A/N – I've had my idea for Ferb's middle name for a while, and it finally prompted me to write this.

Ferb's Middle Name

Vanessa Doofenshmirtz had known Ferb Fletcher for eight years. They had been a couple for two and a half of those years, and three days ago, he had moved in with her. She knew all of his vital statistics, the sizes of all of his clothing, his favorite brands of toothpaste and breakfast tea and hex bolts. She knew that he had read all of Candace's "Little House" books when he was six and still harbored a fondness for them, that he had a mole on his left shoulder blade, and that he still ate spray cheese straight out of the can. Vanessa knew things about Ferb that no one else knew, not even his family. But, after all this time, she still did not know his middle name.

She had asked him once, when he was twelve and she was graduating high school. Vanessa had hand-delivered to him one of her graduation announcements, and he had read out loud from it, "Vanessa Joy Doofenshmirtz. I didn't know your middle name was Joy," Ferb had remarked.

"That's because I hate it," she had told him, rolling her eyes. "Mom made me put it on the announcements, or I would have left it off."

"But, why?" Ferb had challenged. "It's very pretty. Vanessa Joy."

It did sound pretty, when he said it in his British accent, but she had explained, "When you're some weird, gloomy little kid who dresses in black, 'Joy' is just – well," she had sighed, "I never found the irony funny. Not the way some people did." Not wanting to expand on her Kindergarten memories, she had thrown the question out to him, "So, what's your middle name, Ferb?"

He had been silent for more than a few seconds before he had given her a ruefully apologetic look and said, "Unfortunate."

"Well, that's an unusual middle name," Vanessa had joked. She had been inclined to tease him about how the real one couldn't be any more unusual than Ferbouche, and hey, she had told him hers, but his expression had made it clear that this was not a topic open for discussion, and she didn't want to make him uncomfortable. That was the last time she had brought it up.

Now, Ferb was in the process of unpacking the boxes of his belongings that he had brought with him to the bungalow, and trying to figure out where to put everything. Vanessa had already been using the second bedroom as a study of sorts, and they had managed to squeeze in a desk and file cabinet for Ferb as well. As he was glancing through file folders, Vanessa spotted some paperwork bearing the name Ferbouche E. Fletcher, and this prompted her to speak.

"You know, Ferb, you never have told me what your middle name is."

He blinked at this, but did not look at her as he replied, "No. No, I haven't."

She wasn't giving up so easily this time. For crying out loud, considering all the intimate and sometimes embarrassing things they had discovered about each other in the course of their relationship, surely he could trust her with this one. "I promise not to laugh. Or make a face. Or ever bring it up again."

Ferb continued his work as if she hadn't spoken, but there was something in the tilt of his head that said he was considering her offer.

"You know I'm going to find out sooner or later," Vanessa pointed out. "I know it starts with an E. Can I guess?"

"Go right ahead," said Ferb, although he sounded doubtful that she would succeed.

Vanessa pondered where to begin. She had assumed that the name had to be something unusual, but maybe it was just something he didn't like, or had negative associations with, just as she disliked Joy. So, she started with the obvious.

"Edward. Edmund, Edgar…"

Ferb stopped her there. "If it was something like that, why wouldn't I use it and call myself 'Ed' instead of 'Ferb'?"

Vanessa knew the answer to this one. "Because Ferb sounds cooler."

With a thoughtful tip of his head, Ferb conceded this point.

She tried a different approach. "All right, what about… Elvis."

He gave a soft snort of amusement at this. "Then I really would sound cool."

This time, she was the one to agree. Following on from Elvis, she tried, "Elton, Ellington, Eliot…"

"No, no and no," said Ferb. Vanessa could see in his brief glance that he was actually starting to enjoy the game.

"How about Elmer?" she suggested. "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits."

Ferb regarded her attempt at the cartoon voice with a chuckle and said, "Well, that might be a bit embarrassing, but no."

"All right," she looked for a different angle. "What about… Eli? Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel, Ezra…"

"No, it's not Biblical," said Ferb.

"Probably something British," she decided, and he didn't contradict her. She searched her brain for a literary reference, Shakespeare, or Dickens, or… "Wait, I've got it!" she exclaimed, suddenly convinced that she had the answer. "Ebenezer!"

Ferb grinned at this. "While that would be fairly dreadful – no."

Maybe it wasn't even a name, but a place. Something like… "Edinburgh? Eton? Epsom?"

"No, it is an actual human name. Not a place, or an animal, or anything such as that." This time, Ferb dug in one of the boxes and pulled out a sheaf of papers. It was flat, but at some time had been folded in thirds, like a letter, and he folded it back into that shape and held it up in his hand. "In the interest of not spending the rest of our lives on this…" He clearly was having fun with the game now, judging by the sly smile curling the edges of his mouth. "I'm giving you three more guesses. Then your first born child is mine."

"I should certainly hope so," Vanessa teased. "All right, Rumplestiltskin – and that wasn't a guess," she hastily clarified. "At least give me a clue. What's the second letter?"

"Same as your first initial."

"Hmm. E-V…" She considered her options. "Everhart?"

Ferb shook his head.

"Eviscerus?"

Ferb actually laughed out loud at this. "Oh, now you're just making things up. Come on, last guess," he prompted. "Make it a good one."

Something unfortunate, something unfortunate… She was completely stumped. The word that popped out of her mouth as a last resort was, "Evil?"

"What?" he scoffed at this in surprise. "That isn't even a name."

"Yes, it is," she defended herself. "Evel Knievel, remember?"

Ferb waved this off and said, "Time's up." Unfolding the paper, he handed it to her.

It was a copy of his adoption papers, from when he was four years old, and Linda Flynn-Fletcher had become his mother. Printed carefully, in her handwriting, was the name FERBOUCHE EVELYN FLETCHER.

"Evelyn?" Vanessa pronounced it the only way she knew how. "Were your parents expecting a girl?"

Ferb still had an awkward smile on his lips, but she saw him flinch at her remark, and she understood why he had kept the name such a secret. "It's not a girl's name. First off, it's pronounced EEV-lin. And it's a perfectly respectable English gentleman's name. A bit out of date, that's all."

"So, I take it this came from some Lord Evelyn Fletcher who invented the tea cozy or something?" she asked, thinking back to the story of Sir Ferbouche, from whom he had gotten his first name.

"Close," he admitted. "He was Rear Admiral Evelyn Wimpole of Queen Victoria's Royal Navy. From my grandmother's side of the family. And yes," he admitted, "her maiden name was Winnie Wimpole, so I really have no room to complain."

"Hmm," Vanessa pondered now, and gave it another try, pronouncing the name correctly this time. "Ferbouche Evelyn Fletcher. That's not so bad. It sounds kind of distinguished."

"Oh, very distinguished," he acknowledged, "for a century or two ago." Reclaiming his adoption papers from her, Ferb put them back in the file, and sighed. "I love my father, but sometimes I wish he weren't quite so fond of antiques."

THE END

A/N – I first knew of "Evelyn" as a man's name from the character Lord Evelyn Oakley from the musical "Anything Goes." I've always thought of it as one of those great, "fussy, upper-class Englishman" names. My original idea of "what Ferb was short for" was that his full name was something like "Francis Evelyn Reginald Bruce Fletcher" and "Ferb" was derived from his initials. Of course, I ended up buying into the "Ferbooch" reference from "The Beak," but I liked the idea of keeping Evelyn as his middle name.