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There is a universe where they meet in the apocalypse.
Leo is a survivor of a large group of others in Rosario. They've locked down the city, conserved its resources, and found a way to stay safe for longer than Leo ever considered.
He is the leader of the group. He is not born with it in his veins. It's something that just happens over time. His father dies and the people in his community only seem to trust him to protect them. He must grow and mature so much in so little. Learn in so little.
But he manages to do it. He manages to keep his community safe for so many years that they cannot really be counted, because time and years no longer exist in this world. No more.
Everything changes the day Kun shows up.
Kun is tall and has ripped muscles and a gigantic shoulder scar that is the first thing Leo sees after his deep dark eyes. Not much life behind them.
Kun and his community do not come looking for a war. They come wounded and bleeding after being attacked by another community and having lost a large part of their people. Leo is too noble, Kun will tell him later, because he accepts them without hesitation. He gives them food, and he gives them clean clothes, and hot water, and a home to stay. The people of Rosario accept them with time, while the hours begin to pass little by little. They are reluctant, and Kun’s community is hard, wounded, on the defensive that another attack might wipe them out. But they start to trust Leo over the months, just as much as Kun starts to.
Leo's face, arms, and calves are tanned from years of sunbathing without sunscreen, as he hunts for his community and trains his men to protect themselves. Kun has a scar on his shoulder and hair so long that it falls below his elbows. Leo is noble, capable and a born leader, possessive when it comes to his people and a saint to all of them. Kun is strong, courageous and reckless, he would put his life in danger to protect others, leading with dignity.
It is a matter of time for both of them to fall in love.
Antonella, his right hand and second in command, will laugh at Leo for all the years that might appear. Because she sees it before everyone else. Hugs that are not just brotherly. Little smiles full of love. Man against man, a warmth that no longer exists, that this new world took away, but that Kun brings to life inside him.
"To my left, there will always be Kun."
"There is no one I trust more to protect my people than Leo."
"I can't lose you, Kun, not you. Not anyone else."
"I will always be there to protect you, Leo."
And if the people of Rosario have something against their two bosses being in love, no one ever seems to say anything. There are more important things to worry about: An apocalypse to survive, for example.
_
Leo is a great writer and has an endless line of singers who want to sing his songs, work alongside him, recite his prose and his poems.
Kun has a band and plays in all the bars in Argentina. Kun sings well, but he plays the guitar better.
It's the nineties and pop and ballads take over Latin America, and Kun's band agent thinks it's a good idea to sing different songs, participate with different songwriters, do something different. Kun disagrees. And he is not even present at the dinner where Leo meets the band, willing to work with them for their new album.
They meet one day in the studio, where Chiquito is rehearsing on the drums and Antonella is going crazy about singing a song by Leo. Kun arrives late at the studio and Mascherano looks at him as if he wants to kill him, with the bass in his hands, playing a chord while Leo is sitting on the floor.
Leo is shy and quiet, and Kun talks a lot. Antonella wants to write a love song, but Kun disagrees. Leo doesn't have much say or vote in what the band decides. It's a bad first day at the studio and Leo goes home thinking that this has been the worst decision of his life.
But where Kun is difficult and cynical, he is also an artist at heart. And even he can recognize a good song when he hears it, good lyrics written with soul. A good idea when he has it in front of him.
Leo arrives with a melody in his head and a non-stop rhyme, and begins to write on the piano in the studio under the watchful eye of Kun, who must swallow his pride and appreciate a good song. Kun helps him with the chords on the guitar, they create a catchy chorus and Antonella sings as if life were infinite, under the thoughtful gaze of Mascherano and an impressed Chiquito.
They call the song "Primavera" and it's a song about starting over. Leo smiles at Kun when they hear it completed for the first time, and Kun thinks he falls in love instantly ever since.
They write so many songs together and only fifteen come out to the public. They are songs ranging from rock, punk and ballads. They attract a new audience, teenage girls who hang Kun's photo in their rooms and adults who say "this is real music". Critics love them. Kun tries to carry success with as much sobriety as he can, going from playing in bars to festivals to stadiums.
