It was most decidedly not December the twenty-fifth. It wasn't even winter. It was quite nice out, actually, Crowley thought as he sidled up against the barn wall. He paused a moment and looked furtively up at the crisp, clear night sky, and noted that the stars were particularly bright that night, especially that one quite conspicuously positioned over the barn.
But maybe that was just Him ensuring that His Son had a pleasant birth-day, seeing as the rest of the boy's life was pretty much going to be nothing but Hardship, capitol H intended and deserved. At least, it would be if prophets were anything to go by. Crowley had given enough would-be prophets enough false visions to know that they weren't always as reliable as the faithful liked to claim.
It was much easier to snigger at false prophets as he got closer and closer to the entrance of the barn than to actually think about what he was doing. He wasn't here officially, not on business from Hell. He wasn't sure why he was here, actually. If pressed he might admit that a small part of him wanted to see this baby that everyone had been—still was—so excited about, this King of Kings that old Herod was so upset about. But Crowley was very rarely pressed, so he admitted no such thing.
He'd heard rumors that close proximity to the Christ Child would result in the instant and permanent demise of any demon of lower rank than Duke, but Crowley put very little merit into such rumors. Humans liked to say a lot of things could kill demons, and very few things actually had such power. (Fewer still in that Holy Water had yet to be invented.)
Besides, he considered as he poked his head into the stable where the Holy Family was sleeping, he'd been in closer proximity to a full-grown angel than he planned to get to the Son, so really there shouldn't be any danger—
And then he was promptly tackled by that very angel, who very desperately did not want a demon getting any closer to the baby—decidedly not out of fear of the demon's instant and permanent demise, mind you.
The violent reaction on the angel's behalf was rather a vague disappointment to Crowley—of late, they'd become less and less likely to kill one another every time they met up. He supposed this was just bad timing all around. Nothing for it, really.
"What are you doing here?!" the angel growled at the same time that the demon shouted, "What the Hell?!"
Aziraphale blanched and stood with a huff. "Quiet," he admonished in a harsh whisper. "You'll wake the baby."
"No I won't," said Crowley as he stood, rubbing the back of his head, which had hit the ground rather hard in that little encounter.
"You will if you keep shouting," Aziraphale insisted, poking his head worriedly into the little building.
"No, I won't," the demon repeated, sauntering up beside the angel to peek in as well. It wasn't particularly hard to look inside, as there was apparently no fourth wall, but Crowley felt in less danger of dissolving if he creeped about.
The angel gave him an odd look. "You didn't freeze them, did you?" he asked, clearly distressed. "Your demonic powers shouldn't be able to affect them! They're the Holy Family!"
"Actually, a few of them are shepherds," Crowley corrected, pointing to the corner where said shepherds slept forcibly soundly. "Besides, they're all human. Why shouldn't I be able to affect them?"
Aziraphale looked stricken, at a loss. "But they're—er. He, the baby…he's going to be sinless, you know. He will be completely outside your jurisdiction."
"Will he," Crowley mumbled dryly, peering at the bundle of blankets in the manger. "That's hard to believe. Poor bastard won't have any free will at all, will he?"
"That's not it," the angel replied, leaning against the doorframe, gazing at the baby rather wistfully. "He's just going to be perfect, that's all. He won't feel any desire, not the slightest urge, to sin. That's more than can be said for any angel," he added a little guiltily. "And don't call him a bastard."
"I only mean it as a technical term. Immaculate conception is still considered to be out of wedlock." He looked pointedly at who he could only assume was Joseph, thinking, I can understand why he wanted to divorce her, the poor sod.
Aziraphale blushed and averted his eyes. "It's still unbelievably disrespectful." But he smiled when he looked back at the baby. "But I suppose you have an understandable reason for not liking him. He's going to cause an awful lot of trouble for you and your business endeavors, I must imagine."
Crowley scoffed. "I doubt it," he lied.
Aziraphale said nothing. They stood in an oddly peaceful silence for a few minutes, until Crowley quite suddenly realized that Aziraphale's wings were out.
