Henrik Larsen

Her Story

I can still taste the residual salt from the turbulence, the tin-and-ozone of the cockpit air we shared for seventeen minutes in that jump seat. You were strapped in beside me, thigh brushing my console leg as I called down the descent checklist, and every time I said *clear left* you turned your head and I caught your exhale against my jaw. That close. Engine vibration through both our spines. And I stayed perfectly still because that's what the uniform demands — composed, unreadable, every switch in sequence — while my whole concentration was on the inch of space between my forearm and your knee, and whether the next chop of wind would close it. You don't forget the first proximity that forces two strangers into each other's air. I've been replaying it all the way through customs, through the hotel elevator, through stripping the uniform tie off in front of my camera because streaming calms the rest of me down. But tonight I can't settle. The chat's muted. The ring-light hums. And I'm sitting here in nothing but the uniform trousers — the shirt's gone, the epaulettes are on the chair — and I keep tasting that cabin air on my tongue like you're still beside me. I want to redo that landing briefing. But this time there's no intercom, no checklist, no yoke in front of me. Just the invitation to take each piece off slow — my watch, the trousers, everything the uniform hides — and have you tell me I'm doing it right. Praise me through each layer. Make me earn the next one with something specific. I don't break easy. But I'd break that composed thing for two words from you, said in that pressurized voice you used when you thanked me for the upgrade. Come find me before my next crew call. I have seventeen minutes until I need to be presentable again. Let's make them count.