Leo goes with them to every concert he can. And before going out to play, both of them will end up somewhere in the dressing room, writing some love song with Kun's old guitar, in Leo's notebook.
_
Leo has just retired from Formula 1 after a fatal accident that almost killed him.
His leg will never be the same. He has burn marks that run from his ankle to his thigh. But he can still walk and when he wears long pants, you can't see the scars.
He can't sleep at night, because he sees flames and embers and feels the smoke go into his lungs. His voice asking for help, while the fire burns his leg. Nobody going to help him. Everyone watches from outside as the fire slowly kills him, leaving nothing behind but his ashes.
He wakes up sweaty and crying. He stops eating. He doesn't get out of bed.
Antonella, his assistant, looks at him one day and decides that it is enough to let him end his life little by little. He hires Kun on a Wednesday to work three days a week, which then becomes a seven-day week job.
Kun is quiet and is strong enough to carry Leo across the room when he can't move well because of the pain. He has big muscles, tanned skin, he studied nursing at some university in Argentina that he is still paying, and he doesn't let Leo lie down in bed to die for another day.
He makes him do physical therapy and takes him to the psychologist every Thursday. He cooks his breakfast, lunch and dinner. He cleans the house and takes care of him all the time. Leo knows he shouldn't, but after months on his luck, with no one by his side, it's so easy to fall in love with Kun, so easy to get carried away by everything that he is.
Years later, Leo will make a foundation for people whose lives have been altered by car accidents and wildfires. He will talk to children in hospitals and share his story with adults who have lost everything, always reminding Leo how lucky he is.
When they do a press conference about the foundation, all of Spain talks about the strong and quiet man next to Lionel Messi, who scolds him for leaving his cane at home while Leo looks at him like a lovesick fool.
_
When Leo's father and older brothers are murdered, the entire kingdom wonders how someone so shy and small can be the new King.
Leo's mother gives him hope. His younger sister, Princess María Sol, tells him that he will be the best King the kingdom of Barcelona has ever seen. But Leo is only 16, and he doesn't know how to strategize or kill a man or rule a kingdom.
When his mother falls ill, Leo has to grow up so fast to be the King that Barcelona needs in such of critical moments.
It's not easy. His father, a noble and gentle king, loved by all his people, has left behind a giant debt that Leo can't let their people discover. His adviser, the king's former right-hand man, Scaloni, recommends that he associates with a sister kingdom. Someone who has more knowledge, marry a princess from a noble kingdom with enough money.
He knows Yesika del Castillo. And she's cute and understanding and older than Leo, the same age as Matías if he were still alive. Her kingdom is prosperous and has many brothers who will never see the light from a throne.
He meets Kun, the next to the throne in his sister's line. He is the same age as him, laughs at all the jokes of the court jester, and spend all of his time riding kingdom’s horses. They play and talk about books and poems in the halls of the palace, and the day before Leo's wedding, Kun calls him his only friend.
Leo is in love with him.
And he has to marry his sister.
The beauty of youth contrasts with the misfortune of doing the right thing. The innocence of a first love that is worth nothing to anyone, more than to those who experience it. The pain of ceasing to be a normal child, that wanted to be a poet to the King of Barcelona, with his queen by his side.
Kun marries some girl from a nearby kingdom and becomes a duke, and is happy with how simple life can be. Leo would like to run away with him to some deserted plain, where they can raise cows and make meaningless jokes below the candle lights.
But Leo must be a man. And he must be a King. And that doesn't include Kun.
_
Kun is about to die when Leo saves him.
Leo shouldn't save him. They are enemies. His community at war with Leo’s for as long as the years have existed, a story they share, bathed in blood and written by the hands of assassins. Kun is a warrior, who will kill anyone to stand up for his people, to defend the legacy of his father, who fought so many years before him.
Leo is a warrior just like him. But he sees the gentleness of the war, the devotion to the protection of his people. And he saves Kun from drowning after failing to survive an ambush, his neck opened by a horrendous wound.
Leo takes him to his town and heals his wounds and no one in town seems to bat their eyelashes in confusion to see Leo do it. Kun must hate him. And he lives with those emotions inside himself for so long: The hatred and desire for revenge towards Leo's people, the respect and gratitude for the man who saved his life.
