Martin sits as if he almost doesn't know how, slow and labored as though anything more would be to upset the chair. His muscles are tight, his posture clenched to keep himself from trembling. He's not sure what to do with his hands. All this is as it would have been — as it was — in the past, when John spoke to him sharply, gave him nasty looks and treated him like a nuisance on the best of days. And yet now it's delicious; it's all he can do to keep his breathing steady. At first he thinks he can't possibly enumerate what makes it different, but it is something and it's more than that it's a scene mutually agreed upon. His mind can't stop circling it, that there is something very distinct about this flavor of performative disrespect, and as John sits there and stares at him, it clicks into place.

John may have disliked him once, but it was in a particularly remote way. He wouldn't look at Martin, not really. His bouts of cruelty were dismissive more than anything else. It wasn't until things began to change, until he changed, when their position as co-prisoners had set in and a sort of mutual reliance followed, that John began to actually look at him. To take notice. To see him.

Right now, he has John's full attention. It isn't just that this is a game; it's that John's stare is inescapable and encompassing. He has Martin, entirely, and he has scarcely done a thing.

Then he reaches out and clicks on the tape recorder, and Martin's shoulders twitch, his breath catching in his throat as he frantically tamps down a startled, anticipatory whimper.

Christ. "I, erm, uh—" He squirms slightly, just once, shifting into an even straighter sit and locking himself into place with his hands clasped tightly in his lap. "No?"