"So have you been guardian-angel-ing it up tonight, Aziraphale?" he teased.
Aziraphale gave him a look that was more tolerant than amused, but amused nonetheless. "Why not? It's not every day that the Son of God is born. It's rather an honor to be so close to him. I heard from Gabriel that hardly any of the other angels could believe that He would ever…" He trailed off, seeming to realize what it was that he was saying, and a look of pain crossed his face.
"Ever send His little tyke down to die?" Crowley finished with no small amount of acid in his tone. The angel's frown deepened.
"You do tend to focus on the negative, don't you?" he said. "You should be more optimistic."
"I'm very optimistic. But that kid's life is set in stone, and does not exactly call for optimism, does it?"
Aziraphale bit his lower lip. "But think of all the good he'll bring to the world…"
"Yep, and all he has to do is give his life in one of the most painful ways imaginable."
Aziraphale coughed politely. "He knows that, I'm sure. He can't afford to be selfish…"
"A lot of stress for a five-hour-old, don't you think? I can't wait until he reaches his teenage rebellion stage. That'll be fun."
Aziraphale obviously couldn't imagine His Son anything close to rebellious, and did not catch the sarcasm. "What? No it won't! Didn't I just tell you he's going to be perfect?"
Crowley's eye twitched, humor forgotten. "And didn't I just tell you that he's human?I'm not saying he's going to go around starting fights and using foul language—I just refuse to believe that He would deny His Son a normal-ish life before he has to start performing miracles and getting himself crucified!"
Presently, a tiny sneeze sounded from the stable, ending the conversation. Crowley dove backwards into the shadows, while Aziraphale shot in the opposite direction, rushing right up to the side of the manger. Crowley had vaguely expected the angel to start glowing from such close proximity to the Divine Child, but no such thing occurred. Aziraphale's face remained in the dark, if a bit flustered.
"Oh look what we've done," the angel muttered. "All this talking about him made the poor thing sneeze."
"He's a baby, angel," the demon said, not moving any closer. "I'm not convinced that superstitions really have any power over him yet. It's probably just the dust, or the hay."
Aziraphale ignored that statement and looked over to where Crowley stood and gave him a gentle smile that the demon had only seen a few times in the last 4,004 years, usually directed towards scrolls, not himself. "I told you that you didn't have any influence over him, you old serpent. Now do stop hiding. You did come here to see him, didn't you?"
Crowley hesitated, unnerved. The last few times he'd spent any substantial amount of time speaking civilly with the angel like this, they'd both ended up stinking drunk. When that failed, they discorporated each other, or at least got close. There was no alcohol on hand and it would be rather inappropriate to kill each other in front of the Christ Child, even by demonic standards. They had had more and more peaceful interactions in the last few thousand years, but it still wasn't official. They could snap at any time… So, Crowley really didn't know what to think here.
So he didn't think as he approached the manger and the angel, keeping his face a hard mask. The mask, however, felt inclined to slip off as soon as he saw the blessed thing for the first time. It really was just a regular human baby with dark, thin, wispy hair and mud-brown eyes. Not such an uncommon-looking babe at all, really.
That is, if you excluded the fact that Jesus was looking up at the angel and demon with greater focus than any newborn had any right to possess. More than focus, there was emotion in the baby's face—at the moment, pure and palpable compassion emanated from the child.
It shook Crowley to the core. For just a brief instant, he remembered the all-encompassing Love he'd always felt in Heaven, and it was all wrapped up in this little baby. It endeared him to the child, and for a moment, he honestly wished he could save it from all the pain he would unavoidably endure during his time on Earth. The unbidden protectiveness was too much; he had to look away to break the spell.
Aziraphale did not seem to notice Crowley's inner turmoil. He was still cooing over the holy infant, saying nonsense like, "Oh look, he has his mother's eyes, but that's definitely his Father's nose!" Crowley couldn't very well remember His nose, so he marked it down as the angel being caught up in the moment. Even Jesus' expression was now as though he was only indulging the angel by being adorable.
