You know how you felt when you watched the series finale of Breaking Bad? Now imagine if you’d been one of the people actually living in the complicated skin of these characters since 2006, when that groundbreaking pilot was shot. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul decided to honor the last unforgiving leg of Walt and Jesse’s meth-making journey to hell by reading the finale script aloud together. (Fun fact: Paul actually had to delete a copy of the script from his email because he was so worried that he would sneak a peek.)

The pair convened in March at Cranston’s place in Albuquerque, ordered some Greek take-out, cracked open a few beers and tackled the “Felina” script for the first time, dividing up the roles between them. (Cranston, for example, played Todd and Marie while Paul assumed the roles of Skyler and Lydia.) As Paul told EW earlier this fall: “When we got to the final page, it was just… [He takes a deep breath.] Usually at the end of an episode, it says, ‘End of episode,’ but Bryan read, ‘End of series.’ And that was it. We sat there and just kind of looked at each other, not knowing what to say. But I could tell both of us were just so…so happy.” Recalled Cranston: “It was a moment of silence, like, wowww. We were just quiet for a while, realizing that was the last time we were ever going to read a Breaking Bad script. And then we looked at each other. There are people that you work with and you hope you would stay in touch with, and I know I’ll be a friend of Aaron’s forever.”