#cuddy knew him in college. stacy met him at a conference after he was alr a doctor

[realbeefman]

thinking about queer!house, who would’ve been just getting out of medical school at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. house who loves puzzles and mysterious diseases. who probably did have to interview patients when he was younger and didn’t have the reputation to back up his behavior, having to deliver a diagnosis of GRID, that has only experimental treatments, a mysterious disease that nobody will fund the research for. the medical community can’t even agree on why exactly people catch it or on how it’s transmitted at first.

in the hallways, the unspoken consensus is that it’s spread through deviancy. degeneracy. queer behavior. that it’s more social contagion than real disease.

it would’ve made him furious. to watch people die, over and over again, from a puzzle that those with power didn’t want to solve. to hear so many become indignant or furious or hysterical at a diagnosis that labels them as queer. maybe it was worse to see those visibly gay men who only nodded their head, accepted that what had already begun killing their friends, their lovers, was killing them too.

everybody lies. whether they’re lying about their sexuality or lying about accepting an awful death shouldn’t make a difference to him. they’re going to die irregardless.

i think living through the epidemic as a young queer man would give additional explanation to a lot of house’s behavior. his general distaste for and mistrust for authority, his willingness to try any treatment no matter how radical or experimental, his conscious refusal to connect emotionally with patients, even down to less obvious stuff, like his consistent refusal to use heroin. he’s genuinely traumatized from living through an epidemic that killed people like him.

#i just think it would explain soo much abt him #he hates everyone around him a little too much for somebody that hasnt been through hell #stacy says he’s always been a jerk but cuddy notably doesn’t #cuddy knew him in college. stacy met him at a conference after he was alr a doctor #and i think obviously house was always kind of an asshole #but i think living thru the epidemic wouldve changed him #wilson wouldve been affected by it too #but he wouldve more seen the moral panic and such #he wouldve been in high school/college at its height #and by the time he gets out of med school HIV is a diagnosis and there is much more public knowledge about it #different perspectives on it idk #been thinking abt this a lot recently #house md #greg house #house md headcanon #tw HIV #tw AIDS epidemic #house md hc