"This isn't what it looks like."
Newt Geiszler stopped in the doorway, jaw dropped. Quickly he slapped a hand over his eyes and turned around, laughing. "Whoa, Hermann! In the laboratory?"
Hermann Gottlieb fumbled with the front of his pants, struggling to refasten his trousers, and shot Newt a scandalized glare.
"I told you," he said, "This isn't what it looks like. I wasn't-"
"No, no," Newt laughed, "Whatever you're up to is your own business. Just do it in your room, man." Newt's smile dropped. "Is that lube?"
"It's lotion!" Hermann quickly opened a drawer and dropped the bottle inside.
"You keep that in the lab? In your desk?"
Hermann spun around in his chair to face his chalkboard, furiously writing out an equation. He was completely red in the face.
"Hermann, you dirty dog."
"Dr. Geiszler, I'm extremely busy, and I would very much appreciate it if you dropped the subject."
"Busy."
"Yes, very busy."
"Yeah, no. Me too, me too…" Newt tugged up his shirt sleeves and wandered a little closer to Dr. Gottlieb's side of the room. "Not too busy to bust a nut though, huh?"
Hermann's piece of chalk scraped awkwardly against the chalkboard and snapped. "I wasn't-!"
"I'm kidding, Hermann. God, chill out, man. I mean, Jesus. Everybody does it. Just not everybody does it where they work."
"Dr. Geiszler, I wasn't-" Hermann briefly lowered his voice, "-interfering with my myself. I was...doing something else. If you don't drop the subject, I will file a complaint. So please." Hermann turned back to the chalkboard.
"Well, that's just a meaningless threat. Like, I catch you jerking it so you're gonna show me by telling a bunch of other people I caught you jerking it. Doesn't make a lot of sense."
"I wasn't 'jerking it.'"
Newt pulled up a stool next to Hermann. Despite being red-faced and looking a little flustered, Hermann had furrowed his brow and was resolutely trying to finish his equation.
"Hey, dude," Newt said.
Hermann kept writing.
"You gotta admit it looked pretty incriminating."
Hermann sighed angrily through his nose.
They sat for a few moments in silence. Newt fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt, looking around Herman's work space from the stool. It was annoyingly neat. The objects on the desk were laid out like a game of Tetris, every pen and pencil lined up geometrically so that everything had a place. There were, however, a few skewed items where Hermann had scrambled to put the bottle of lotion back into his desk drawer.
Newt looked at Hermann. He was still scowling at the equation, and had apparently slipped into a state of hyper-focus. It wa just Hermann and Hermann's numbers it seemed.
Slowly, Newt reached over to Hermann's drawer. He wrapped a hand around the knob and pulled it open.
"Newton!" Hermann snapped.
Inside the drawer was the bottle of lotion, a bottle of pills, and a hot pack. Hermann slammed the drawer shut again.
"Was that a compress?" Newt asked.
"It is none of your business!" Hermann said, "If you had any sense of professionalism-"
"What do you need a hot pack for?"
"Snooping in my work area! It isn't enough that you badger me day in, day out-"
"Listen, hey, I wasn't trying to badger you, Hermann. But when you see a guy with his hands down his own pants, well a guy's gonna have some questions, you know."
Red crept back into Hermann's face. He grabbed his cane and swatted at Newt's legs.
"Ow!"
"Get out!"
"Jesus Christ!"
"Get out, you-you termite, you-"
Newt stumbled off his stool and out of Hermann's range. Hermann swung his cane again.
"You stupid, brainless-"
Hermann swung, and Newton caught the cane in his hands. He yanked twice, and the second time he yanked, the cane slipped out of Hermann's hands.
"Jesus, Herm!" he said, "You're one to talk about a sense of professionalism."
Hermann huffed, seeming almost to deflate. They both leaned back a little from the situation and took a breath. After a few moments, Newt handed the cane back to Hermann, who took it begrudgingly.
"Very sorry," Hermann said. "I don't know what came over me."
"Yeah, no kidding," Newt said. "What's up with you anyway? You're acting like a maniac."
Hermann set a piece of chalk down, slowly clapping the dust off his hands and clothes.
"Well?" Newt said.
"What do you want me to say?"
"You could explain yourself." Newt sat down again, pulling the stool closer to Hermann. "I mean you don't have to; I know it's probably touchy. And I'm not, like, a therapist or anything, I just-you could probably talk to the psyche staff, if you wanted-"
Hermann cleared his throat. "Dr. Geiszler, please."
