“Anyways, you can just sit there and I need to get some things in order for the dinner party.”

“It’s like three in the afternoon.” I said as I sat on the couch, setting my shoes under the very large iron and mirror coffee table, Gellert instantly enamored with smelling me now that I was seated.

“Yeah and somethings need time.” He said as he leaned forward and flicked all of his hair in front of him.

“The red’s real, right?”

“Of course” he said as he twisted it together and wrapped it back with a hair-tie keeping it out of his face as he walked into the kitchen, “Dad has black hair, Mom was ginger…by luck of draw and genetics I somehow ended up with a hybrid of both.”

“I don’t think that’s how genetics work.”

He laughed at that, “I know, but a mix of their hair would be auburn and by my genetics, that’s what I got.” His laugh is…so attractive: his voice is so rich, slow and thick with a graveling British accent, how can someone’s voice be smooth as silk, but also super gravely at the same time: he’s got the growling rasp of a deep, blues singer, but the way he spoke was smoother than anything I had ever heard before.

“What…what does Kálmán even like mean?” I asked as I pet Gellert’s head, scratching him behind his ears.

“It means beautiful name…it also means remainder for the Hungarian usage.”

“And Varga?”

“Cobbler…not the most fitting name, for the son of the world serpent.” He said laughing softly as he walked around the island. To the right of the kitchen past everything in a little nook was a smaller black table with two chairs at it, flanked by huge plants and statues.

“What…what was your mom like?” I asked

“She was interesting to say the least: how she was a prostitute in London before she sold everything she owned to buy a ship and became a pirate with a crew of women she saved from sex work, abuse and…other terrible happenings. Her ship was this massive galleon painted black and blue, it was called The Siren’s Wail…Dad was attracted to her power, her ability to rule over the sea when everything in the world was stacked against her…and her bloodthirst, she was a very…cutthroat pirate to say the least. After Dad showed her ship where this massive hoard of treasure was, when he breeched the top he turned into a waterspout and reformed into his humanoid form on the deck, completely smitten by my mom. She humored him and he stayed on the ship for a while before she fell pregnant with me. She thought it important for me to be born in the homeland.”

“What was her name?”

“Csilla…it means star. Dad took her last name which is also my last name.”

“But the story about the ring was true?”

“Yeah, though the time between when she passed and when I found the pearl was far, far larger. The skin cancer was also true, a mole formed on her shoulder and it rapidly spread getting darker and darker till the flesh was dry, black and cracked, it caked her entire throat and was starting to spread across her body and face. The hospitals and doctors of the time said that because she was a woman with a child, not married, they didn’t see her marriage to Dad as real because she officiated it, they said her having a kid out of wedlock, being a pirate, being an ex-prostitute and things along those lines made her blood be filled with demons poisoning her as a sign from god as a sign of her evilness and wrong doings.”

“Your poor mom…she must have been in so much pain.”

“She was, but after a little in the hospital. She just grabbed her things and went off till she passed on the sea when her body was wrapped in fabric, tied to weighted chains and thrown out. She wanted to rejoin Dad in the sea forever. He was able to pull her spirit from the underworld without permission which got him in a lot of trouble and…her spirit is still around in his palace at the bottom of the ocean.”

“That’s…so sweet.”

“They love each other…fully and eternally. I could only hope when I was a kid…that one day I’d meet a guy that made me feel like that…that even in death that we’d always be together.”

“When did you know when you were gay?”

“October 15th, 1662”

“But that was the day you were born.”

“Exactly.” He said with a laugh as he walked into the wine-bar area and returned with a couple bottles which he put on the table.

“One more question.”

“Go for it.”

“How tall are you?”

“Six foot six”

“And your dad?”

“That’s two questions, but he’s six seven.”

“God, you’re both so tall.”

“Well, in his actual form he’s a two thousand foot long sea serpent…so that lends well to the two of us being…impossibly tall, but it shows more in him because of the fact he has like no shoulders.”

“Who of your friends have you known the longest?”

“Devon, he’s two centuries, I met him when he was thirty…he lives every day like its Pride. The group of us definitely stand out at Pride: him dressed in top down rainbow, Bek being the most butch lesbian ever, Diamond decked out in trans colors and me…usually shirtless and in entirely leather.”

“Leather?”

“Yeah” he said as he walked into the kitchen. “The problem usually is because Devon can’t be in sunlight, so…he has to be out of the sunlight, but he also wants to wear high heels, booty shorts and a crop top with dick across it in rainbow glitter…let me ask you this”

“Go ahead”

“Why’d you agree so quickly and easily…to hanging out with me?”