I did it for several reasons.. one character compensated the other, two because it was difficult to manage their relations in the future differently... while now I could manage the continuous history in both ways with a single thread while if I left them as a story individually I would have to do twice the story. sam although romantic... he lacked the humor of Ray and the opposite , so it is more complete and compensate each other. You’ll have the love story with both instead of just one, won’t you?