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John can feel the caulker's mate watching him all the time, even when the other man is supposed to be working. (Especially when the other man is supposed to be working.) John hasn't shirked his duty to come down to the orlop, he hasn't, but he has done nothing to be stared at so, and wishes to be alone.
Except he isn't, is he. There are others: John can hear them even through the racket of his heart pounding in his ears. He should turn around.
He doesn't. He rounds a stack of crates out of a sense of duty and obligation, and though he turns around as quickly as he can, it is not soon enough to prevent the scene before him being burnt into his eyes—one man knelt between another’s legs, and—and all that entails.
(His palms are sweating, his whole body entering a state of shock that he endeavors to prevent by digging his nails into his palm.)
“Good boy, now up you get—we’ve got company.”
“Easy for you to say,” the one kneeling grouses. “You got yours, didn’t you?”
John’s face is hot, his skin flushed. He should leave, head back up the ladder, but if he does, he knows exactly who will be hovering around, still not doing any work, and the caulker's mate will know, somehow, what sins John has seen…
“Evening, Lieutenant,” says the boy—the man, the man. John glances over his shoulder and feels sweat prickle on the back of his neck because Sergeant Tozer is definitely, definitely a man, and a large one at that, all elegant and handsome in his reds. “See something you like?”
John sets his mouth in a sharp line, bites down on his tongue, and then realizes that in not saying anything, it makes him look as though he was spying—which he was, but unintentionally, and he does not desire to do so again, so instead he blurts out something about the caulker’s mate, and blushes shamefully when Tozer just chuckles.
“That little rat skulking around again?”
“Be nice, Sergeant,” admonishes the man behind him, straightening his jacket as he steps forward into the light. Private Heather. The eye contact he makes with John is just as unconcerned as the eye contact that the sergeant had made—is making. “The lieutenant was just letting us know.”
Sergeant Tozer looks at John for a long, steady moment before he nods. “Thank you, lieutenant,” he says in a tone so deferential it has to be mocking, but what could John report him for? Tozer's eyes are bright as he reaches forward, clasps John’s elbow. “We’ll keep an eye on him. With me, Heather.”
John stands there a long while after the two marines have left, feeling dizzy and over-exposed. When he finally puts his fingers to the place Tozer had touched him, he is surprised to find his uniform intact.
It feels as though the heat from Tozer's hand should have burnt the fabric clean through.