What I notice is that they are both rather more uptight than usual for them. They stand a fair distance apart (compared to the Mesopotamia or Globe scenes) and their body language to start is very restrained, though Aziraphale becomes a bit more expressive as they speak. Their voices are fairly hushed, even as they argue -- again, Aziraphale finally raises his -- and Crowley dares not even speak the words "holy water" aloud.

All this, to me, screams "kayfabe," specifically of the fool-Head-Office variety. More of it than usual, even for Crowley, who is generally more kayfabe-observant than Aziraphale. For his part, Aziraphale is showing concern for Crowley and his situation by playing along, doing his little angelic best not to get Crowley in even more trouble with Hell.

Aziraphale being Aziraphale, I think he overplays a bit, which is (in my opinion) where the irritating Heaven orthodoxy comes from. (For a future meta: Aziraphale's Heaven orthodoxy. Best I can tell, there's some of it he believes, some of it he's not sure of, and some of it he just parrots.) But the subtext is kayfabe, again; he's telling Crowley that he'll play along with the hereditary-enemies nonsense to keep Crowley safe.

It's an odd way to demonstrate concern, but I think it's real and the concern is there. Aziraphale can't do much to repair Crowley or Crowley's situation... but he can try not to worsen it, and he does try. And what does Crowley return him? A demand that Aziraphale give him means to destroy himself. I read Aziraphale's extra volume and body language before he stomps off as a bit of a dropping-out of kayfabe: "I pretend for you, and this is how you repay me?"

Aziraphale's black-and-white thinking doesn't help him here. He can only imagine something blessed as inimical to Crowley. (He can perhaps only imagine himself as inimical to Crowley, which is heartbreaking, but would make a certain amount of bitter sense after the events in Edinburgh.) The angel who gave his sword away certainly can't manage to see holy water as Crowley's weapon against other demons. He doesn't think in aggressive, warlike (War-like!) terms.

I hope this holds together for you?

Doylistly, this scene is a bridge to the bandstand. If the bandstand scene had come out of nowhere -- if all we'd seen of them before that was billing and cooing a la Rome and the Globe -- we'd have had much the same reaction as we did to the Final Fifteen Minutes of s2, I think, basically "where the heaven hell somewhere did that come from?" But 1862 means we know what's going on in the bandstand. We know they aren't always aligned. We know the hairs they tend to split, the gaps they can't bridge. It's necessary storytelling.

Outside the bookshop, early morning: Metatron, Michael, Uriel and Sandalphon appear, with a beaten, bloodied Aziraphale on his knees between them, his hands chained behind his back. Metatron grabs Azzy's hair and yanks his head around to the right, contemptuously snarling, "Take a good look -- this is the last time you'll ever see sunlight, or your precious bookshop!" None of the angels particularly bother to notice that an unusual number of Whickber Street Traders seem to be helping Nina clean her front windows with a slightly suspicious number of buckets of *completely innocent* water. A portal to Hell opens in the road, accompanied by the appearance of a horde of demons led by Shax and Furfur, who're openly gleeful at getting to be part of the first Fall since The Big One (especially because it's Aziraphale on the chopping block) but just as openly chafing at being told what to do by the Metatron. Before Aziraphale can be handed over for torture and Falling, the WSTs (at some prearranged signal) throw the holy water in their buckets at the demons and the Hell portal, which proves sufficiently distracting that Crowley [something brave and clever and awesome which I haven't thought of yet], removes Azzy's chains and takes his hand to perform a joint miracle that not only banishes Metatron and co. back to Heaven ('Begone, foul fiends! Avaunt!') but binds them there permanently, so they can never come back to Earth. As an encore, the reunited Ineffable Husbands rework the wards on the shop with joint miracles so powerful that Saraquel sends them a note to the effect of, "Our miracle detector just exploded. Whatever you did, it must've been big. For goodness' sake, GET MARRIED ALREADY!!!"

The Whickber Street Traders taking Muriel under their collective (metaphorical) wing

The Shopkeepers' Association feeling a bit awkward around the bookshop for a little while after the Armageddon 2 gets averted, because of the rather scary way it was confirmed that they'd been entertaining angels unaware, until Mrs Sandwich breaks the silence by bringing the Ineffable Bookshop Crew some home-made tiramisu brownies

Aziraphale needing to use mobility aids after everything's sorted, either because of physical injuries sustained while saving the world or because of PTSD-related tremors and suchlike

Crowley recalling that Aziraphale risked not just discorporation but permanent death trying to rescue people from Sodom and Gomorrah (in the process receiving injuries that left scars on his arms and chest that're visible even in modern times), and was so distraught for weeks afterwards that he (Crowley) took some pretty major risks to stay with and comfort him

Aziraphale, when making the final rejection of Heaven, quoting or referencing things Crowley's said previously -- especially "Great pustulent mangled bollocks to the GREAT BLASTED PLAN!!!" Bonus points if he directly states he's quoting Crowley, and extra double bonus if our wily ol' snek gets to overhear the whole thing :D (I really want this to happen in S3!!!!! There're so many awesome bits of parallel-ing already, this'd fit right in!)

