My spicy ineffable husbands take

You've heard consent isn't just for sex. Now get ready for the corollary you didn't know you needed, consensual non - consent isn't just for sex. It's going to take some foundation to get to the point, but trust me, it's worth it.

Disclaimer: this is all my personal interpretation, you are always welcome to see things differently.

I think Crowley and Aziraphale have both known that they are on a path to become each other's world since Job, but in a way that to them feels more profound than can ever be human analogued.

I think Aziraphale has known for some time that he wants their relationship to progress in a human, (physical, courtship, ect...) way, but is approach avoidant. The approach avoidance takes the form of trying to bait Crowley into making a move, like the faces he makes to get Crowley to make Hamlet a success, or the pouting he does to get Crowley to remove the paintball paint, but then bailing when Crowley makes an offer that gets serious. "You go to fast for me", not letting Crowley come over for the lockdown. But the "you go too fast for me" isn't a no, it's a 'convince me.'

Crowley's goal with pulling Aziraphale into shades of grey depends on letting Aziraphale make his own choices at every incremental step. All he is ever able to do is make an offer, and then Aziraphale decides if he is ready for it. It worked for the food, it probably eventually worked for the wine sometime off screen. It eventually turns into their agreement, which continues to exist in the form of: Crowley makes a proposition, Aziraphale makes a decision. We see Crowley be VERY hands off about the offers and answers. He almost never initiates physical contact with Aziraphale, and barely responds when Aziraphale does touch him, despite the actions clearly grabbing his attention. This lets Aziraphale have full control over how far he is willing to stray from heaven at any particular moment. In the church scene, Crowley notices the holy water, but doesn't push about it. Aziraphale was a no on that, and Crowley respects the no, and comes to his rescue and goes on the full date night magic show adventure accepting that no without complaint. And Crowley LOVES complaining.

If this dynamic is adhered to, Aziraphale won't make an actual first move physically, because he wants Crowley to do it, in the same way he might insist that Crowley do 'the dirty work.' He wants Crowley to be the proximate cause, because that is how Aziraphale assigns responsibilities to actions. S1E1 modern Aziraphale is still doing the whole "I've never actually killed anything before... I don't think I could... : (" bit after sending the French executioner to his death without qualms, and S1E6 Aziraphale is still fussing over trying to make sure it's Crowley that gets them into the airbase, because 'I'm the nice one, you can't expect me to do the dirty work.' He really does put far too much weight on who is doing the immediate action in that moment in isolation, and not nearly enough ethical weight on who contrived the scenario that caused the chain of events.

Crowley equally will not make a first move physically by their old rules, because of the priority he places on letting Aziraphale have full control of every millimeter of his indulgences. The proposition / decision framework that Crowley is adhering to is a system of platonic structured consent, and I don't think there is any reason to believe he would treat non platonic consent differently. I imagine that in an alternate universe where Azriaphale owns his desires and makes a physical first move, but there is a similar lack of communication, Crowley would starfish in the absence of an explicit instruction to do otherwise for fear of going somewhere Aziraphale doesn't want to go. In my view, Crowley's default really is to be that absolutist when it comes to Aziraphale's consent.

The irony of it is that he really doesn't need to be. Aziraphale's skittishness is an act. Aside from the kiss, the one other instance of Crowley initiating a substantial physical thing is the wall slam. As others have observed, Aziraphale is not even slightly fazed by it. If anything, he is fazed by Crowley letting him go. Right after he objects to Crowley hypnotizing the nun, "you didn't have to do that, you could have just asked her." But slamming him into a wall? No objection. (Do that again, right now.)

Personally I think Aziraphale's continuous bailing and 'you go too fast for me' had left Crowley with the impression that Aziraphale was not physically interested, at least not seriously, not yet. I think the Nina revelation was a 'oh shit, he actually wants that now.' That gave him the motivation to first attempt an offer, and then when that got derailed, for the first time, he didn't let Aziraphale have full control. From how I read Crowley's behaviour up to that point, the confession kiss was a very dramatic reversal that speaks to an almost unhinged emotional state.

That said, outside of the part where they were in the middle of a fight, being swept off his feet like that really is what Aziraphale wanted Crowley to do, and crucially, he didn't want to have to tell Crowley to do it. I think by season 2 Aziraphale is owning his desire for the trappings of a human romance, but when it comes to the more physical things, I could imagine Aziraphale most of the way through season 2's modern era still 100% endorsing the idea that he isn't being lustful if he's just letting Crowley have his way.

Problem is, Crowley's version of 'having his way' is transparently doing whatever Aziraphale wants him to do, specifically because Aziraphale wants him to do it and for no other reason.

And now for the spicy bit.

The impasse Aziraphale and Crowley have here is very similar to an impasse that's known to show up in CNC kink space. (That stands for Consensual Non - Consent.) This comparison is useful for understanding what's happening with them even if you headcannon them as sexless ace, or vanilla (or, you know... vanilla for now...) because so much of their interactions revolve around platonic consent games. So the argument I am presenting here is not that they would strike up sexual CNC roleplays, but rather to say that the way they have been interacting this whole time functionally is a platonic version of a poorly negotiated CNC dynamic already.

