#is a big part of why he stopped manipulating Gwyn so early

[not-poignant]

I had a question I wanted to ask you, but every time I came to your tumblr, I kept getting distracted by all the wonderful asks/answers/worldbuilding and I would forget my question. But I have finally remembered! What exactly did Augus do for people as a dominant that helped them so much? I mean, the only thing we've seen him do in canon is break Gwyn's heartsong/s, but that's apparently an unusual request? What was so unique about his services? And that he could only offer on a one-time basis?

Oh! Awesome question.

Okay, firstly, Augus chooses to only offer his services on a one-time basis. That’s his personal choice, because he doesn’t like relationships, and he gets bored easily; it actually has nothing to do with the type of service he offers, and he acknowledges himself that some people would be benefitted from seeing him more often. He even says this to Gwyn, directly, in Deeper into the Woods I’m pretty sure.

So Augus’ ‘one-time service’ isn’t anything to do with his clients, it’s to do with him. In that sense, if a client wants to do something similar again, he has other fae he can refer them to, or he’ll refer them on from the outset. Augus actually was really well networked before the Nightingale came along, in that sense. And in The Wildness Within we actually see him refer a potential client along to another Dom, because he’s too busy to attend to her properly.

In that sense, Augus’ services are not unique. He’s not like...someone who will solve everything in a single weekend so that you never need that again. He knows that. He’s pretty clear with his clients about that. And if he thinks he can’t help a client, he’ll be honest from the outset (it’s why he has the interview period before he commits to anything - and also where he secures the fae version of consent, lol).

Augus’ reputation is that he’s a miracle worker, because that’s how some of his clients talk about it (it’s certainly how Gwyn thought of him after seeing him), but it’s not because Augus only sees them once or whatever. That’s just...’I have commitment issues also I like being alone go away’ - Augus’ particular charm.

Okay, so, now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at how he helped people. He was generally well-suited to people who were in some kind of crisis in their life, who didn’t know how to fix it, but who had already searched or tried to fix it. He wasn’t the only one who could provide a solution to that and his methods aren’t the only ones that could be used for it. But his reputation preceded him, he didn’t have a fixed rate, and he worked fast - i.e. over a weekend (which for fae would be more the equivalent of a long weekend, but still).

Fae are also generally more okay with sex and have less taboos about it, so the idea of ‘processing through physical intimacy’ or ‘processing through pain’ is - for many of them - not really as horrifying a concept as it is in human society. Augus also doesn’t inflict pain on every client he has/sees, nor does he have sex with all of them.

Augus’ primary role is mostly coercing people into an environment where they have to confront the thing that they’re avoiding/denying, and pushing them to a breakthrough where they then accept that thing (or repudiate it, depending on what the situation requires) so that they can figure out what they need to do next. He’s also adept at stabilising fae who feel like they’re flying apart or unable to contain themselves, and grounding fae back down into themselves - their true selves in particular.

Augus has an innate ability that is mentioned throughout the series, but isn’t really made a big deal of (though it kind of is...a big deal) in that he can sense heartsongs and he can tell what they are to a high degree of accuracy. It’s generally not a common trait. Most fae couldn’t put their hand on your back and go ‘your heartsong is affection’ etc. But Augus can. (So can Fenwrel).

So while Augus isn’t in the practice of breaking heartsongs, he’s definitely in the practice of divining them and grounding someone back into them healthily, getting someone away from corruption of a heartsong, helping them find a new one, or stabilising them back into themselves. It’s how he can actually check that what he’s done has worked, because he trusts that (meridians / heartsongs) more than he trusts what someone says or how they’re behaving. He also uses that to guide his actions.

But yeah, he turns away clients, he redirects clients, I don’t think he believes for one second that he can help all clients and sometimes he doesn’t want to. He’s  aware that what he does is on the more extreme end of ‘healing services,’ especially since he doesn’t have much time to build trust and sometimes doesn’t bother (fear is useful for him, so are compulsions).

As for his methods, I mean we’ve seen elements of them throughout. We’ve seen that he can be gentler and cause no pain re: The Raven Prince in those canon interludes, we’ve seen that he will be more brutal with Gwyn (in part because he likes to be, these days, but because Gwyn needed it back in the day), we’ve seen that he can also be very gentle to Gwyn in The Wildness Within etc.

He caters his methods to the fae he’s working with. He tends to think that anyone who fronts up on the doorstep of the world’s most powerful Each Uisge, who has a notorious reputation for ferocity in both the human realm and in the fae realm, is probably someone who needs a more intense experience in the first place.

(Also, randomly, I’d say that breaking Gwyn’s heartsongs aren’t the only thing we’ve seen him do in the canon. His encounters with The Raven Prince were also canon. And in addition, quite outside of heartsong breakage, he’s had a lot of transformative or healing-based scenes with Gwyn. One could argue that one of the most transformative outside of Gwyn’s formal requests for Augus services, was the one that’s the most-quoted - the very first: ‘it’s not a sin to be yourself’ scene.

It was Augus’ first major foray into pushing Gwyn into becoming more anchored in himself (outside of Deeper into the Woods), even before he knew Gwyn was Unseelie, he was still instinctively aiming in a direction that was far healthier for Gwyn - and a lot of the scenes that followed; from Augus talking about Gwyn being as brutish as his soldiers and taking him dry, to mimicking a sex scene with Mafydd, etc. All of those were, for Augus, very much about aiming for something deeper and all held elements of what he might offer or do for clients

It’s one of the reasons Augus says he appreciates like, spontaneity a bit more, in COFT, because he’s always in that other mindset otherwise, and until Gwyn he’d never had sex just for the sake of having sex --- Augus is often ‘on’ and is still learning how to be selfish during sex scenes. While it seems he’s being selfish a lot of the time, he usually has strong emotional aims re: his client’s welfare and health - though he can be hit and miss with Gwyn, especially before he knew Gwyn was Unseelie).