Aziraphale repeatedly scaring the crap out of Michael and Uriel with simple sleight-of-hand tricks, because they're so unimaginative that they cannot work out how to do that sort of thing without using miracles

Muriel reading Carpe Jugulum, seeing the bit where Granny Weatherwax talks about sin always fundamentally involving treating people as things, and becoming almost incoherent with terror upon realising how well that describes the Heavenly higher-ups

INEFFABLE HAND-KISSING

Aziraphale's puttering gently around the bookshop, and Crowley's slouching around, admiring him and smiling besottedly. Azzy eventually spots him and asks how long he's been doing that. "Quite a while," Crowley replies. "You're the most beautiful being in all creation." This catches Azzy right in the still-slightly-shaky self-esteem, and he has to bury his face in Crowley's shoulder for a bit. Once he's recovered, he realises that his faithful serpent seems to be working up to a Significant Question and fidgeting with something in his pocket, so he steps back to give Crowley space to ask. Besotted Snek stutters his way through fragments of a pre-planned speech that's mostly swan-dived out of his memory, before mentally going 'sod it' and saying words to the effect of, "We've more or less been emotionally married for millennia at this point." [holds out open ring box] "Want to formalise it?" Aziraphale: [loud excited squeals through which the word 'YES!!!!!!!!!' can be at least somewhat distinguished] Once the ring's on his finger, Azzy pulls a ring box out of his own pocket and proffers it to Crowley, conveying his own question via squeaks, eyebrow movements, hand gestures and full-body wiggles because he's so happy and excited that he's temporarily lost the capacity for coherent speech. When the ring's on Crowley's finger, they both have a bit of a 'holy crap, did we just get ENGAGED???? Are we FIANCES now????? :D' moment before smooching each other's faces off

Azzy and Crowley discussing wedding plans, deciding against a church ceremony (for many very obvious reasons) and a simple registry office thing (feels a bit...mundane), eventually going for a handfasting-type ceremony at Tadfield Manor (in the garden, because Azzy finds expansive indoor spaces with fluorescent lighting a bit triggering), with guests including the Shopkeepers' Association, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Anathema and Newt, the Them, and Muriel <3 Speeches and toasts about 6000 years of slow burn love and "my angel, who makes eternity worthwhile" and "my demon -- my wily old serpent who led me to salvation", a first dance to A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, an eclectic playlist that ranges from Shostakovitch to Saint-Saens* and Queen (We Are The Champions, Somebody To Love etc) and Velvet Underground (Sunday Morning, I'll Be Your Mirror, Pale Blue Eyes etc) <3 General all-round romantic loveliness! *(I picked this 'cos Azzy's listening to Danse Macabre in S2E3 when he's talking to the Bentley about 'classical music that stays classical music')

The Ineffable Husbands are wandering around, hand in hand, being happy and adorable and completely in love, when they happen to walk past one of those loud obnoxious street preachers, who calls out to them with some religious remark that hits directly on a raw point. Aziraphale instantly drops from cheery bonhomie to steely, icy civility, coldly telling the preacher, "I have neither the time nor the patience to explain just how offensively wrong you are. Kindly leave. Now." No miracles required -- the preacher is so intimidated that they scurry off immediately, and Azzy is able to cheer back up after a few moments of staring at his wily, precious ol' serpent <3

Muriel nips into GMCOGMD for a soothing chamomile tea after an all-hands meeting in Heaven that was supposed to be about the Second Coming but didn't go quite according to plan >:D Nina points them towards Crowley, who's gloomily consuming mug after mug of the strongest espresso she can legally sell him. Muriel goes over and, after the initial couple beats of awkwardness, tells him, "I think we're going to need a new metaphor." C: "Huh?" M: "Because if a, um, murder hornet or something gets into a beehive..." [C. perks up a bit and deploys his Left Eyebrow] "...I don't think it'd spread absolute unbridled chaos..." [C. starts smirking affectionately] "...simply by being unrelentingly lovely to the worker drones!" [C. cackles delightedly, startling everyone in the coffee shop] C: "Ohohohoho, Aziraphale, you absolute BEAUTY!!! Hahahahaha!"