Leo is noble and has scars on his hands from shooting arrows from the distance, the best archer in his nation. Kun has a scar through his eye and a tattoo all over his arm that all the men in his community get on their fifteenth birthday.
Leo makes mate with herbs from his town and cooks bread in the oven and wishes to escape from the war that his ancestors started. Kun hears fables and fantasy stories about a better world, a world before the war, because one after it doesn't seem realistic.
Falling in love with your enemy is a tale as old as time. But Kun does. When he must return to his town, safe and sound, with a new scar on his neck, he doesn't look back to see Leo watch him go.
_
Most of the time, they are the same age in all universes. Not in this one.
Kun doesn't know what he is doing with his life, but he decides to start studying economics right after high school. He is in his third year of college when he meets Leo.
Leo thinks that life as a teacher is boring and doesn't bring anything to his life. He's over thirty now and his wife is pregnant, and he can't turn back time, only move forward.
He meets Kun at a coffee shop before learning that he is his student. He is funny and talks about things he has no idea about, like every kid who has just come out into the world. They talk about music and movies and how they don't know what to do with their lives.
It’s inappropriate even before Leo becomes his teacher. What's a man over thirty doing, with a pregnant wife at home, talking about the decisions he's made in his life with a guy who's not even twenty-three yet?
The first time Leo kisses him, they are alone in the classroom after a long and boring class. Leo has made so many mistakes throughout his life, and this is one of the biggest, but looking back, he will never see this as one. He will never regret meeting him, kissing him and loving him.
Kun is so young and has a whole life ahead of him. Leo needs to be a loving husband and provide for his son that will soon arrive. Neither of those two things matter in the back of a car, in hotel rooms or abandoned ballrooms in the middle of the night. It's just Kun and Leo, with not large age-gaps and wives waiting at home and an uncertain future in a cruel world.
_
There is one where everything is very similar to the rest that has been seen. Kun is born in a catastrophic episode in Argentine history, a flood that will kill so many people, his mother alone in a delivery room with no one to hold her hand.
It's all pretty much the same. The only difference is that his mother doesn't have a girl's name to give him, because the doctor was wrong when telling him that it would be a boy.
Sonia Leonela Agüero is born with a dislocated clavicle and crying so hard. She will be one of the oldest in a gigantic family of brothers and sisters. And she will start playing soccer from a very young age.
And that is where the story is no longer so similar.
Because Sonia is a woman. In football. And God knows it's the worst decision she's ever made. There are not many women's football teams, there is no one who believes that women in football are good, who seriously believes it.
Her dad will do everything in his power to support her and work with her to make her a football player. But it is not an easy path; and it is not easy to hear no every time you knock on a door, because the daughter that you brought into the world and that you have protected all your life is not enough if the eyes of the people.
She meets Lia sometime between knocking on doors that end up getting smashed in your face.
Lionela is small and skinny and plays better than any man or woman Sonia has ever seen in her life. No one is at her level. No a single person. It is ruthless to see her play on the field and it is painful to see her being rejected a thousand times more just because there is no space for women in football. Because there is no one whose eyes are open enough to see how good Lia is.
Sonia will kiss her for the first time when they turn 18 at a family barbecue hidden from their parents and then they will play a one-on-one football game where Sonia will be good, but Lia will be even better and then they will talk about how everything would be easier in another life.
Sonia tells her that she is the best football player in the world. Lia tells her that maybe in a parallel universe.
_
There is one, where Leo is a cat. And Kun is too.
Kun is a Siamese cat who was abandoned when he was just a baby. After at least a year of living in the streets and eating garbage and being covered of fleas, Antonella finds him on the side of a road trying to cross, and decides to take him home.
Antonella is a loving, understanding and pampering mother cat. She lets Kun eat leftover beef and buys expensive cat food. She brushes him every day and bathes him in the shower. She buys him toys and tells him that he is the cutest cat in the world.
All this until Leo arrives.
