Title: Snowfall, Unobserved.
Synopsis:
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.