The source of the dynamic goes back to Aziraphale's fixation on proximate cause. He can set up whole elaborate escapades and have no shame response for the consequences as long as the very last action in the chain of events wasn't performed by him, and he has the thinnest veil of plausible deniability about what he was trying to accomplish. He wants the romantic gestures, but he doesn't want to be responsible for either wanting it, or it happening. This is a real life thing that often happens with people who have repressed desires. CNC world has a fair number of people who grew into it from letting themselves have fantasies that initially purported to be fears that someone will force themselves on them. It's a buffer that lets them believe they aren't having sex fantasies. Separately, a lot of trans women, while eggs, get really into forced feminization, because it creates a fantasy reality where they can explore gender with a pretense that it is being forced on them, which takes some of the shame out. (Which is not to suggest that they ought to feel shame, just that there is an unfortunate reality that many do.)

In the same way, Aziraphale wants the human romantic things, but wants to construct a fantasy where they are being forced on him by the wiley demon adversary. Aziraphale wants Crowley to tempt him. In Rome he almost instructs Crowley tempt him. He will construct elaborate damsel in distress rescues to avoid having to ask Crowley out to dinner. He will nonsensically complain about how he'll always know the stain had been there if he miracles away the paintball paint [himself], rather than ask Crowley to do it. Over and over again, Aziraphale wants Crowley to do romantic things, but his moral outlook forbids him from communicating textually that he wants them. If Crowley spontaneously does the things because Crowley intrinsically wants to do them, Aziraphale won't hold himself morally accountable for them happening, no matter how much he is hinting and insinuating. There are still hints of this in S2E5, with how Aziraphale describes Crowley, “rescuing me makes him so happy.” It’s true, but not in a vacuum the way Aziraphale implies. Crowley likes rescuing Aziraphale because Aziraphale likes to be rescued, and Aziraphale likes to pretend his desires aren’t part of that equation. Aziraphale wants to be romanced 'against his will.' Even in a fully non-sexual asexual interpretation of their relationship, this is still a CNC kink dynamic.

So, back to the real world CNC impasse, that usually is about sex, but can also be an analogy. In CNC community, there is a phenomenon where a certain kind of CNC bottom, often from a very repressed and / or religious background, is only willing to express their interest in the form of wanting a CNC top to 'do whatever they like,' with instructions along the lines of 'use me however you want.' But for a CNC top, this is a very unclear instruction. Taking pleasure from someone's body however feels good doesn't automatically entail a lot of the surrounding kink genre activities people often imagine as part of a CNC fantasy, so literally following those instructions leads to a disappointed and bored bottom.

The fantasy from the bottoms perspective is often that the top is so overcome with lust that they do all the kinky things to force their way to the conventional things. But those things aren't actually necessary though? Chucking people around, roughing them up, various implements, ect... it's a lot of work, and it's fun for how people react to it, but people usually aren't literally getting off on the labour intensive extras. It's fun, but it's honestly a more ordinary fun than people outside of that world might expect.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine one once where she said, and I quote, "I'm not a sadist, I just find it fun to hurt people." (And she found it more fun when they were attractive people.) The mental gymnastics of me trying to explain to her "that's literally what sadism is" were wild, and I have refused to let her live it down. It's also worth pointing out that amongst the top tier of serious professional kink riggers, it's pretty common for them to operate on implements / tools / toys only, and a few of the most accomplished have been widely speculated to be ace. House of Gord is the most obvious example, but I honestly get a similar vibe from The Pope. (Obviously not the one at the Vatican) (Google them at your own risk)

But back to the point, CNC bottom fantasies tend to be a universe where they get to imagine the CNC top's kinky behaviours are more driven by the direct pursuit of pleasure than they actually are, and that the top's actions are the organic result of the top's lust, that exist independently of the bottoms proclivities (which don't exist). CNC tops meanwhile (at least the ethical ones) have a particularly strong need for the rules and boundaries and wants to be really clearly and explicitly laid out, and while they might have some specific things they find intrinsically fun, they are most driven by doing what's going to work for the bottom they are working with at the time. The scenes run on the pretense that the top is a raging lust monster, masking the reality that they are delivering a tailor made performance scripted to the bottoms needs and are enjoying it more for the reactions the actions produce than the actions themselves.

To put the pressures and pretenses of the situation concisely, it is pretty common for CNC scenes to be a hypersexual bottom maintaining a performance of not having physical desires and a comparatively if not entirely ace top maintaining a pretense of being overcome by physical desires.

There are a lot of CNC bottoms who do an excellent job navigating communicating what they want, and can drop the role to present a fully thought out list of things that are ok, things that are not ok, this is how you know if somethings going wrong, here are the things that are ok specifically in this context but not in this other context, ect…, there are whole spreadsheets you can set up. It gets talked through and worked out ahead of time, and then later the act goes up.

