Fictional Fans

Spike is the best-known name, the one for swagger, everyday conversations, new people, introductions, the one everybody better remember. William is both more removed and impersonal and formal, and way more intimate at the same time, and that depends on how it's said and who's speaking.

I just started The Americans, and it begins with the two main characters - deep cover KGB spies - only knowing each other by their assigned identities. They don't share their birth names with each other so they don't think of their partner as someone other than their cover identity. And even after that information comes up - in a deeply private, personal moment meant as a crack in the facade, this reaching for true connection in a life of lies - they still think of each other as the cover names, because that's how they met, and that's how they fell in love.