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Aziraphale was always uncomfortable these days where he was supposed to appear somewhere in all his heavenly glory, as it were.
People were no longer used to it, and it always made them rather nervous and hardly helped the situation at all.
Nevertheless, the upstairs had insisted, and so he had little choice in this.
With a sigh, he shed the human disguise, spread his wings, and approached the shepherds.
Just as he had expected, they began to tremble, fall to their knees and exhibit other usual signs of someone terrified out of their mind.
“It’s- it’s quite all right!” Aziraphale called.
It did not seem to help.
“Really,” Aziraphale insisted, not coming any closer to make it worse and silently cursing his orders. “Don’t be afraid, I don’t want to hurt you. In fact, I’m here with good news!”
He tried to smile, but wasn’t sure they could even see it in all the light.
Perhaps it was best to just get it over with.
“Your Messiah has been born!” He announced, trying for the sort of booming voice Gabriel would appreciate.
The shepherd just continued to tremble. “Your- your Saviour,” Aziraphale tried to elaborate. “Your Lord?”
Still nothing.
“Look, he’s in the town of David,” he added, a little tired now. “Bethlehem, I mean, in case that was unclear. You should recognize him by being the only child in town – at least I should hope so! - who is lying in a manger.”
Aziraphale was still unclear about why that had been necessary, but as Gabriel had said, he didn’t have to understand everything.
He didn’t have any more time to contemplate it, however, as as soon as he said this, a whole bunch of angels suddenly appeared next to him.
Aziraphale flinched.
One of the shepherds fainted, and another seemed to have wet himself.
The angels began to sing glory to the Almightly, and Aziraphale sighed a little.
He liked angelic singing as much as the next celestial being – really, he did – but there was a time and place for it, and on a random hill near Bethlehem in the middle of the night was decidedly not it.
“I thought this was supposed to be my job?” He hissed to the angel standing nearest to him.
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” the angel said immediately. “So we let you do the actual announcement, but we were so excited, we didn’t want to miss this moment.”
“Shouldn’t you have been helping with the birth, then? That seems like a much more important thing to witness.”
The angel grimaced. “Bodies,” he said. “They are so...well, so icky. This is much better, I think. Now hush,” he added, and began to sing.
Aziraphale patiently waited some minutes, until the angels realized their singing was not, perhaps, having the effect on the shepherds they had hoped and withdrew amidst discontented mumbling..
Then he finally took on the human disguise again, hid his wings, and hurried to the shepherd who had fainted.
“Is he alright?” He asked.
The others blinked, taking a moment to get used to his now normal form, getting up from their knees.
“He’ll be fine,” one of them assured him then. “Jacob just gets these fainting spells, really, it’s nothing extraordinary.” He gulped. “So, what is this all about?”
“Right.” Aziraphale took a deep breath, then let it out again after looking at the shepherd’s faces and said in a normal voice: “So, the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem, and I believe you are expected to go and see him.”
“We can do that,” the man immediately said with a decisive nod. “Right, boys? We can absolutely do that.”
There were nods all around, but one of them piped up. “What about the sheep?” He said. “We can’t take them with us, but we can’t just leave them here. Someone will have to stay.”
“I can absolutely guarantee nothing will happen to your sheep,” Aziraphale said.
They gave him dubious looks, but under his unflinching gaze, began to nod and sort of shuffle away, looking over their shoulders frequently at the herd, as if believing they would never see it again.
-
Crowley was always keeping track of where Aziraphale was these days.
It was his job, right? He was supposed to thwart his heavenly works, so.
He was just doing his job.
So when the angel had headed to that little shithole Bethlehem, and then taken to following a young couple around, Crowley was not far.
They ended up in a stable, which was just disgusting if you asked him, and he made sure to send a lovely little curse in the way of every damn innkeeper who had refused them despite it being obvious the girl was about to give birth any time now.
Then he turned into a snake and hid in the hay, trying not to be too disgusted by what was around him.
And for a while it was fine – it was warm, after all, and he could doze and be relatively content as he waited for Aziraphale to show up again – but then the actual delivery started.
Crowley had seen people give birth before, of course, many times. Usually there was a gaggle of midwives, or at least older relatives who had gone through the same thing and helped, both with the practicalities and as moral support.
But here, there was only the scared mother and and even more terrified looking father.
Crowley remembered only one other birth like that – when Eve bore her children.
She had been an old friend at the time – of sorts, anyway – and so his presence was hardly disturbing.
This girl on the other hand had never seen him before, and so Crowley wasn’t certain he wouldn’t do more harm than good. But listening a while longer to their panicked whispers, he just...
Well.
This seemed like a great place to cause some mischief, didn’t it? And it had been a while since he changed up the way he looked, anyway.
So a while later, a strict looking middle-aged woman entered the stable.
The man inside shot her an alarmed look. “Is...is this your place? We don’t want to steal anything, I promise, just let us stay until the birth is over-”
She waved her hand. “No worries, young man,” she said. “I’m a midwife, and I’m here to help.”
-
Once the shepherd were gone, Aziraphale did his minor miracle – really, nothing would happen to the sheep – and followed them.
Once he reached his goal, he was, he had to admit, scandalized.
It was one thing to hear the child was born in a stable, and quite another to see it.
The place smelled of excrement, was tiny and packed with animals, and he could barely reach the scared, exhausted teenage girl in the back and her nervous husband.
It also became immediately obvious that the last thing she had wanted was a whole gaggle of strangers coming and gaping at her and her new child, which was exactly what the shepherds were doing.
The whole thing was uncomfortable and unhygienic and really, giving birth here must have presented a severe risk of infection, though he supposed Upstairs had taken care of that.
Then again, it wouldn’t surprise him at all if they had just made sure the child survived and ignored the mother, so just to be sure he did another minor miracle of his own.
And got rid of all the excrement, too, while he was at it.
Really, he would have words with someone Upstairs.
For now, he settled down in the cleanest place he could find, determined to watch over the young family.
He was all set for basking in the holiness of the miracle that just happened, but it wasn’t five minutes until he felt demonic power at work.
He sat up immediately, trying to locate the source, or at least the effect – surely no one could harm baby Jesus this way? - and what he saw was...the shepherds were leaving.
It was as if they had, all at once, remembered the sheep they had left outside the town, and were hurrying to make sure they were all present and accounted for.
Aziraphale clicked his tongue and looked around – and sure enough, there he was, a snake in the hay.
“Are you here to tempt and wile, fiend?” He asked conversationally.
“Of course,” the snake said immediately, not looking like a snake anymore. “Tempting and wiling, that’s me.”
“Mhm.” Aziraphale looked around. “Do you think I should make it a little bit warmer? I seem to recall reading somewhere that babies needed warmth, and they don’t have any blankets for him...”
“You do that,” Crowley agreed. “I think I will make sure they aren’t disturbed for the rest of the night. Hindering the arrival of pilgrims and such, very demonic.”
“Of course it is, my dear,” Aziraphale said absently, thinking about how warm exactly he should make the place.
Crowley stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and turned his attention to his own demonic miracles. Surely an exceptional night like this warranted doing a bit more of them than usual?
Once they were both done, they settled next to each other in the warm hay, watching the new mother put her baby to sleep, singing a lullaby.
And yes, the air still smelled a little of shit around them and they barely had enough space to sit, but it was...nice. It was nice, and comfortable, and as Crowley closed his eyes next to him, his body relaxing, Aziraphale smiled and began to hum alongside Mary.
“Oh sleep, my sweet, my darling,” she sang...and Aziraphale, looking at Crowley’s closed eyes, thought the same.