Sebastian has a ritual he never names, the kind of habit that slips beneath anything language can cover and settles somewhere uncomfortable under the ribs. Every time he comes home from a job in the endless sprawl of the city or further afield, he stops on the seventh step of the safehouse staircase. He stands there with one hand curled tightly around the banister, shoulders tense, head bowed just slightly, as if listening out for something only he can hear.
It looks ordinary to anyone else, almost invisible, just a tall figure pausing on a stairwell with his jacket still half unzipped and the smell of rain , gunpowder or diesel clinging to him like a shroud. But the moment is never ordinary to him. It is the point where his heartbeat slows enough to feel real again instead of hammering hard enough to burst outward. The point where he confirms he has made it back alive with all aspects intact and his target handled - a job well done , of course.
The ritual began long before Jim had dug his claws in, long before the unending reach of criminal networks and heavy weight of an encrypted phone in his pocket. It began in a bombed out apartment complex where the stairs had collapsed under the weight of chaos. Sebastian was twenty three, breathless from sprinting through dust thick corridors, half deaf from the last explosion ringing in his ears, hands shaking though he would have denied it. He reached the seventh step before the rest of the stairwell crumbled behind him in a roar that he's certain lifted his feet off the ground. For one long second he stared at the empty air where the stairs had been, alive only because he had hesitated to catch his breath - one of those purely instinctual actions that he hadn't given a second thought.
He never forgot the number - despite trying to.
Now the safehouse staircase is clean, freshly painted and reinforced to hell by Jim's paranoia - but the ritual remains. After each mission he climbs slowly, boots heavy with exhaustion, hoodie damp from weather or sweat. On the seventh step he pauses. Sometimes he closes his eyes. Sometimes his thumb taps out a restless rhythm on the rail, the ghost of a soldier's prayer. Sometimes he just stands there breathing deeply, letting the knot in his chest loosen enough to be ignored.
Jim pretends not to notice. He sits on the sofa with his laptop open or sprawls across the bed scrolling through dossiers, but he always goes silent at the exact moment Sebastian's footsteps reach the seventh step. He waits for the pause. He waits for the breath. He waits for the small creaking of motion that means Sebastian is continuing upward, alive and whole.
On nights when Sebastian does not pause, Jim feels the change like a cold current through the walls. It means the assignment was too close for comfort. It means someone got a little too clever. It means Sebastian is wearing that taut, brittle calm that usually precedes a nightmare, the kind where he wakes with his fists clenched and his breath ragged. Jim does not sleep during those nights. He pretends to read or reorganise documents, but really he watches the rise and fall of Sebastian’s chest until it steadies.
Sebastian would never call the ritual sentimental. He calls it habit, or nothing, or simply shrugs if asked. But it is the only moment where he allows himself to feel the weight of living through another day, another job, another brush with the sharp edge of mortality that has chased him since he was eighteen.
In a world full of surveillance, sirens, CCTV static, and the neon hum of streets that never sleep, the seventh step is the closest thing he has to a grounding point. A tiny quiet space that belongs only to him. A single breath between danger and home.
Jim never speaks of it, but sometimes, when he hears Sebastian pause on the stairs after a particularly rough night, he closes his eyes and breathes with him, matching the sniper's sporadic rhythm for one unguarded second.
Because in a world where everyone leaves eventually, the sound of Sebastian taking that breath on the seventh step is the closest thing Jim has ever known to feeling safe.
In a December London hushed by cold and habit, Sebastian Moran moves through the season unchanged - until a quiet act of kindness reminds him that meaning lives not in celebration, but in what is done unseen.
December always found Sebastian like a hound found a hare, whether he wanted it to or not and with an undercurrent of unease.
It arrived without ceremony, slipping into the city through shorter days and colder pavements, through breath fogging the air and the particular quiet that settled over London when people started carrying their lives inward.
The world felt smaller in that weaning end to the year. More contained. Sounds softened by scarves and gloves, movements slower, as if everyone were bracing against something unseen - well , everyone but the tourists , that is.
Sebastian noticed. He always did - even if he refused to acknowledge it.
He noticed the way footsteps changed, cautious on ice slick stone. The way traffic grew impatient as daylight dwindled to dusk with every second spent idling between changing lights. The way people clung closer together, families tightening ranks against the cold and couples leaned in to one another that bit more. December altered behaviour, altered risk, altered the emotional terrain, and Sebastian had been trained, very thoroughly, to read terrain.
He moved through it steadily, coat pulled close, hands bare despite the biting afternoon cold. His breath bloomed white and promptly vanished. Shop windows glowed with excess, strings of lights attempting cheer, mannequins frozen mid-celebration. He watched it all with the detached attentiveness of someone who had never quite been part of it - not in any way that deserved repeating until emblazoned with the title of 'tradition'.
