Francis ventured that, once they reached the bedroom, they wouldn’t face any other issues: that although sharing a room was inconvenient, they’d manage with composure, and nothing else would drive them up the walls—at least until the next day.

But he was wrong.

“Why is there only one bed?” he asked as soon as they entered the room, glaring at the piece of furniture as though it had personally offended him.

“Didn’t you notice earlier?”

“I was only here to drop off my luggage, not inspect the adequacy of the furnishings.”

Already exasperated earlier, fresh from his second failed attempt to negotiate with the landlady after finding the dead body in the garden, Francis had simply opened the room’s door far enough to leave his suitcase inside, pressed against the wall.

He hadn’t bothered turning on a light or inspecting the surroundings. He hadn’t cared. His sole focus at the time was heading to the restaurant for dinner. Any remaining problems could wait.

“Well, now you know,” Julien said with complete nonchalance. “I’d offer to sleep on the floor...”

“Do it.”

“...but it’s cold, and we don’t even have a miserable rug,” Julien replied, looking at Francis indignantly as he processed what had just been said. “How cruel! Would you really make me spend the night on the floor while you hog a perfectly soft bed?”

“Don’t make it sound like the mattress is worthy of a five-star hotel! I’m suffering too! I only said that because you offered...”

“I wasn’t offering, that’s the point. I’m kind, not stupid.”

“We could flip a coin, then,” Francis suggested. As much as the idea of sharing a bed with his longtime rival disgusted him, he didn’t want to seem like a tyrant forcing someone else to sleep in an uncomfortable spot just to spare himself.

“Flip a coin?”

Julien didn’t seem convinced, and truthfully, neither was Francis: flipping a coin meant a fifty percent chance of losing in his own game.

“Or we could decide it with a game of piquet…”

“I’m not much of a gambler.”

“Of course not, staying away from addiction and all that.”

“I just don’t see why we should complicate things: the bed is big enough for both of us. Why bother deciding who gets it?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely massive,” Francis muttered sarcastically. “If we both lie down there, by morning we’ll have forgotten there was anyone else with us.”

“Unless...” Julien pondered with a smile that spelled trouble, “you’re embarrassed about sharing a bed with another man?”

“T-that’s absurd!” Francis replied so quickly that it might have given him away. Maybe his sudden denial, or the slight flush on his cheeks, made Julien think he’d hit a nerve.

For the record, Francis didn’t feel any shame in that regard. This wouldn’t be his first time sharing space with another man: in Paris, he’d had plenty of encounters that, while not necessarily ending in bed, were entirely intentional. Especially during his university days, when he began frequenting certain establishments.

“What bothers me is that it has to be with you in particular,” Francis continued, also wondering why Julien seemed so unbothered by the arrangement. Did he really not mind sharing something as intimate as a bed with someone who was supposed to be his rival?

“Well, I don’t see why,” Julien said with a shrug. “So far, we’re getting along wonderfully, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I suppose the fact that I haven’t committed murder or considered ending my own life yet says something.”

“That’s the spirit! Look on the bright side—this experience might even inspire your next column. Maybe instead of criticizing me for using overly sophisticated words to praise a mundane landscape, you’ll come up with something a hundred thousand times worse. Like claiming I snore, for example.”

Francis grumbled something unintelligible but didn’t engage further.

Perhaps he could be overly critical in his articles, often without reason. Even so, he wasn’t the type to exploit someone else’s vulnerability for the sake of spicing up his column.

If Julien snored, hogged the blankets while asleep, or did handstands on the bed, those were things that would stay between them in that shabby little room. Francis wouldn’t breathe a word about it. In fact, the moment he could lose sight of Julien, he was determined to forget everything that had happened in those hours.

Sharing a bed didn’t have to be taboo, and given how poorly Francis had handled the situation so far, he was now more determined than ever to prove he could keep his composure in any unexpected scenario.

Thus, when Julien offered to fetch a chair from the landlady so one of them could sleep on it and avoid any possible discomfort—clearly preferring to share the bed but not wanting to impose—Francis refused.

It was annoyingly considerate of Julien, which, for some reason, irked Francis even more.

Fortunately, sharing the bed wasn’t as terrible as Francis had anticipated: while it wasn’t spacious, it was wide enough for two adults to lie down without limbs dangling off the sides. If one focused hard enough, they could almost forget they were lying back-to-back when the lights went out and they attempted to sleep.

“Francis?” Julien called softly, about fifteen minutes after they’d gotten into bed.

“What is it now?”

For all his chatter during the day, Francis had assumed Julien’s energy would run out by nightfall. Perhaps he’d been naive.

“Are you still awake?”

“No.”

“I was wondering... Do you really think my poetry is a waste of time and resources?”

“Of course it is,” Francis replied quickly, as though Julien had just asked the most obvious question in the world and his response was merely instinctive.

Francis wanted to be more sarcastic than anything else. After all, who asks such a question of a stranger? Especially one trying to sleep?

It was clear Julien’s intention was to be silenced, to stop dwelling on silly notions at such a late hour. Yet somehow, the fact that Julien didn’t immediately snap back made Francis feel uneasy. The silence suggested he’d crossed a line.

Hadn’t Julien sounded vulnerable when he asked? What if he genuinely cared about Francis’ opinion of his work?

“Well,” Francis added after a pause, deciding he didn’t want to crush someone else’s professional dreams, “I’m not in the habit of reading that sort of thing—beyond what I stumble across in the papers. So, what do I know about poetry?”

What he meant was: “Don’t take what I say too seriously.” Just as Francis didn’t take criticisms of his own column from outsiders too personally, he didn’t expect other writers to radically change their approach based on his words.

Francis wondered if he’d been clear enough. He was on the verge of setting aside his vanity to admit something he now found embarrassing: that he hadn’t paid much attention to Julien’s poetry until Julien started responding to his articles.

After several months of carefully reading Julien’s work, Francis had come to enjoy it—to the point where finding a flaw to critique grew increasingly difficult with each new publication.

He even considered admitting the embarrassingly petty reason he’d written that first critique in the first place.

But just as Francis was about to confess everything, Julien murmured a quiet thank-you and drifted off to sleep.

It seemed Francis’ initial comment had sufficed, and for now, he had managed to avoid making what would have been his greatest confession to date.