“Yes, hello. I’d like to make a reservation for seven o’clock, please.”
“Yes, sir. Party of…?”
“Two, please.”
“Yes, sir. Name of?”
“Fell.”
“First name, sir?”
“Ah—”
It’s not that no one ever asks. People ask all the time. A title usually does the trick. Sometimes he goes by Mr, sometimes Mrs, once upon a time he’d flirted with Mademoiselle, because titles are great fun: they hide secrets, they have connotations. But if one is asked specifically for a first name, it’s rude to use a title. Some kinds of rudeness he’s perfectly fine with. Being rude is not sinful. But it’s also usually, he feels, not necessary.
Aziraphale is a perfectly lovely name for an angel, and a completely awful name for a human. For starters, no one can ever spell it (not that there really is any correct way to spell it in any human language, except perhaps Hebrew, and even then one has to squint). Once they’ve failed to spell it, it’s a certain thing that any attempt at pronunciation will be execrable. He dislikes unnecessary embarrassment, both of the human who is tasked with uttering his name and of himself, and spending five minutes arguing back and forth extremely politely about how to pronounce his own name is not something that brings him joy.
Angels don’t lie. He’s quite sure about that. He’d come into existence with a very specific task set, and none of those tasks had been distort reality. Of course, none of those tasks had been style one’s hair or wear proper shoes or even be polite, either.
The first time he’d given in to the impulse to just make up a name, he’d felt a bit odd about it. But everything had gone so smoothly. He’d been able to just go in and eat and then leave and it hadn’t mattered at all, the human hadn’t really wanted to know his name, they’d just wanted something to peg him by while he was there.
And so: Fell. Ezra Fell. Ms Azee Phale. Mme A Zinnia File. A Z Fell, bookseller.
That last one has stuck around the longest, now. He’s grown rather attached to it.
A… A… what begins with A?
“Anthony.”
(“Wha?” says Crowley, half looking around from where he’s idly zapping motes of dust out of a sunbeam.)
“Very good, sir. We’ll see you tonight.”
ginyia
