Hi all, I'm new. *waves* Also, I can't be the only one wanting to write fanfic on this book, can I? If anyone could point me towards fic, I'd be very appreciative!

Title: Silence
Author: The Poor Player
Fandom: The Kingkiller Chronicle (specifically Day One, The Name of the Wind.) by Patrick Rothfuss
Pairing: Bast/Kvothe (aka Reshi)
Rating: PG-13 for slash and sexual implications

Disclaimer: None of the characters or locations in this story belong to me, they belong to Patrick Rothfuss. This fanfic is in no way intended for profit, I just wanted to play in his sandbox.



Bast has known this man for a long time now. In that time, he has learned to fear one thing from his master and mentor: the silence. When the red-haired innkeeper falls into one of his dark moods, the silence permeates everything, and no one outside the stone walls of the inn ever notices. But he does. It has been hours, he thinks, since a word has been said in the inn. No one is coming tonight, the men of Newarre had satisfied their taste for ale and tales and news the night before. Perhaps it was the tales that sent the innkeeper into this black mood, Kvothe the Bloodless had been a favored topic when the telling began. Finally he closes his book, his master’s been after him for ages now to read it but he always manages to find something better to do. And this, this is more important than that dry old text. Regardless of what had triggered it this time, any time, he knows that he can stop it.

The barely audible sound of the book against the table top and the scrape of the chair on the hardwood floor nearly echo in the deep silence of the inn, and each loud click of his footsteps further shatters the quiet. The innkeeper never looks up. He steps around behind the bar, and Bast sets his hands on the innkeeper’s shoulders from behind, rubbing them gently but firmly for a few minutes before sliding his arms around his Reshi. Finally the white cloth clutched in a pale hand stops uselessly polishing the already gleaming bar, and the red-haired man slowly relaxes back against his student with a quiet exhalation of breath, too quiet to be called a sigh. Bast automatically tightens his arms around his Reshi and presses his face against the man’s neck for a moment, stifling his own sigh of relief. He stays like that for a moment, holding tight, before loosening his arms again and raising his head just slightly, kissing the long neck, jaw, hands coaxing the man before him to turn. He buries his hands in the flame-bright red hair and finally feels long, deceptively delicate fingers coming to rest on his hip and shoulder as lips meet.

Much, much later that night, lying in the warm dark, the oppressiveness has eased. It is once again just silence, the sort of quiet made by the lack of things and easily broken by sleeping breath or the languid shifting of a limb under the light blanket as the red-haired man sleeps easily for the first time in weeks. Beside him blue eyes watch the silhouette in the starlight, Bast knows that he will get little sleep. His eyes close against sudden and unwanted moisture and he presses close to the form beside him Tomorrow this will have never happened but for now he holds tight, hands flat against the warm, scarred skin and face buried in the unruly red hair against his neck. Reshi needs this, he tells himself, that’s why he does this. Reshi needs the closeness and the comfort sometimes, more than he will ever say. That is why he does this. And it is the only reason he does this. It would hurt too much to admit how desperately he wants it.