The Sentence.

The paint was peeling, Olli noticed, the dry cracked chips flecking and crashing into the ground. He kept himself still, because maybe if he didn't move too much he could somehow process the heaviness inside, this insidious millstone of guilt, keep it from dragging him down to shatter like the brittle paint. But then, maybe it would be best to let himself drown, seared as he was by the scarlet heat of Christian's anger around his throat. He didn't have the tears anymore, or the energy. All he had was time. Fifteen minutes for the ambulance to come to the flatshare, ten minutes to the hospital, a minute to find a seat and an eternity to get used to the quicksand pull of mourning, filling his bones, scratching at his eyes and crawling over his skin.

He'd wanted to drop Rob off in the care of the hospital staff and leave, slink back to the flat and lose himself in something be it alcohol, Rob's last pill, or his own all pervasive self pity. But the nurses and doctors had surrounded him, asking him questions and making mentions of corroborating a police report. And shit, Olli couldn't go, couldn't have a moment to himself. Even battered and bloody, Rob was still lashing out at Christian, maintaining that he'd been brutally attacked – gay bashed, and proclaiming his false innocence. It made Olli ill. Rob's foul lies tied him to the hospital, where he had to deny everything and protect Christian, he could still feel what he and Rob had done inside of him, felt it like a brand, fresh and stinging. And overlaid on that, the unrelenting ache where Christian had touched him last, a cruel mockery of what he usually felt in Christian's arms.

"Olli! What happened? Oh my God, you look terrible." Rebecca was standing in front of him, arms outstretched and, to Olli's dismay, moving closer her face creased with pity that Olli did not want. "Is it Christian? Did something happen to him?" Her panic was crystal clear and her eyes frantic as she clutched uselessly at her volunteer outfit, visibly upset at the possibility that something was wrong with her friend. And no mistaking it, none of that concern was for him. Christian's words in the hallway came back to him in a rush, and almost too quickly a dozen little details Olli had filed away flew together. The way Rebecca's mouth would twist when he and Christian kissed, how she always averted her eyes when he spoke to her, how she hadn't wanted to go shopping or gossip with him for months – jealousy. All of it. She was jealous and without his knowing it, she'd turned Christian against Olli.

"How long have you been harboring my boyfriend Rebecca?" Olli asked coolly, finding the calm dense center of his white hot rage. But he was also honestly curious and trying to soothe the sting of Christian's parting 'Rebecca was right.' Because he knew, deep in his bones that whatever she'd been feeding Christian hadn't come from a sense of righteousness. It had come from a selfish voracious place of coveting. Olli had known it, had almost surrendered to it before, watching CoCo pull Christian into kisses, pull him farther away from Olli's sweet and awed intimacy. In some ways he understood how Rebecca felt, how the yearning could lure you into cunning and leave you heedless of decency, while you convinced yourself that it was for the greater good, that it was in the name of love. He had avoided it himself, though it had been a narrow thing. But not Rebecca, she'd succumbed and now she wasn't the Rebecca he'd thought he'd known, sweetly loyal and vulnerable. This Rebecca had kept him from Christian whispering seeds of betrayal that he and Rob had tended with cruel and meticulous care.

"Just a few days." He could see she was nervous, but there was still an edge of defiance in her, and he admired that she didn't even try to lie to him. "That first day he was so miserable," Rebecca continued. "It was your fault Olli." Her fingers twisted into cruel fists as she continued, as though the jealousy was trying to crawl out of her extremities, sentient and intent on Olli. "All he talked about was how he couldn't live without you. I tried to make him understand, to make him see the real you but he just wouldn't." Her voice was shrill and the nurses paused briefly to stare, but Olli ignored them, entranced by the cloud of indignation that surrounded her. "He, well, we talked for a long time, a really long time and it was too late for him to go to you. And-and he was tired. Too tired to make the trek to the city. So-so I took care of him. He was basically worn out and babbling, so I put him to sleep. And-and I made sure he wouldn't be disturbed." She paused, her glance darting nervously around the ward, and Olli found himself intensely curious, for once, about what she had to say. She locked eyes with him finally and said in a rush, "I took his phone."