"He's going to change the world, you know," Aziraphale finally said, looking at Crowley at last. "That's why he came. Not to be human—to save them."
The Lamb's head wiggled solemnly.
"So of course that means he can't have a life of his own."
The Rock of Ages averted his gaze politely, meaning something along the lines of 'Oh my, don't start fighting again, it's not important.'
"No, that's not what it means! Why are you so offended by this whole business, anyway? What does it have to do with you?"
"Dunno, maybe I'm just having problems picturing this baby on a cross."
The Son of God winced. They'd come full circle and had started all over again. Why couldn't they just be distracted by his cuteness for a while longer?
"I don't like it any more than you do, demon, but it's part of the Ineffable Plan! He knows that, I wager," Aziraphale insisted, gesturing towards the Messiah.
'Hey, leave me out of this,' Jesus tried to say, but it came out as an easily-ignorable gurgle.
They easily ignored him. "I'm sick of the Ineffable Plan. And you know what? I don't think this is going to end as great as you think it will. I can think of some pretty bad things this kid'll bring."
The Immanuel looked intrigued, if vaguely worried.
"What could you possibly be talking about? He's going to bring people closer to God, to Heaven. You know, the whole Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards Men business. I can imagine how that all might be a bad thing to you, but—"
"Holy Wars," Crowley said oddly casually, wiggling a finger lazily in front of the Redeemer's chubby face. "Religious fanatics." He paused and allowed his demonic aura to reach a bit farther into the future. "Commercialism."
Aziraphale gasped and Jesus looked as offended as a peace-loving infant could. 'Alright, enough with discussing my Destiny as if I'm not in the room,' he said with a sadly unintelligible coo.
And, as the angel and demon still didn't seem to understand, the Prince of Peace opened his tiny, adorable mouth and started to cry. Loudly. Big, fat tears ran down his very human face, and, as hoped and expected, Aziraphale and Crowley froze, looked from each other to the wailing Lamb and back again. They promptly wished themselves elsewhere.
Crowley's spell broken, a very tired Mary—who had been enjoying the nap, thank you very much—sat up unsteadily and placed a hand on her son's chest, looking down on him with all the gentleness she could muster. Which was a lot.
"Baby, shh, what's wrong? Are you hungry, baby? Shh, come here, I've got you—I won't let anything hurt you, don't cry. My baby, my baby…"
She gently lifted her baby, her baby out of his sad little trough-crib and began to feed him, humming a small tune and smiling.
--
Crowley never explained outright why he was so against the Plan as far as Jesus concerned. However, once, when he and Aziraphale were quite inebriated in the spring of 10 A.D., Crowley said something that made just a bit of sense.
"Y'know," said Crowley, "I don't think anyone even remotely divine hassss a choiccccce when it comessss to shit like dessstiny."
"Well, that's why it's called destiny, don't'cha think?" the angel replied, voice somehow managing to sound soggy.
"'Snot fair. People should have choiccces."
"They do. Don't you always say that people have choices? Like Adam an' Eve."
"Yeah, but…you an' medon't have choiccces. Not 'ny big onesss, 'nyway. We gotta do like we gotta do…oooor elsssse.And that Jesusss kid. Poor bassstard ain't got 'ny choiccce about 'nything. An' he doesn't even think to mind.Bassstard."
Aziraphale said nothing, just drank. That statement had almost been compassionate, he thought, for a second at least. For a short instant, Aziraphale wondered if perhaps his Enemy had Fallen on accident. He couldn't imagine that someone who felt so sorry for the misfortune of one man—er, boy, as it was at the moment—could have meant to damn himself, to Fall from Grace. Maybe Crowley was right. Maybe they didn't have choice in the way things went, at least in the grand scheme of things. After all, it was all part of the Ineffable Plan…did that mean that they were just pieces on a game-board…or something else entirely?
He shook his head. Best not to speculate, he finally decided before promptly passing out from too much to drink.
