awesome. It's kind of nice everyone left, though."

"Yeah," Seth agreed.

The two men sat there, feeling the growing darkness as a shroud of comfort rather than an oppressive layer between them and the rest of the world, and breathed together. Mark's hand was resting on the wood of the bench between them. Seth noticed it after Mark yawned and moved his hand up to cover his mouth.

Seth swallowed and tried his best to ignore it. He tried to turn his attention back to the quiet twilight, but it was impossible. He steeled himself and slowly inched his hand over. He wished the earth would eat him whole when his fingers collided with Mark's, and his heart rate sped up to an unhealthy level. Mark looked over at him in shock, and they maintained eye contact for a startlingly long period of time. Eventually, Mark blinked and turned his hand over. Palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.

Something had changed between them, but Seth wasn't sure he was willing to face that reality.

...

It started so innocently, touches here and there. Mark's hand would linger on Seth's knee for a bit longer than was considered platonic. Seth would maintain eye contact until he felt weightless. Their smiles were no longer friendly, but... longing? Seth didn't know if that was the word. All he knew was that... that...

He couldn't even admit to in his most private thoughts. But something was there.

...

Seth looked himself in the mirror. If it weren't for such a grim occasion, he would have said he looked rather handsome in his black suit. But it didn't really matter. One of his friends from college, the girl who had saved his butt in more than one class by drilling him relentlessly until he understood the concepts for exams, was dead. A heart attack. At thirty-one. It was ridiculous.

"Hey Seth," Mark said solemnly as he walked into Seth's bedroom. He had been waiting in the kitchen for the past ten minutes; he had hardly even left Seth's apartment since he had heard the news. "You almost ready?"

"Almost," Seth answered dully.

Mark came up behind him and rested his hands on Seth's waist. He didn't say another word; he just stood there, and his hands, it seemed, were the only things that were keeping Seth from completely falling apart. He was there, and Seth found comfort in that.

...

"Please?"

"No."

"Come on!"

"No."

"Seth...!"

"What do you think I'm going to say?"

"'Of course, Mark, we can go bowling!'?"

"... No."

"What do you have against bowling?!"

"Nothing! It's just boring."

"Oh, please. You like baseball."

"So do you!"

"But at least I accept it's a boring game, but it has its merits."

"I refuse to bowl."

"You're boring, Seth."

"At least I don't bowl."

...

His private thought had become a roaring in his ears every time he laid eyes on Mark Dallas.

The man was grace. He smiled, laughed, and lived with this incredible sense of balance. He had his extremes and his moments, but he was balanced. He was not only a good man, Seth was beginning to realize, but a great one.

And Seth Brown loved him with all of his heart, with every inch of his soul.

He held no romantic illusions; he knew some of his friends would turn away from him. He knew his parents might not be pleased. He knew that if, should Seth be so blessed, they were together, they might not be received well by a good portion of the population.

But he also knew that there was no one else for him. They were perfect matches in every single way -- they both loved baseball, dammit -- and if this was wrong, if this was unnatural, if this was a sin, he would gladly jump with both feet from the path of the straight and narrow and live in glorious debauchery in the tangled wilderness of sinfulness with Mark.

"Seth?"

He looked up and saw Mark peering at him curiously. "What?"

"You were a million miles away." Mark's voice was oddly husky, and his fingers burned into Seth's skin. They were sitting almost too close together, almost. The air was suddenly hot, and Seth felt constricted. He didn't move, though.

"I was just thinking," Seth explained.

"Anything you want to talk about?" Mark probed gently, his fingers still on Seth's bare forearm. He seemed to lean in a bit closer.

Seth's eyes fixed themselves on Mark's lips. Mark noticed and self-consciously looked at Seth's. Their breaths in perfect tandem with one another, they leaned in, brushing noses before their lips met. The world exploded in a flurry of sensation, stars, and sin, and for the first time, everything was both frenzied and calm, hurried and still, and everything seemed right.

 

Return to Top

 

Return to North Bend Library Home Page

Last Updated: January 20, 2010