In an attempt to keep Aziraphale in line when his psychological break from Heaven becomes increasingly obvious, the Metatron has Sandalphon give Crowley's block of flats the Sodom-and-Gomorrah treatment with him inside it, while Azzy is forced to watch. Afterwards, Azzy starts wearing a black armband of mourning, and as a piece of stubborn, bloody-minded contrariness and rebellion, deliberately makes it larger and more elaborate whenever anyone comments on it (sometimes twice in a row, e.g. 'That armband...' *ka-elaborate!* '...Are you going to do that *every* time someone comments on it??' *Looks them dead in the eye and ka-elaborates again*) -- especially when he starts to suspect that Crowley survived. He did, of course, thanks to a Nice & Accurate letter from Anathema Device that gave him enough notice to be able to pack up his stuff *and* evacuate the other residents with all their possessions! By the time the Ineffable Husbands are reunited, Azzy's armband is so large and elaborate that it covers his entire upper left arm in an intricate braid of gilt-edged black and red leather with subtle snake designs everywhere -- it ends up hanging in pride of place on the living room wall of their South Downs cottage :D

Crowley fretting over a traumatised, just-escaped-from-Heaven Aziraphale -- cuddling him, wrapping him in blankets, cuddling him some more, stroking and nuzzling his face and hair, and so on... Someone (who Crowley's already a bit miffed at) incautiously ventures to ask why he's acting this way, to which Crowley calmly and coldly replies, "When I was crawling out of a lake of boiling sulphur after the Fall, I really needed hugs and comfort and soft blankets, but there was nothing. No-one was offering. I had to deal with that trauma alone. Aziraphale might not have Fallen, but he's lost a load-bearing part of his identity in a similarly traumatic way, and I am NOT going to make him go through that on his own. If you have anything so crass as an objection, the door's over there [points]. Don't let it hit you on your way out." [proceeds to glare until they back down]

Aziraphale just barely escaping Heaven, fleeing to the bookshop pretty much via homing instinct, and desperately scrubbing out the summoning circle before the trauma catches up to him and he keels over into Crowley's arms

During the course of preventing-the-Second-Coming planning, Crowley takes to wandering aimlessly around the bookshop, clutching Azzy's cuddly grey cardigan like a security blanket

The Ineffable Husbands accurately narrating each other's body language and facial expressions from opposite ends of a long-distance phone call because they just know each other THAT well <3 (audibly acrobatic Left Eyebrow!!! The Full-Body Wiggles!!!)

Both of them know that one awkward question to Upstairs at the wrong moment and its Fallsville. Crowley, however, knows a couple of things that Aziraphale doesn't have to:

Punishment isn't just once; in some ways, the Fall is never over. Beelzebub or Hastur can throw you in the Dung Pits whenever, after all, or feed you to a Hellhound, or zap you like an Eric. Crowley's lot do not send rude notes. (s2: we do not know what happened to Crowley after Hell dragged him back at the end of the Resurrectionists 'sode, but I think it safe to say it was not great for Crowley. Litotes: your key to quality meta.)

Downstairs can and does check in -- or drag Crowley Downstairs for a chat and possibly a bit of idle torture -- whenever they feel like it. Downstairs seems pretty disorganized, especially its leadership, so I'd expect ad-hoc surprise inspections from them. Downstairs can invade Crowley's flat's TV, his Bentley's radio, and his very mind to perform those inspections. Crowley is never, ever safe from this. He can't relax. Ever.

Heaven, on the other hand, has 37 levels of scriveners and zero interest in Earth. Talk of "reprimands" and "miracle budgets" and Michael being a stickler and whatnot suggests a formal review process happening on a schedule, governed largely by the dreaded (but quite possibly fake-able or spinnable) "paperwork" rather than direct observation by Aziraphale's peers or superiors. Otherwise, Aziraphale is usually left to his own devices. Remember how startled he is when Gabriel shows up at the sushi restaurant in s1? This is unusual!

(We also know from Muriel that Heaven's records office doesn't seem to get consulted a whole lot. It's possible this just means that first-through-thirty-sixth-level scriveners handle everything, but in my experience of large bureaucracies, it's the folks at the bottom of the hierarchy who invariably get run off their feet first. Don't see why Heaven would be any different.)

Moreover, Heaven's punishments seem pretty light, on the whole? Our angel is so anxious and so sensitive to slights that I'm sure the reprimands aren't fun, and nobody likes a reduced miracle budget... but Heavenly "needs improvement" reviews don't seem to be a patch on the Dung Pits. The real threat is Falling, which is more than horrible enough to serve as deterrent; Heaven doesn't need to add torments.

Moreover moreover, Aziraphale is mostly aligned with his Head Office in a way that Crowley really, really isn't. I'm sure Aziraphale does a lot of his Heaven assignments with a song in his heart and a skip in his step -- it's mostly not smiting or the like. Crowley... probably spends a lot of his work time figuring out how to obey the letter of Hellish law while defying its spirit. Crowley's in far more danger of angering his bosses.