On the other hand, there are many CNC bottoms who don't handle this well at all, because going through that process breaks the immersion of the fantasy. And if they are coming at things from the repressive background / religious trauma angle, it breaks their ability to deflect their shame about having sinful thoughts if they have to explicitly state what they want. For them, the selling point of CNC is that they get to actually believe they don't want what they want and they aren't responsible for it happening. It's not just about temporarily being that overpowered character for that time, the veil is, at least in part, permanent.

This creates kink negotiations that can end up looking like:

"What do you want me to do to you?"

"I want you to do whatever you want to me."

"Ok, but what do you want me to want to do to you?"

It can be like pulling teeth.

Even if we imagine a Good Omens universe where they don't get up to any actual kinky things, or even sexual things, Aziraphale's behaviour looks a lot like a shy CNC bottom to me. They want the top to "do whatever they want" but even if they don't admit it to themselves, they have some strong ideas about what that would entail, it's going to include some amount of a performance / custom ordered service, and they are going to need to communicate what they want that to be. And Crowley is all about delivering a performance and custom ordered acts of service, but he needs ironclad permission and clear instructions.

Crowley looks to me like a shy CNC top, who wants to be absolutely certain they aren't colouring outside the lines, (as you should be) but is presented with a prospective partner who won't drop the game long enough to communicate what he wants. Crowley will do the favors he knows for sure Aziraphale wants, and live for Aziraphale's reactions. He enjoys coming to the rescue and performing acts of service because it is a service Aziraphale wants, not because there is an intrinsic pleasure to showing up in the Bastille or walking over consecrated ground. A universe where Aziraphale doesn't want Crowley to miracle the paint off his coat is a universe in which Crowley doesn't want to do that either, he isn't going to proactively perform miracles on Aziraphale's clothes on a whim.

I similarly expect that Crowley is 100% enthusiastically down to perform any romantic or sexual act of service Aziraphale desires, specifically because Aziraphale desires it, and probably has little to no intrinsic motivation towards the physical sides of things. I think he's down to put on the character of an intrinsically motivated person, but he needs clear instructions. Consider Crowley in the audience of the 40's magic show, Aziraphale asks if anyone in the audience has experience with firearms, and everyone BUT Crowley raises their hand. He didn't have experience with firearms, so he didn't raise his hand.

Crowley can break out of literalism in a familiar situation, and we do see him take a lot of Aziraphale's hints. A big part of why I keep going back to the paintball scene is because we can observe Crowley shift from 'instructions unclear, hands off' to 'oh, he wants me to do a thing' to [dramatic romantic gesture] to [absolutely loving Aziraphale's reaction]. Just as there is no practical reason for Crowley to do the miracle rather than Aziraphale, there is no practical reason for Crowley to have to blow the paint away with a breath, he could have just finger snapped it like he usually does. But once it's clear to him that Aziraphale wants it to be a thing, Crowley goes full ham into it.

For some things they have enough established short hand to communicate through what they infer they are implying to each other. For physically romantic things though, Crowley hadn't been reading the subtext, and he had been defaulting to hands off mode. So they were stuck at an impasse, until Nina makes the subtext textual and Crowley YOLOs into the kiss. And now they are probably back to the impasse again until they can have an actual explicit, face value conversation, because even though I don't think Aziraphale meant it that way, or experienced the kiss that way, his last "I forgive you" can read to Crowley as an indication that there was a consent violation.

There is a lot of potential compatibility that is squandered by their lack of communication. They really need to sit down for a proper kink negotiation, even if it doesn't involve actual kink yet I think the format would do wonders for them.

Yes, this is PERFECT as a framework for understanding their dynamic. Thank you SO MUCH for laying it out this way.

I really think interpretations that assume a long history of unwanted boundary pushing between them (in either direction) miss the mark. The consent is unspoken but it is there. And like, maybe I'll get my kinkster card revoked for this but non-explicit communication is still communication. It is not best practice, especially for a game like this, but that's not because communicating through hints and guesses is in itself a violation. It's because it's way too easy to make a mistake. And I'm not saying they don't make mistakes. I'm saying they are paying attention. They are conscious of the line they are walking and they care about not hurting each other.

God, it's too bad they can't have just one (1) explicit conversation about this because they would thrive with a safeword. As it stands, Crowley is backing off way earlier than Aziraphale actually wants him to, because they have no clear way to distinguish between "no, rakish demon, do not tempt me into sin with your handsomeness~" and "actually wait no stop for real". Backing off early is absolutely the right thing to do here, zero criticism, but it does mean they're both regularly disappointed by missing out on things they want. With a safeword, Aziraphale could do all the "no I couldn't possibly"-ing his little heart desires, Crowley would have carte blanche to force indulgences upon him to their mutual bliss and there would be no uncertainty about crossed lines.