"You're wrong," Lex said, abruptly, coldly, hands clenching into fists at his side. His expression transformed into something ugly and quivering, resentment and anger and not hate, exactly, but as close as Lex could bring himself where Clark was concerned. It was the face of a man who had been beaten and broken over and over again, who had laid down and taken it and bottled all the bad up until there was simply no more room.
Clark couldn't possibly understand. Clark had had a family and friends that loved him while Lex was suffering years of physical and emotional abuse by Lionel Luthor, scorned by his peers for his lack of hair, dealing with the damage of losing his own brother. Clark likely would have been playing with other children his own age while Lex was sleeping in waiting rooms hoping for a miracle cure for his mother's cancer. Clark was dealing with the perils of middle school while Lex was overdosing on cocaine in the back of a seedy London night club. Clark had this picturesque little life and Lex would have killed for a second of it, Lex, who...
...Who had one thing going for him, back in Smallville, just one thing. But in the end, Clark had left too, and Lex had been back to square one.
"The Clark Kent I knew was the one who died all those years ago. I had just one friend, one person who believed in me--and then he was gone, just like everyone else in my fucking life who I've ever--"
His voice cracked. Lex hadn't realized he'd been getting louder, to the point of shouting, until it had happened. Control, he reminded himself, control, but it wasn't that easy because Lex had always felt things, emotions, bigger and grander than other people, so when the dam broke, it was nigh impossible to hold the flood back.
Lex closed his eyes. There were sharp pinpricks on the backs of his eyelids and a lump rising in his throat, so he turned away before something in his face could give it away.
When he could speak again, voice thick, all Lex said was, "I had hoped there was some small part of Clark left that I could appeal to. I see now that I shouldn't have assumed such."
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