So Aziraphale doesn't have to keep up kayfabe a lot of the time, not even while interacting with Crowley. He can and does save it for the rare occasions Heaven takes a personal interest. Crowley, however, must keep up kayfabe always, whether Aziraphale's there or not. The courage it must have taken that snake to slither up the wall of Eden!

The way Crowley navigates his permanent need for kayfabe is twofold. First, his all but instinctive refusal to accept any positive word or compliment about himself or his actions from anyone ever -- "I'M NOT NICE!" If Hell were ever to hear someone characterizing Crowley that way... That's also why Crowley is a bit less exercised when Jimbriel calls him nice: "nobody'll ever believe you."

Second, a species of Orwellian doublethink: maintaining a running commentary in his head of how he's going to justify any unHellish actions to Hell, since he can never know exactly when he'll have to or what exactly they'll have a bug up their butt (sorry, Beez) about. Even high as a kite on laudanum in the Edinburgh cemetery, Crowley can explain his current justification (in a curiously sober voice -- is Crowley ever really high in that scene? or is it all kayfabe? I lean toward kayfabe) to Aziraphale, "Not kind! Off my head on laudanum, not responsible for my actions."

We can see the kayfabe mismatch play out a few times, and it does appear that Aziraphale gets more concerned for Crowley's safety and more aware of Crowley's need for kayfabe post-Arrangement. That doesn't mean he always remembers, of course -- he wouldn't, he just doesn't have that same desperate need. And, of course, the ineffable walnuts do not communicate, as s2 went to some lengths to point out. I do think kayfabe is part of that -- it's hard for Crowley to be sincere when he's constantly doublethinking, and Aziraphale's off-and-on involvement with kayfabe (and all his other tendencies toward lying) disincline him to achieve or even learn about honest communication.

One s1 scene I went back and rewatched while thinking about this was the Globe scene, which contains Aziraphale's Saint-Peter-esque three-time denial of Crowley. I find it easy now to read that as Aziraphale going "oh crap do I need to drop back into kayfabe now? I didn't break kayfabe, did I?" and Crowley grinning, at least partly as reassurance. (Partly, of course, because Aziraphale is cute and funny even when kayfabing -- and partly because Aziraphale's sudden drop into kayfabe is Aziraphale trying to protect Crowley, of course Crowley's pleased by that.)

The wall pin, now that I think about it, also gains a little nuance from this. Crowley's fear-laced ire is genuine, but how many times must Aziraphale have heard Crowley snarl at him not to break kayfabe in this way? No surprise he's a little unimpressed. (With Crowley's demand. He's clearly very impressed by Crowley.)

In the s2 Job minisode, Aziraphale hilariously drops kayfabe (and that epic whole-body halo, loved that, great job FX folks) almost immediately. Crowley allows it, because Crowley is on firm ground -- Hell will be just fine with Crowley wrapping the angel in a Chuck-Jones-cartoon amount of scroll parchment and flipping him off.

When angel and demon collude on the con later, of course, they observe kayfabe, improv-style -- Crowley helps Aziraphale deal with the Job's-children situation without giving either of them away to the watching angel posse. Interestingly, it's Aziraphale who de-gecko-izes the kids. That gives Crowley an out, sort of: "look, the mansion collapse missed them because they were in the cellar, I turned them into geckos, totally Hellish thing to do, they'd never survive in the wild, but then this bloody interfering angel went and changed them back!"

And how does Crowley console a distraught angel who thinks he's about to be dragged to Hell? Crowley explains kayfabe in the fewest and clearest words possible. "Well, yeah, you did, but... I'm not going to tell anybody. Are you?"

So yeah. That's kayfabe for the Ineffable Walnuts.

But I promised there was a point to this, didn't I? Yes, I have a point.

My point is...

my POINT is...

my point IS...

(not dolphins, not this time)

My point is, how much of s2's Final Fifteen Minutes is kayfabe?

“With the cheesecakes. The little miniature ones. I had a chocolate-raspberry.”

“Oh, yeah. You raved about those for weeks.”

“I knew you’d remember.” With a smug look, Aziraphale sat back in his chair. “Your turn. Favorite thing on Earth that didn’t get destroyed. Don’t say the Bentley, that’s too obvious.”

“The Bentley—? No. It’s you.” In the silence after, Crowley cleared his throat. “It’s, er...always been you, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale had stared at him for a moment, his wine forgotten. “Oh,” he said, and his voice cracked. He looked down.

Crowley frowned, watching him carefully. “Sssomething wrong?”