Leo is so small when Kun meets him that he thinks he's a pussycat, but no, he's just a Singaporean cat with café-au-lait fur and a brownish nose. He is quiet and barely meows. Antonella is worried that he won't adjust well and Kun is praying that he won't so it can be just the two of them again.
Leo comes from a family that used to abuse him and Antonella rescued him. He has bald skin on some parts of his body and crusts and a docked tail. However, Antonella tells him that he is the cutest cat in the world, a nickname previously only for Kun.
Kun must now watch as Leo eats his food, plays with his toys, and invades his space. Because Leo is quiet and hardly meows, but he is always close to Kun, as if he couldn't notice the animosity the other cat feels towards him.
But Kun is a good cat, Antonella will always say, a big cat brother who makes everything easier. It doesn't take long for her to become friends with the little one. Because Leo is quiet and hardly meows, but he's adorable and he's been through so much, and Kun doesn't want to make things worse.
Antonella will see, fascinated, one day how Leo will be wrapped with his whole body around Kun while they sleep on the coach in the living room, where Antonella told them they couldn't sleep. She doesn't have the heart to kick them out.
_
There is one...
There is one where Leo is the new promise of Barcelona FC. Where everyone is talking about how a little Argentinian boy is here to stay and change the world. Where his country calls him to play with other boys the same age as him, to try to achieve something.
One where everyone looks at him as if he were someone fallen from heaven, a legend in the making. The new Maradona.
One where Kun has no idea who he is.
Kun will ask his name at least three times and he won't know who he is. And Leo, coming off an injury and not playing for a long time and tired of everyone's expectations of him, will be happy that Kun doesn't know him. Not really. He can be who he truly is with Kun.
He doesn't know who Kun is either. But a short time later he will remember reading or seeing something about him. The youngest player to play in Independiente, a record. A legacy.
They will sleep in the same room that year. And in all the years that can come where they have to. (And the ones they don't have to. Leo will make a fuss if the thought of not sleeping in the same room comes up every time.)
Leo will become the best player in the world and will make history year after year in Barcelona. Kun will be at Atlético de Madrid and then he will go to Manchester City, where his life will change completely. They will be away for months, without seeing each other for so long, but they always will come back.
They always return to Argentina, with the warmth of the people and the love they have for their country. Leo is the best in the world, but he's only Leo when he's with Kun.
Lionel Andrés Messi from Rosario, so small that people underestimated him all his life, so good on the pitch that people praise him as a God.
Sergio “Kun” Aguero, who is energetic and a legend for whoever you ask and Messi's eternal acquaintance wherever he steps. Above all, in hard times, battles lost every time, doubts and people who don't know what they are talking about, saying things just to say.
Kun leaving football, Messi leaving Barça. A reunion that was written in the stars and that could not happen.
A victory at the hands of Scaloni and twenty other men. Young and unknown and who love Leo and would go to war to die just for him, but no one ever loves Leo like Kun.
Kun, who carries him on his shoulders and showers him with kisses in his hotel room after celebrating for hours and being so drunk and not eating anything. Kun, who will make him play FIFA with him and take turns to be Argentina in each game.
Leo looks at him from the side, and that’s the love of his life. It is everything that has happened and has to happen in his life. With his constant, contagious energy and his dumb, half-told jokes and his big hands and strong muscles and his soft heart that dances when it comes to Leo, ever since they were 17.
“What are you looking at, pa'?” Kun says at one point in the night, when they are in bed, in the dark. Still hearing cumbia from somewhere and fireworks exploding.
Leo smiles at him.
“I'm in love with you.”
“Well, I know. You are very obvious.”
“I love you with all my heart. You're the love of my life”
“You are so cheesy. Lie down to sleep” Kun mocks, but he leans against Leo on the bed, to be closer to him, to feel him closer. Leo continues.
“I feel like we were destined to be together. And all of this was destined to happen. I feel it in my bones-“
“Leo, papi, what are you talking about?”
“Don't know. I'm drunk.”
“Ah, boludo.” Kun kisses his jaw and settles more on the bed, while he laughs. “I love you more. And you're right.”
Leo smiles at him. And he closes his eyes.
He thinks of alternate universes.
In all of them, he loves Kun.