Took. Then Christian hadn't heard, he hadn't known the things that Olli had said, he'd been spilling his soul into emptiness. He didn't realize he'd been stepping closer to her as she rambled about how deftly she'd worked to destroy their faith in each other. She'd been a creeping opportunistic vine of doubt wedging her way into the cracks Olli had put in the otherwise solid wall of their relationship.

He didn't register that his skin was flushed and he was breathing too hard, or that he couldn't even hear Rebecca's smug countess voice now, or that his vision had gone red on the edges. He just knew he'd felt grim satisfaction pressing bruises into her biceps, and dimly it registered that maybe she wasn't talking so much anymore because he was shaking her so soundly.

"Olli! Stop!" A man's voice, intruding through his haze, he pressed harder until he felt large insistent hands on his shoulders. He wheeled around snarling and wounded, ready to snap out and crush whoever was interrupting him, he had rage enough for two, rage enough for thousands if it came to it. But he paused mid-lunge when he found Gregor's hands on his arms, pulling him roughly away from Rebecca. His senses came back to him in a sickening rush, and he found himself thrashing against Gregor's grip for a long time, the buttons stretching and snapping on his shirt, until fatigue stripped the struggle from him.

"You were lying anyway!" Rebecca's voice was shaky but her eyes were still stubborn and defiant. "All that CRAP about him being 'your heart-' you don't know what love is! You're selfish, and he didn't need to hear that, any of that! He deserves better than you." She was scared and seething, her voice pitched high and echoing in the hospital hallway, dripping with such bitter holier-than-thou certainty, it made Olli pause. It was clear to him that she believed, with unshakable conviction, that he wasn't what Christian needed. That she alone held the keys to the kingdom.

"Maybe he does." Olli said quietly, almost believing it himself. "But he'll figure it out one day Rebecca. And you will be sorry." He pulled completely out of Gregor's hold, straightening his rumpled collar and jacket. "He deserves the truth. "

She shook at Olli's words, lips tremulous and anxious, fingers cruel and trembling at her side. Olli braced himself, because he could read in the tensed lines of her body that Rebecca was poised to do something stupid. As though it wasn't enough that she'd been a siren singing lies and leaving Christian wrecked on the shores of his own grief, keeping him from Olli, who had been waiting. It was too surreal to think that he'd called this person friend.

"Rebecca." Gregor's voice was sharp and authoritative and it served to stem the tide of Rebecca's bile, snapping her out of her bewildered anger. "Why don't you have my driver take you home. Maybe it's best if you just aren't here right now, ok?" She blinked a few times, and nodded at Gregor. Olli felt an odd mix of fury and longing as Rebecca tore off her candy-striper's apron, turned and left without a word. She was probably heading toward Konnigsbrun, heading toward Christian and it made Olli ache all over again to know that there might not be anything he could do about it. That, again, he couldn't hold Christian through this hurt, to soothe away the worried lines in his brow and kiss the distracted pout from his lips. Rebecca had destroyed that for him, and he had been a weak and willing accomplice.

"Oliver?" Gregor's hands were gentle on his shoulders and he shrugged them off, turning slowly to face his ex's brother.

"Oliver," he repeated, "are you OK?"

And a crazed choked off sound of mirth bubbled out of Olli. Because the question was ridiculous, he was so far from OK, practically on the other side of the world from OK that he could hardly understand it himself. But he couldn't let Gregor see it. It was ridiculous, the whole situation was patently ridiculous but he didn't want another Mann to see him brought so low.

"Yeah, I- she- I don't know." Olli swallowed and rubbed at his eyes again. "I was upset."

"Oliver, come on, sit down. I don't know what the hell is going on but hopefully you can explain everything and you're going to do it right now, my friend."

Olli flinched, recognizing the steely cast of his eyes, the way the muscles in his jaw twitched and how his nostrils flared. Christian and his brother were different in so many ways, but in their anger they were like twins, silent and seething foreboding and never easily placated. Olli would've preferred to keep silence between them, to go back into himself where he could stay untouched and meditate alone on the sobering ugliness of his new life.

"Maybe you could start by explaining who's blood is all over my brother's hands and clothes? When he came back to Konigsbrun tonight I thought – I don't know what I thought. And he wouldn't say anything." Gregor was shifting next to him, and Olli tried to inch away from the anxiety coming off of Gregor in waves. He had enough of his own to deal with.