Family, as a whole , had always been a complicated web to pick apart for him.
As a child, it had meant long corridors and voices that echoed within them too much, dinners where laughter felt rehearsed and affection arrived with expectations attached. The gifts may have been plentiful but they were cold - given for bragging rights rather than enjoyment and wrapped by frazzled strangers trying to get through another day in retail.
Sir Augustus Moran appeared frequently this time of year, photographed beneath chandeliers, quoted about legacy and service, shaking hands for charities he couldn’t name. Sebastian did not read the articles. He did not need to. December in that house had never been about warmth. It had been about appearances, about tradition wielded like a measuring stick - clearly, little had changed in that regard despite the passage of time.
He stopped at a crossing and waited through the flickering light. A father nearby lifted his tired child onto his shoulders, murmuring something that made the child laugh, sharp and unguarded. Sebastian watched the way the child’s hands fisted in the man’s coat collar, the absolute trust in the gesture.
Something tightened beneath the collar of his coat - a hard knot forming in his throat. Not pain, exactly. An old, familiar ache, the kind that flared in cold weather.
He looked away before the light changed.
The safehouse greeted him with warmth and noise, the heating clanking rhythmic in protest at the season. Jim had dragged in a Christmas tree earlier that week and had, by some miracle, made it worse. It leaned precariously in the corner, half-lit, half-trapped in its netting, as if it had attempted escape and failed - being mauled for it’s trouble.
Sebastian paused on the seventh step, fingers resting against the banister. He breathed. Once. Twice. Long enough for the tension to ease out of his shoulders. Then he continued upward with the rising heat.
Jim was sprawled on the sofa, laptop open, one foot hooked over the armrest. He had wrapped tinsel around his wrist like a bracelet. It glittered every time he moved. Sebastian resisted the urge to ask if his pantomime audition had been successful - that would only end badly.
“You’re late,” Jim said, without looking up.
“Traffic,” Sebastian replied, shrugging out of his coat. It was true. Everything slowed down in December, despite the look of frantic holiday shoppers - some found comfort in the glacial speed , not Jim, he loathed it with a passion reminiscent of the grinch himself.
Jim glanced up then, eyes sharp, cataloguing him out of habit. The smile that followed was crooked and knowing. “You look festive.”
Sebastian huffed softly. “You look like a fashion violation.”
“Seasonal,” Jim said brightly, already turning back to his screen.
They did not discuss Christmas. They never really did. It was not avoidance so much as an unspoken agreement. Jim treated holidays like anthropological curiosities, things other people participated in and that could occasionally amuse him. Sebastian treated them like weather systems, something to endure and adapt to.
Later, when the sky had fully darkened and the city pressed closer, Sebastian went back out. He told Jim he was just walking to the shops. Jim nodded, distracted but attentive in that strange way of his. They trusted each other, not with softness, but with consistency.
The night air cut sharper now. Pubs spilled heat and laughter onto the pavement. Churches glowed with candlelight, doors ajar, hymns drifting into the street. Sebastian slowed as he passed one, the sound catching him unawares. The melody was old, worn smooth by centuries. His mother used to hum it, back when she still believed in gentle things.
He stood there until the song ended, then moved on.
He found the boy near a closed up shop entrance, curled in on himself against the wall. Not a child, not quite a man. Sixteen, maybe. Too thin for the jacket he wore. Eyes too alert, scanning for threat. Sebastian clocked it all automatically. Cold exposure. Hunger. The posture of someone who had learned how to disappear amongst the crowds of faceless movement.
He adjusted his approach so he would not loom over the crumpled figure - a not so easy task with his height and - what could charitably be called a non-jovial expression. At least he didn’t look like a nuisance drunk seeking out trouble with the poor lad.
“You alright?” he asked, voice neutral.
The boy shrugged. “Fine, missed my bus home.”
The lie was reflexive, not strategic. Sebastian recognised it immediately.
“There’s a café round the corner,” he said. “Open late. Warm.”
Suspicion flickered across the boy’s face. Hunger followed close behind. Sebastian waited. Waiting was something he had done his entire adult life as it was.
“I don’t have money,” the boy said eventually.
“I do.” is all the blonde retorted with.
They walked together, not quite side by side.
The café was small , nearly empty at such an hour , windows fogged from warmth and spilled conversation. Sebastian ordered tea and a couple sandwiches , paid without comment, then sat angled away, giving the boy space. He watched colour creep back into his face as he ate. From a corpse like ash to something more befitting his youth.
“Name?” Sebastian asked gently.
“Tom.”
Sebastian nodded. He did not offer his own. Names mattered. Names carried weight - his wasn’t important right now.
