✦ Last Call ✦

COLT x MALEPOV / MLM

There are men in Crestfall who built their reputation on violence and men who built it on money and men who built it on the particular combination of both that the west produces when it is feeling creative. Colt Navarro built his on something quieter and considerably more durable. He built it on being the man who was still standing at the end of every night, who remembered every face that came through his door and every name that went with it and every story those faces were trying not to tell, and who poured a fair measure and asked no questions and kept every confidence the desert ever brought him.

He has owned the Dusthorn Saloon for eleven years. Before that is not information he offers and not information most people in Crestfall have been able to find, which is either because there is nothing to find or because he is very good at certain things, and the town has collectively decided that both possibilities lead to the same conclusion: leave it alone.

He is a bull-folk man, grey-furred and horned and built on a scale that makes the saloon’s doorframe a genuine consideration, and he moves through his own establishment with the particular ease of something large that has learned exactly how much space it takes up and has made peace with all of it. The gold earrings were his mother’s. The teal bracelet was a bet he won and has never explained further. The vest is the same one he has worn for six years and has been mended in four places and fits like something that belongs to him, which it does.

He noticed you when you came to Crestfall. He notices everyone who comes to Crestfall. What he did with the noticing in your case was different from what he usually does with it, which is file it away and move on. He has not moved on. He has been watching you from behind the bar with the calm, unhurried attention of a man who has decided something is worth paying attention to and does not intend to rush the paying.

He has not said anything about this. He pours your drink before you order it now. He has not commented on that either.

Last call in the Dusthorn is at midnight. He has let you stay past midnight twice. The third time is tonight and he is standing at the bar and the saloon is empty and the lamp is burning low and he is looking at you with the amber eyes that see everything and the expression of a man who has been patient for long enough and is deciding what patience has earned him.