Hard Broyled
Part 1: Slow Broyled.
Colonel Phillip Broyles stood reveling in the cold night air, taking one final moment to consider the action he was about to take; to consider the ramifications of his need.
As a Colonel in the Fringe Division, reporting directly to Secretary Walter Bishop, he was privy to a host of classified information: information about the alternate universe, about the war between them, about the potentially cataclysmic threat they posed to his very way of life. But most importantly, information about the tools and weapons they would use to fight this war.
Standing alone outside a seemingly vacant warehouse on the outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey, he inhaled a deep lungful of winter wind and pressed the entry code into the keypad controlling the warehouse door, and stepped a commanding foot through the doorway and into the pitch black interior.
His commanding step marched him forward, striding confidently through a darkness that did not concern him. He was as confident in his impending actions as he was that there was absolutely nothing for him to walk into in this facility. He stopped halfway in, and removed the backpack from his back, pulling from it first a small lantern-like device that, when turned on, provided a tight, two foot circle of light, but fell off abruptly afterward. At the edges of the light he placed three separate metallic cones -resonance cones they were called- so that each was equidistant from the others, and he proceeded to stand between them. The cones were a prototype device, cooked up by the lab geeks in the basement of Liberty Island, meant to create small bridges between the two universes. Meant to provide a potential means for infiltration. If all went well, he would be infiltrating tonight, but not in the traditional sense.
He pulled a small tablet device from his pocket, and typed an access code into the interface it presented. Immediately the cones began to hum, and he placed the tablet back in his pocket, and held his breath, the humming growing more intense, though in vibration, not volume. The feeling was intense, a sensation that floundered ungainly like a beached whale between excruciating and erotic. A scream was trying to force its way out of is throat when a sudden, cold released crashed over him. He gasped for air, cold and wet, and shook his head to try and regain his bearings. He was on his knees, alone, in a field in the middle of the night. He was sweating... no, on closer inspection, he was soaked with sweat. His knees felt wobbly, and his legs weak, but he stood up anyway, easing into his stock-still, commanding posture, feet firm against the earth like an ancient naked tree. But not his Earth. He looked up at the stars, and around at the empty field into which he'd emerged. It had worked. He had crossed over.
With his bearings gained and the surety of his legs reaffirmed, he marched a quarter mile due west to a small barn where agents from his side had stored a car for use on short-run infiltration missions. The cold New Jersey breeze teased around his black commando sweater and gently rubbed the rim of his beret. He mused briefly that it was colder here than on his side, and wondered how much less indelicate all the facets of life on this Earth were. What rough innuendo did this chill wind portent for the night's coming mission?
In the barn he located the vehicle, keys already in the ignition, and he proceeded methodically to open the barn doors, start the car, then the heater, then the GPS device mounted to the dash. When prompted by the digital voice of the GPS device, he spoke the address of his destination aloud, the address of Special Agent Phillip Broyles.
Part 2: A Rolling Broyle.
It was an hour's drive to his doppleganger's home, but the time passed quickly, seemingly hastened forward at break-neck speed on a chariot drawn by the rapid anticipatory beatings of the Colonel's heart. It felt as though thunder rolled in his chest, deafening all his other senses. Deaf to anything other than the needs of the mission. His needs.
The car came to a smooth stop an easy surveilling distance away on the street outside the Special Agent's home. A modest home, fit perfectly for the needs of a single Special Agent, and not unlike what he himself might select were their roles reversed, thought the Colonel.
'This is where he lives. This is where I live,' mused the Colonel, 'This is where we live. This is where it happens.'
After a few minutes of watching, a few minutes of letting the anticipation run rampant through his blood, the Colonel was confident that his double was alone in the house, and working quietly in a back office. He exited the vehicle and strolled down the brisk winter sidewalk with a casualness that masked the commanding determination in his stride. He approached the front door, but instead of knocking, he produced from his pocket a lock picking device which he inserted into the door-nob as calmly as if it had been a key. Years of experience allowed him to gain ingress to the home silently, and he moved through the house as though the immaculately polished hard wood floor were no more sturdy than ancient glass.
Tides of adrenaline were washing over him and drowning the sands of the Now, a viscous, syrupy sensation slowly oozing hyper clarity over the pancakes of his perception as he approached the threshold of the back office, then stepping through and searching for his voice, scrambling in this last undetected moment to find the word...
"Phillip."
Special Agent Phillip Broyles froze, if only for a split second, as a voice like a well-done steak called out his name. He knew the voice, even if he'd never heard it like this before. He knew the long, dusty shadow that fell across his desk with the familiar dark tint of the wrapper of an unpurchased 5th Avenue Candy bar; a handsome shadow, he appreciated. Special Agent Broyles knew the man standing in the threshold of his office even before he turned to face him.
