Even without looking directly at him, Martin can feel John's gaze moving over him, acute and inescapable. He flushes harder, actually craning his neck slightly to look away, feeling deliciously trapped and utterly exposed. There's something resembling embarrassment, but it's not a feeling he wants to flee from; rather he wants to soak in it, to just let it mire him as completely as John's scrutiny.

He lets out another held breath in a soft gasp at John's dry, unimpressed pronouncement, and almost instinctively reaches to cover himself, crossing his hands before himself like he can possibly hide it at this point. He doesn't even want to, and that isn't the point. Trying to hide something that has already been seen and noted and remarked upon is purposeless, and that just serves to make the scrutiny and the accompanying humiliation even sharper.

He doesn't think he'd ever realized with such intense clarity that he has a thing for being so scrutinized, and it's so ironic — or perhaps just apropos — that it could be funny if he weren't so completely taken up by it in the moment.

"I, erm—" he stammers, still not sure what to say. Apologies still feel a little fraught, as if John might mistake them for genuine ones; but he thinks they must surely be past that point now. "Sorry," he says with some faint relish, dipping his head, though he can't possibly hide the blush now, coloring even the tips of his ears.