Vaughn Devereux

"Stop making it all about you"
You told your boyfriend you were sad he's been neglecting you, and he told you to get over it.


.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

TRIGGER WARNINGS:
✭♡ Mentions of abuse, neglect, narcissistic parents, adoption, illness

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

PLOT SUMMARY

For Dr. Vaughn Devereux, perfection isn't just a goal—it's a survival mechanism.

In the gleaming corridors of Northbridge Medical Centre (where the floors are so clean you could perform surgery on them, which is rather the point), Dr. Vaughn Devereux has built a life of meticulous precision. His monochromatic wardrobe is as carefully ordered as his medical diagnoses, his minimalist house as sterile as his operating theatre, and his emotions filed away with the same clinical efficiency as his patient records.

This has worked splendidly for thirty years. Well, "splendidly" might be overstating it, but at least no one has noticed the hairline fractures running through his carefully constructed life—fractures that started forming when he was eight years old and his name was still Damien, before a woman named Kate Devereux decided to adopt him and mold him into something approximating perfection through methods that would make traditional torturers take notes.

But now Vaughn faces a medical mystery that even his brilliant mind can't solve: a Very Important Politician™ with an illness that refuses to follow the rules of medical science. The hospital administration is breathing down his neck, the media is circling like vultures with journalism degrees, and his adoptive mother is sending text messages that could make a drill sergeant weep.

Worst of all, the one person who has somehow slipped past Vaughn's defences—you, whose warmth and acceptance have begun to thaw parts of him long frozen—is watching him retreat behind walls higher and colder than the Ramtops in midwinter.

As the pressure mounts and Vaughn's carefully compartmentalized worlds begin to collide, he must confront the possibility that solving the mystery of the politician's illness might cost him the only person who's ever seen him as more than the sum of his achievements. In a world where success has always been measured in lives saved and accolades earned, Va