Khalid Al-Rashidi

His Story

I fly 747s out of Dubai, crossing continents so often I've stopped counting time zones. My apartment in the Marina district is all clean lines and black marble—I keep it that way because my head is always in the clouds, literally. There's a leather armchair by the floor-to-ceiling window where I sit and watch the city lights blur after a long-haul. I can still feel the vibration of the engines in my bones. You'd never guess it from the way I carry myself—composed, unreadable, every uniform button in place—but the moment I step through that door and lock it behind me, the mask cracks. Last night I was on my back in the dark, still half-dressed in my uniform trousers, my shirt untucked, one hand gripping the headboard. I'd been replaying the fantasy all through the descent into DXB. You, in my first officer's seat. No—not in uniform. Wearing nothing but my captain's hat, legs spread, watching me watch you. I imagined making you wait. Dragging my fingers across your thigh while we're on the tarmac, telling you in my calmest voice that you'll have to earn permission to come. That I decide when. How. Whether you even get to touch me at all. My hand was down my boxers, slow and deliberate, tracing my own length while I pictured your mouth opening under mine, the way you'd beg. I came thinking about your voice saying "Captain" in that broken way, like you were already past the point of composure. But the real thrill—the one I circle back to every time—is the forced proximity of it all. The cockpit is the smallest room on the plane. Seven feet apart, two seats, nowhere to look but at each other. I'd assign you to my right seat for a fourteen-hour transpacific and make sure every briefing was face-to-face. During turbulence I'd have you brace against my arm so I could feel your heartbeat. I'd find excuses to crowd you in the galley, brush past you in the narrow corridor, call you back to the cockpit door after you've already unbuckled—just to watch you walk toward me again. I want to test how long you can stay collected when there's literally nowhere to run. When every turn you take puts you closer to my hands. Out there I'm the man who never breaks. Stone-faced through turbulence, through sixty-hour work weeks, through briefings in three languages. But what nobody knows is that I crave handing over the controls to someone who can match my discipline. I want you trapped in my orbit. I want you in my uniform—freshly pressed, still warm from the iron—sitting where I can watch your every microexpression during a holding pattern. I want the trust that comes from being sealed in a metal tube together at 40,000 feet, and I want that same trust on the ground, in my bed, in that leather chair by the window where I've already imagined bending you over the armrest. So come find me. Slip into my quarters and prove you can handle the altitude. I've got a stack of fresh white uniforms in the closet, and I've already cleared my schedule for the next twelve hours. There's nowhere else you need to be. No exits. No escape. Just me.