for meozzloveyeol;; (1645 words)

Sungyeol was tired.

Not just physically, because honestly that’s become so normal that it barely even fazes him anymore, but mentally exhausted. When he got the role in the drama he was ecstatic, couldn’t believe his luck, even if it was just the second lead. But he had forgotten how grueling shooting schedules could be, how time consuming a role was. And sure he didn’t have to spend every moment of his free time on set mentally critiquing his last take, and of course he wasn’t required to do research for his role, but he did. He had to, acting was one of his passions and it was something that he wanted people to think he was good at. But doing all of this on top of Last Romeo promotions - which painfully wasn’t getting as good of a response from the public as he had hoped - just made him, well, tired.

He was currently in his room alone, some of the others had went out for dinner but he wasn’t feeling up to it. In the morning they had done a prerecording for a music show, that afternoon was the music show itself, and right after he and Woohyun had been whisked away to the set to film retakes for the script changes. Sungyeol closed his eyes, resting his weary head against the wall for a small moment of peace. The new script was held securely in his hand, but no matter how many times he tried to read over the page the lines just didn’t sink in. He wanted to give up, to sink into his pillows and refuse to open his eyes again until morning, but his desire to prove himself as an actor won out in the end. Sungyeol made himself shift up in bed, ready to tackle the page all over again.

There was a light knock on his door, before the door creaked open to reveal the cautious face of his best friend. “Yeollie?” The dark eyes flickered over Sungyeol’s body. “It was so quiet, I thought you might be asleep.”

Sungyeol shook his head and Myungsoo stepped into the room, closing the door behind him softly. “I thought you went to dinner with the others.” He asked confused, shifting over on his bed to make room for the new addition.

“Oh, I was going to. But then you said you wanted to stay here, and I feel like we’ve barely seen each other lately. Outside of practice I mean.” Myungsoo explained, grabbing one of the free pillows to rest it under his chin.

“Tell me about it. Everytime I want to complain about my schedule I remember that Woohyun has it so much worse than I do. He had Toheart before we started doing stuff for our album, and he has to carry the weight of the lead-”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Sungyeol lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“You are allowed to be exhausted Yeol. You shouldn’t put on a brave face just because of someone else. Especially in front of me. I’m your best friend, you’re supposed to tell me this kind of stuff. The others have been asking me how you are handling it, and I don’t know what to say.”

Sungyeol sighed, “This is exactly why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want them to worry or think that I couldn’t handle it. I’ll get used to it, no matter how crazy the schedules get, eventually it becomes normal.”

Myungsoo shook his head, reaching out his hand to rest it on Sungyeol’s thigh. “It doesn’t matter if it becomes ‘normal’ Yeol. What I’m saying is that I’m here for you. I just want you to know that you can talk to me.” He looked down at the bed, his eyes worried. “When we are at practice we don’t talk because we are focused on perfecting our routines. And at schedules we’re worried about our image. Then you’re gone because you’re filming. I don’t know Yeol… I’m just not sure if we aren’t talking because you’re too tired or because you’re hiding someth