In the past year, Grayson Wilkes had had a lot of time to himself to think. Granted, most of that time had been spent having something of a psychotic break -- but the last month or so, he'd just been thinking. His brother was dead -- by his own hand -- and his family was more on the rocks than they'd been in years. He'd spent a good deal of time regretting Amery's death, but the fact was ... if he hadn't ended his brother's life, their entire family would've suffered even more than they were suffering now. It had been a long, hard road to this conclusion, but he had to believe it.

None of this silly regressing bullshit: he was the only son of the family now, and he needed to pull himself together. Continuing to wallow was just going to drag his family through the mud again, and that wasn't something he was going to tolerate.

Truth be told, he'd been well enough for the last few weeks. He knew he should've been the one to contact Ophelia, but he'd spent the majority of his time getting back into shape (apparently not eating and subsisting mostly on grain alcohols did not do wonders for a man's figure) and finding house elves to replace the ones that he'd messily thrown out windows or through walls. He needed to know that Ophelia would still come back to him, that he was (at least in his opinion) in control of that situation.

The manor looked lovely now, though; fresh coats of paint on some of the walls, flowers in the vase by the door. Grayson himself looked for every intent and purpose like he had before his brother's death; the fire was back in his eyes and he felt sharper than ever.

No more of this failure nonsense.

WHO: Ophelia Wilkes and Ioan Llewellyn
WHAT: Siblings talk about important matters
WHERE: Llewellyn home
WHEN: Beeeefore Ophelia and Grayson's thread

(  I don’t know what to do for him )

WHO: Grayson, Ophelia + Anastasiya Wilkes
WHAT: AWWWWWKWARD!
WHEN: Midday
WHERE: Wilkes Manor

( This all seemed like a very terrible idea. )

So, this wasn't awkward at all.

In fact, it was so not awkward, that Ophelia was literally fidgeting in her chair every thirty seconds or so, and hadn't gotten through more than a paragraph of the book she had been attempting to read for the past fifteen minutes. Suppressing the urge to groan in frustration, she moved again, pulling her legs up next to her and repositioning herself in the library's large armchair, while at the same time attempting to keep from glancing up at her boyfriend--no, husband, husband now--just across the room.

In truth, this shouldn't be this awkward. Sitting around in the library after dinner with Grayson, reading a book, had never been weird. Or, at least it hadn't been weird until they'd come home from the honeymoon, she'd promptly found out that she was carrying a child she wasn't sure he wanted, and the best advice she'd gotten about the situation was Tell him. Soon. No, none of that was helping in the least, nor was his signature cool and serious attitude that had made fulfilling that advice deathly frightening every time she had even thought about it.

So she continued to sit. And fidget. And fake like she was actually paying any attention at all to the novel in her hands. And hope beyond all hope that he wasn't going to ask questions.

Oy.

Things had been going well -- eerily well, in all honesty. 'Work' - inasmuch as what he did for the Dark Lord could be called 'work' - had him pleasantly on-time, although he had a few ticking annoyances plaguing the back of his mind that he'd have to take care of sooner rather than later.

He palmed the box in his pocket before he apparated to the door of the house he shared with Ophelia, glancing into the hall as he stepped inside. Grayson would be the first to admit that he kept an odd schedule, so there was no telling whether his girlfriend would even be home. He smelled food, but that was more than likely a house-elf preparing the evening meal at the time it had been told to earlier in the morning by Grayson himself.

Stepping into the living room area, he drew off his gloves and shoved them into the sleeve of his overcoat and hung the thing up on its proper hook. He wasn't one to announce his presence, but Ophelia had probably heard the activity if she was home. He slid down into a chair, opting to wait rather than call out to her.

He hadn't been in a terribly good mood for the past few days for obvious reasons. Losing a little less than half of your blood did that to a man, he supposed. It wasn't so much the fact that he'd fought with Amery (they always fought, and he'd always had a horrible temper) but that he'd fought with him in a public place. It had been stupid, really, and he knew that -- the fact that Mackenzie was the one who had found them was even worse. His chest was still reasonably sore and he was going to have to explain to Ophelia eventually about why they fought, right?

That meant he had to figure out the reason - just another pain in his ass. He frowned to himself and stepped out of the bathroom in a pair of slacks and little else. His shirt was still hanging up in the closet because he hadn't wanted it to crease while he was in the shower.

Grayson was determined to completely ignore the fact that today marked the not-so-pleasant one-year anniversary of their ... Not!Wedding. Yep, there was no way that he was going to bring it up. He'd just have to cleverly distract Ophelia so that she didn't bring it up either.

"Have you spoken to your sister lately? It would get a bit creepy, I'm sure, if I owled her myself to ask." Which didn't mean that he wouldn't do it - just that he wouldn't tell anyone.