Tom spoke in fragments at first, then more steadily. Foster homes. A fight. A bag left behind and misplaced trust. A city that swallowed people whole. Sebastian listened without interruption, without judgment. He had lived adjacent to stories like this his entire life, had watched institutions fail quietly, efficiently. It wasn’t shocking , just bone-deep aggravating.
When Tom finished, shame creeping in at the edges of hushed words, Sebastian finally spoke up from behind his half finished drink, “There’s a charity north of here. They’ll have space - people to talk to. I can walk you.”
Tom hesitated, surely recalling some half remembered warning of secondary locations from a pamphlet somewhere.
“Why?”
Sebastian considered the question seriously. There were many answers. Moral Duty. Guilt. Habit. A soldier’s instinct to extract the vulnerable first.
“Because it’s cold,” he said finally.
The small building they entered was loud and somewhat crowded - but warm , plastered in informational posters and support signposting in garish but well meaning colours. A place alive with a thousand different conversations and helping hands on standby behind well worn tables. Sebastian waited until Tom was signed in, until a blanket was placed around his shoulders, until the door closed behind him.
Until safety was assured.
Walking back alone, something in Sebastian’s chest loosened. It was not joy. It was alignment, the quiet sense of having acted in accordance with something he could still live with.
Back at the safehouse, Jim looked up as Sebastian entered. He read the shift in him immediately.
“You found a stray,” Jim said.
Sebastian exhaled, the ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Something like that.”
Jim closed his laptop and stood. He pressed a mug into Sebastian’s hands. Hot chocolate and Baileys, topped absurdly with marshmallows - because far be it for Jim to half-arse anything, no matter how bizarre.
“Seasonal,” Jim said again, softer.
Sebastian accepted it. Their shoulders brushed. Neither commented.
Later, lying awake beneath the crooked glow of the Christmas tree, Sebastian thought about family. About blood and expectation. About men who stood beside you because you stood beside them. About a boy warming his hands around a cup of tea. About those gathering in the lost , offering much needed lifelines or just a hand up in the exact right moment that it was needed.
December did not redeem Sebastian. It did not soften him into something he was not. But it reminded him, every year, that morality lived in the small, unobserved choices. In stepping into the cold. In not looking away.
Outside, snow began to fall, light and uncertain. The city breathed on.
Sebastian closed his eyes, and for once, the quiet felt deserved.
Sebastian has tried to quit smoking at least six times, each attempt more unhinged than the last.
He’ll declare , usually at two in the morning while shirtless and pacing in a surprisingly energetic fashion , that he’s 'done with the habit,' crush a pack dramatically, and wake up the next day furious that Past-Sebastian took away Present-Sebastian’s morning cigarette in his haste.
The first time, on the advice of a very confused GP, he tries replacement therapy. Most men pick patches or nicotine gum. Sebastian picks lollies. Ridiculously colourful ones that he spots at the pharmacy counter on his way in. He claims it’s because they 'keep the jaw busy,' but in reality, he enjoys the scandalised looks he gets while walking around chewing on a lollipop stick like a delinquent Victorian street urchin.
Within days, the situation escalates. His pockets fill with lollipops the way other men carry ammunition or cash; neatly sorted. He keeps them in the inner lining of his jacket like contraband. He breaks one every time he opens a door too aggressively with his shoulder. He leaves them stuck in coffee mugs, half-unwrapped on his rarely used desk, and once drunkenly on top of his gun case, which feels profoundly cursed even to him. His nicotine cravings turn him into a menace: snapping the sticks between his teeth like tiny bones, sucking on them with the grim focus of a man diffusing a bomb, muttering 'this is fine' while shaking one free from the wrapper like the world’s angriest toddler.
By week two, everyone around him has had enough. He’s jittery, sugar-high, and bizarrely cheerful in a way that makes most people nervous. He keeps forgetting that lollipops are not cigarettes and tries to tap the ash off the end more than once. Mid-argument, he pulls a lollipop from behind his ear with the deadly flourish that leaves no room for laughter at the sheer absurdity of the action.
The worst part? It works. Kind of. His cravings get blunted by sheer oral fixation and the constant industrial-grade sucrose entering his system. He stops snapping at people, mostly because his mouth is too busy. But he also develops the deeply unfortunate habit of talking with the lollipop stick jutting out from the corner of his mouth like some feral, ridiculous, sweet-themed gangster. Anyone trying to take him seriously has to look away every few seconds. He insists he does not have a problem. Evidence suggests otherwise.
Eventually, one morning, he breaks; cravings wins, dignity loses. He stands outside with a cigarette in one hand and a lollipop in the other, like he’s balancing an angel and a devil. He smokes. He sighs. He pockets the lollipop for later. He tells himself he’ll quit again someday. Maybe next week. Maybe next decade.
