"It's him, isn't it?"
A shrill, anger-laced voice sliced through the heavy air, piercing Wilson's eardrums and etching a wince over his guilty features. He hadn't intended things to go this way - he hadn't intended for her to ever get deep enough into his mind to fathom it all out. God, it wasn't even anything that needed arguing over; it was just a crush.
"Alicia, please--" James cut himself off in mid-sentence, chewing childishly on his bottom lip. That simple action changed the medical intern from a determined, dedicated first-year into a hopeless, worried toddler, clawing around his own mind desperately in the hopes that the right words would form the right sentence and save his marriage.
He could name at least ten symptoms of haemochromatosis, he could cathe somebody with his eyes closed, but he couldn't explain himself to the woman that had been with him since college?
"No, James! I don't want to hear it!" Turning her back on him, Alicia padded a few steps closer to the bedroom door, trying to escape him. Their marriage wasn't even a marriage anymore; it wasn't the two of them, it was the three of them. How could he expect her to live like that, after everything she'd done, how could he expect her to just turn a blind eye?
"Just tell me..." She took a breath and turned again, surveying the man before her with a weary gaze. The dark brown eyes she'd fallen so madly in love with were downcast, staring at his shuffling feet. He looked like a child, just a child to be pitied and taken care of. He spent his days caring for others, desperately trying to get a good intern review, trying to please everybody and make it as a doctor. Perhaps she should--
"Which one of us?" Alicia spoke without considering it; it was a last chance for the both of them. If she just let it slip again, the circle could complete and they'd be in this exact same situation in a month's time. "Which one of us do you want?"
Wilson looked up sharply, hands immediately pushed into his pockets. It was a give away – it was 'his thing', what he did when he was guilty. For a moment, horror flitted through his eyes, but the shock was soon replaced with a deep, morose sadness. There was a right answer and a wrong answer, but – for once in his life – James couldn't choose. He could choose correctly, save his marriage, go along with the rest of his life. Or he could choose the wrong one, loose his wife and throw away his life in the hopes that, one day, his boyish affections would be noticed by his coworker.
Swallowing, a sick feeling growing in the depths of his stomach, Wilson made his choice:
"House."