"Shit! Olli, look at me? What the hell is going on? Did he… are you hurt ?"

Olli finally turned to look at Gregor, got a good look for the first time, and realized that, for once, the anger wasn't for him. The tempered fury simmering under Gregor's pores was for Christian, and the razor thin edge of worry tightening his eyes was for him. This misguided chivalry, it made Olli's hands go cold with the utter wrongness of it and he heard, distantly, a wretched sobbing noise as guilt broke something else inside of him, another chip in the wall of his soul falling to the ground.

Gregor crowded him in an instant, murmuring soft sounds that gave him no comfort and pressing cool hands into his hot face to try and stop the last tear that Olli had left. He was graceless and ruined as he sank to the floor, succumbing to the unrelenting pull of his own misery.

"Oh God," Gregor whispered, pulling Olli into him and smoothing the short wiry hairs of his scalp. "Just like Papa, Jesus Christian, Jesus. How could you?" And oh, how Olli wanted, for a moment, just to stay like this, to wring himself out on Gregor's shoulder and let the pain seep out of him slowly, but Gregor still didn't understand. So he pushed off rocking back onto his heels prostrate like a supplicant at the gates of the Kingdom. And he confessed.

"It was Rob's blood. He beat Rob, not me."

"What?" Gregor's voice was thick with disbelief, but Olli continued.

"Because I cheated."

"You what?" Gregor asked softly, his hand tightening dangerously on Olli's shoulder.

Olli knew he had to look Gregor straight in the eye and say it again, confirm the ugliness of it, not just for Christian's brother, but also for himself, to lay claim to this awfulness take it inside himself and keep it away from everyone. He had done enough.

"I fucked him. I fucked Rob." Olli said it, again, though his voice wavered and his throat and teeth tried to close around the sound of it, trying to choke the words into inexistence. But there was nothing that would erase the act. Christian had made that startlingly clear and it was only fair that Gregor know it too.

"Jesus Olli, why?" Gregor asked, genuinely perplexed. "I thought, no Olli, I know you love my brother, I know it, I probably knew before the two of you did. So what happened? Because, trust me, I know this doesn't come out of nowhere."

But Gregor couldn't understand, couldn't know how all the little nothings in Olli's life could grow wild and out of proportion. A nothing decision to move back to Dusseldorf, blithely moving into the flatshare, carelessly inviting himself on that camping trip, and thoughtlessly opening himself to Rob's advances. No, it didn't come out of nowhere. It had come from him. It always came from him.

"Gregor, I honestly thought he wasn't coming back. I thought I'd lost him. I didn't know. I really didn't know."

They sat together on the floor, in silence, ignoring the nurses and doctors stepping around them, their grief an almost tangible division from the subdued rush of the hospital staff. Olli couldn't bring himself to look up at Gregor again. He was guilty, but he didn't want to feel Gregor's blistering judgment scorching him dry. He wanted to pretend for a moment that the hand on his shoulder was an empathetic one. It was out now, so they knew, they all knew.

"Shit. Christian." Gregor breathed sadly as his hand slid slowly from Olli's shoulder. Olli watched it fall. It made his throat and chest clench up with something dolorous and desperate, and he remembered suddenly his loneliness at sea of knowing that intrinsic him, to his being Olli , was being an island unto himself. Everything was reverting to its natural order, and to fight it would be as fruitless as the ocean fighting the inexorable pull of the moon or trying to defy gravity.

He understood, too, Gregor's grief, because they both knew, better than anyone what it cost Christian to trust. And Olli knew he was mourning that too, for barging his way into Christian's life and tearing off the locks that had kept the hope walled up behind his heart. The hope that he'd eventually entrusted to no one but Olli, and which Olli had destroyed with a few heated worthless moments. He was Humbert on the mountainside, alone and remorseful and late - simply too late. Someone was pulling him up, urging him to get up off the floor, and Olli complied, ignoring the twinge of protest in his knees and the throbbing pain in his head.

"Come on. Come here. I know you didn't mean it. I know you didn't." Gregor's scent was different from Christian's. all citrus and sweat, a thread of motor oil and fresh river water, and it was surrounding Olli, who was shocked from sorrow into silence by the offering of this absolution that they both knew his brother wouldn't give. So Olli took it, he clung to Gregor, who was less lithe than his brother but somehow just a little easier for Olli to hang on to, to let himself be lost just for a moment in the comforting strength of the wrong man.