There was an awkward silence, and Hermann returned his attention to the chalk in front of him. He lined up the broken pieces so that they fit more snugly together, sort of like the objects on his desk.
"I'm afraid...I haven't been sleeping much lately. That's all."
Newt let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. "Wow, nice deflection there, buddy. What's really up?"
Hermann shifted uncomfortably. He picked up a piece of chalk, but Newt grabbed his hand before he could raise it to the board.
"How dare-"
"Is it your leg?" Newt asked.
Hermann sputtered, "That is-that is completely-"
"Come on, dude."
Newt let go of Hermann's hand and stood. He looked Hermann in the eye, and then, gently, he put a hand on Hermann's shoulder and pushed him back against the chalkboard. He leaned down and wrapped his hand around Hermann's ankle and the other hand around the back of his knee.
"What are you-How-"
Newt slowly brought Hermann's leg up, pausing when he heard Hermann let out a quiet hiss. He rested the leg on the stool and, carefully, he slipped off Hermann's shoe.
"You wanna tell me what you really use that lotion for, Herms?"
Hermann hesitated. "It's for my leg," he said quietly.
"And?"
"And?"
Newt was dragging another chair back from his own work station. He set it down next to Hermann and walked around to Hermann's desk, opening the drawer. He pulled out the bottle of lotion.
"And when your leg is sore or stiff, you crack this baby out and oil her up like the tin man."
"Yes, so?"
Newt sat down in the chair next to Hermann. Without taking his eyes off Herman, he started shimmying Hermann's trouser leg up until he could see Hermann's knee. Hermann looked absolutely mortified.
"So," Newt said. "You've been working pretty much nonstop. Standing up by the chalkboard all day and most of the night. Your leg starts to hurt, starts to get stiff. But there's not much you can do because you need to be in the lab to do your work, and you can't whip out your leg in the lab to give it a rub. So you keep working, and working. Then I slip out to go get a coffee, and you think, 'Man my leg is killing me. I can do this real quick.' So you grab the lotion, take a seat, and bam! I walk in just in time to catch you with your pants down."
By this time, Newt had poured a generous amount of lotion onto his palm and was warming it up. Hermann looked like a ball of tension.
"Is that right?"
"Yes."
"Look, dude," Newt said earnestly. "I'm a biologist. I get it. If your leg is hurting, you don't have to be embarrassed about it. Just whip it out and give it a rub."
As if to provide an example, Newt leaned forward and spread his hands over Hermann's lower leg, gently working the muscle.
"I'm more than capable of-of," Hermann's eyes fluttered and he let out a soft groan, "-of handling it."
"Come on, man, you know how many years I've been studying human anatomy? Not really a lot, but I know my way around a back massage, and that's like, the same thing. I got this. Don't worry about it."
Just as Hermann began another protest, Newt dug in a little deeper with his knuckles, and Hermann interrupted himself with another, very appreciative groan.
"Damn, Hermann. Having fun?"
Hermann scowled, but the pink blooming in his cheeks betrayed him. "It's different when someone else does it," he muttered.
"No, I get it. It's probably been a while."
"That's not what I meant!"
Newt was at Hermann's knee cap then and moved toward the back of Hermann's knee with soft, round strokes. Gently, he slipped his thumbs under Hermann's trouser leg and kneaded his thigh just above the knee. A few times he alternated between massaging Hermann's calf and his thigh, running his hands down and up the length of Hermann's leg.
After a while, Newt's mind drifted a little. Hermann's leg was surprisingly soft. It was bony and muscular (bent a little out of shape around the knee), but smooth, probably from a hundred previous leg massages. Newt's hands melted over Hermann's skin easily. He became absorbed, watching his hands slide up Hermann's leg, carefully kneading tender areas.
Finally, Newt reached for the lotion bottle, shaking it over his palm. He heard Hermann clear his throat and looked up.
Hermann's lips were slightly parted, his face flushed. His chest rose and fell at a quicker pace than normal. Newt set the lotion down.
"Hermann?" he said.
He looked back down, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. There was a definite tent between Hermann's legs, and this time Newt turned red. He tried to look away as if he hadn't seen, but Hermann was already pulling on his own leg, trying to lower it back to the floor. Newt grasped Hermann's leg behind the knee and helped him. Hermann pushed his trouser leg back down, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"Thank you, Newton," he said gruffly.
Newton nodded. "Yeah, no problem, dude."