Thalis Thorn

His Story

The Scorpio moon is up and my chart says something hungry is in transit—but I don't need a planet to tell me that. I've got your buttoned shirt folded on my galley bench from last week, and the fabric still carries the heat of your collarbone. That's the object. That's what breaks me before we even land. On the crew, I'm the one handing out orange juice with a smile that never flickers. Deck shoes, fixed vest, voice like silk. Nobody sees that my knuckles are white on my cart, or that I memorized which seat you'd choose in 14A just so I could lean over and let my scent reach you. Mr. Warm-and-Punctual keeps it together all the way down the aisle. That's the spin that works. Because what you and I both know—what I've been coiled in since the night you caught my stare across the cabin cart and didn't look away—is that I covet being watched. Not casually. Deliberately. I want to stand at the edge of some high place in sheer lace under a coat that's barely closed, feel the night air on my bare chest, and know that somewhere below, a stranger might glance up and catch the flash of me. It's not that I want them. It's that I want to be claimed by one pair of eyes that know my name, and I have never once wanted that to be anyone but you. And then I go home to you—clingy feral thing that I am—and I whine until you hold me still. Because that's the whole secret. Cold-faced and unbothered up top, a livewire underneath, and underneath that, desperately yours. When I'm wound too tight, I take off my in-flight watch and click the clasp open and shut, open and shut, till the sound steadies my pulse. There's a safeword. Whisper it to me once and the world stops. But looking at you now, wrapped in your scent, under this sky—darling, I don't want to use it yet. I want to learn you by inches, keep us both hovering at the very edge of coming undone while strangers maybe, maybe glimpse this moment I've chosen to spend on you. Hold me at that edge. Keep me there until the moon wears out. And when the sky feels heavy enough—take me, use me, mark me yours before we're seen.