When they sat down again, ages or eons later, Olli didn't feel like himself. He was doubtful he ever would again, but he was calm enough to tell Gregor everything, and it spilled out of him so fast, the tale waiting to be told and felt again in the telling. Though not so deep this time, not so raw as to plunge Olli into the icy tentacles of remorse that had brought him down so entirely. Because Olli had been wrong, Gregor did understand, he knew the story from both sides. He'd done it to Max, and in turn it had been done to him by Sarah, he'd had clients who'd paid him obscene amounts of money to lie with them and watch them rip their own souls out with acts of infidelity. Then paid him to stay while they confessed it all, weary and weeping on his call-boy shoulders.

Olli thought it criminal, that he should find solace here in the compassionate gaze of his boyfriend's – ex boyfriend's – brother, that he should find the greatest measure of peace he'd had in days, as they contemplated, together, in quiet, the obtrusiveness of absence.

"So now the bastard's saying it was a gay bashing?" Gregor asked finally, after the silence had protracted, weaving in and out of ease and unease. Olli nodded dolefully throwing his hands up in frustration.

"Can one gay guy even be gay –bashed by another gay guy?" Gregor mused snorting in disgust as he stared at the OR where Rob was being patched up. "Anyway, I can give him a solid alibi to go along with what you told them. Thanks for that, Olli. He can't, I can't let him go back." Gregor's voice dipped low for a moment and it stripped him bare. Olli could tell he was tired, that he just wanted to go back to Louise, escape Dusseldorf and all the resultant drama once and for all. "It would be the end of him." Gregor continued, sullenly. "He's been through enough."

"I know." Olli answered. "I know." Gregor gave him a friendly, pitying, pat on the shoulder and got up to stretch his legs. "Why were you so upset when I went to Konnigsbrun?" Olli blurted out. Because it was too weird, sitting here and making plans with Gregor about corroborating false evidence, it didn't sit quite right with him, this strange partnership of love and obligation.

Gregor shrugged concentrating on the paint peeling off the wall, not quite meeting Olli's eyes. "You didn't seem sorry, then. You seemed kind of, arrogant? Self-righteous? I don't know. And Christian was a mess. But I should've known even then that you weren't like Sarah. You were actually sorry, you are sorry." Gregor bowed his head focusing on his wedding ring, turning it in slow even circles. "I asked her that, you know, if she would do it again. If she even regretted it. And you know what she said to me, hmm? She looked me in the eye and said that she wished she'd done it sooner. That she'd wished she hadn't led me on like that."

His eyes, blue and intent, focused on Olli suddenly, like a laser full of cutting precision. "I know you're not like that. You're a good man, and I think Christian will remember that soon." Olli smiled with a bitter wretched twist of his lips. Gregor hadn't seen his brother, hadn't felt the finality of Christian's heavy steps, or the way his eyes had died, life flickering out of existence, a deadened star. But he nodded at Gregor, and made his way over to the nurse's station to ask about Rob and see how quickly he could leave this all behind.

He'd only just gotten there, when Miriam had come rushing into the ward, then her face flushed and panting as she approached Olli. "I know he never picks up his phone," she said, waving a dismissive hand toward Gregor, "but I've been calling you forever Olli."

He swallowed a little knot of guilt forming in his chest, his phone was probably somewhere in the hallway, forgotten in the chaos that Rob had delivered along with his return. Miriam had seen the ambulance when she'd stopped by to give Olli the till key that evening, and Olli hadn't had time for more than a sad and confused glance in her direction when he'd climbed into the back of the ambulance, ignoring the sweet sick coppery smell of Rob's blood on his clothes. No doubt she'd stayed covering Olli's overnight shift, and he was grateful, as always, for her steadfast support.

"Yeah, I don't have it with me. What's going on? Something with the whole-seller?" Olli ground the heel of his hand into his palm and looked past Miriam "Because I really can't deal with it today, maybe Gregor-"

"No Olli." Miriam answered, her eyes clear, blue, and swimming with fright.

"It's your uncle, and I think both you and Gregor really need to hear this. "