Air Supply's "All Out of Love" trickled like water from a leaking faucet from his laptop speakers as the Special Agent stood and reached for his gun. Their movements were as rhyme to ears not present to hear, and before the close of the second, the two men with one face stood staring at each other down the barrels of each others' guns.
"You. Somehow, I always knew you'd come for me."
"Lower your weapon, Phillip," said Colonel Broyles, "I haven't come here with malignant intentions."
"If you're not here to kill and replace me, what other possible reason could you have for sneaking into my house in the dead of night?"
The Colonel locked eyes with his double, marveling at the chiseled, onyx features that had taunted him from behind the mirror, all the years of his life. And now, here, he was finally in the presence of his self disembodied, the gaunt visage of a warm, commanding reflection.
The Colonel smiled and said, "I've come to make love to you."
The Special Agent regarded him carefully and said, "You risked life and limb to cross the interdimensional void into a parallel universe in order to sneak into your double's house and make the first-of-its-kind love with an alternate version of yourself?"
The first Broyles asked, not unkindly, "are you done talking?"
The second Broyles said eagerly, "I thought you'd never ask."
Part 3: Broyling Point.
They were on each in a heartbeat, shirts flying off torsos as though fleeing from a fire, and erections bursting violently from their pants like warm pop-tarts from a high-performance toaster. Their first, lasting kiss answered their unasked question of what their own kisses had always tasted like, and they fell to the bed as if under orders.
The initial awkwardness of their encounter played out like the crude puppetry of a young child with dolls: ungainly angles splayed hither and yon, brusque thrusts disrupting the growing trust quietly building between them, taut skin embraced by gaunt limbs, and an equal sense of authority muscling shoulder-to-shoulder for lead in their carousel race for pleasure.
The awkward adolescence of the encounter matured quickly into the graceful execution of a special operation, and they soldiered on together in lockstep. Ungainly angles emerged from the clouds of confusion to produce lithe limbs and limber lovers with each lick of a nipple, each nip of a lip. They recognized each twitch of the muscle, every twirl of the tongue as their own. Thunder rolled in both their chests and the storm clouds of pleasure rolled overhead, obscuring their mutual sense of clarity in a phantasmagoria of hedonistic images and primal sounds, a buffet of exotic delicacies, a smorgasbord of familiar yearnings, a panoply of secret, unspoken dreams, and a synaesthesia of experience so deeply felt that as he ascended the hillside of climax, Broyles could not discern whether the deeply satisfied moans that crowded his ears came from his own throat or the throat of his other self.
The two had became one and came as one together, by themselves but by each other, with only themselves but with each other. There was no need for speech; every desperate desire was his for the taking, every primal pleasure his to give. He moved over himself like a vampiric uroboros, always bleeding out the same amount of life energy he was ingesting, always consuming as much as he lost.
He lay by himself with his cock buried hilt deep in his throat, the reverse being equally true, and the deeper he sucked, the deeper he was sucked until he was certain that all the world should see this perfect balance, this blissful harmony. He was beside himself with the knowledge that the war between their universes could be as peacefully balanced as easily as it could fall to violent ruin, and the very thought of this burning, consuming perfect feeling of self-fulfillment being a unique warmth in the cold January of War brought tears to his eyes, even as he plummeted into the deepest caverns of ecstasy, and found himself unexpectedly ejaculating with the magnificence of a geyser, his own throat suddenly choked by a flood of his own boiling-hot love-juice.
Part 4: Broyling Over.
Disentanglement was not a word in Phillip Broyles' vocabulary until the first rays of dawn crawled like roaches throw the blinds of the bedroom. The undeniable hour brought with it a dreaded exhaustion, and Broyles collapsed on the bed, struggling to find his breath. After a few moments of silence, he said, "Should I think of that as sex, or merely masturbation?"
Broyles thought about the question for a moment and said simply, "Autoeroticism."
Broyles lay there, holding him for awhile and said reluctantly, "It's probably time for me to go," after which he paused and then said, "I may never be able to make it back here again."
Broyles looked him in the eyes and said, "If once was all we had, then once will have to have been enough."
The two Broyles showered, and dressed, and kissed one final time in the foyer by the front door. They did not say goodbye but rather shook hands as Colonel Broyles left the house and hurried back to his car in the unforgiving light of the early dawn.
The hour's drive back to the vacant field in New Jersey now seemed to drag on forever, but Phillip Broyles now felt that a part of himself would remain forever in this world, and no matter which universe he was in, he would truly understand what was at stake; what he had to lose.