Lex gets it now.

Really gets it.

Because apparently, at age sixteen, everyone is hideous. Just hideous. Creatively amalgamated masses of self-righteous bastard-tendencies and really cruel turns of phrase. Satan is channeled through teenagers.

Lex should know; he swears that he shot up with the devil before. But it was Metropolis, and he hadn't slept in seventy-nine hours, and no one could really guarantee that whatever he'd put in his system hadn't been cut with powdered bleach.

Not that, back then, Lex would have cared either way.

Lex has tried to talk on Clark's level, behave on Clark's level, get his fingers on the pulsepoint of youth in Smallville because to stalk effectively, one must know their prey.

And now that Lex knows about the youth of Smallville, he'd just as rather never have tried, because the youth of Smallville tend to be boring, vacuous little motherfuckers, selfish little pieces of shit who don't have any peripheral vision. If it isn't fairy-princessoh -woe-the-fuck-is-me, my parents died, then it's sure-I'll-take-your-time-and-your-souland -break-it-all-to-little-pieces. Lex can do so much better.

It's been an incredibly shitty few weeks.

And if Lex was more like the godforsaken youth of Smallville, he'd pick up his phone, find that rolodex that Helen doesn't know about, and make a few convenient calls. He knows people who know people who would drop on all fours and beg like they've never heard the word dignity if he were to agree to stop by. Lex could forget, for a while.

But that's the other thing about not being a godforsaken teenager:

He just can't.

He tells himself that he's only twenty-two, that really, he should still be in college, wasting away his weekends on women or Lord of the Rings movie-geek-a-thons. He should still be sneaking in extra time in the labs to play with liquid oxygen. He should get bored reading about some highly experimental things going on in extremely controlled conditions, and try to recreate them during ChemLab when Professor Smith isn't looking, and she never was.

Lex can be selfish. Lex is allowed to be cruel.

He just...

It cuts like a knife, a quick stab and a twist for a good measure, familiar and bittersweet on his tongue because he remembers what it was like to be that horrible that easily.

He's done it lots. To his father. To people he befriended for brief moments before losing interest. To the pretty girls in college who'd held his hand and thought that Lex Luthor was really falling for them. To all the pretty boys he'd confused and ruined.

But Lex also turned twenty while blacking out in the back room of a club he doesn't remember, woke up to find himself in the ICU three weeks later.

Lex also should have died when he flew off a bridge in Smallville.

He sighs, and the car makes its way closer to the barn.

And that's what all of this is about.

The fact that the self-righteous son of a bitch thought that he could storm Lex's home, accuse him of trying to murder his own father as well as frame Jonathan Kent was a measure of how stupid Clark really was. Really, really stupid, since peg-legged turkeys with learning disabilities aren't even that stupid.

And Lex was annoyed, irate. Still.

"Not like I haven't seen you shoot someone before," Clark said.

And then Lex's teenaged brain kicked into gear.

In a second, a million years passed, and in every single moment of every single day of every single month and season, Lex was screaming at Clark at the top of his lungs exactly what he deserved to hear, exactly that all sixteen year old boys need to have shoved down their throat - have forced into their mouths until they're choking on it. And yeah, the rape parallel is strong there, and since Lex is a shithead and he hates Clark right now, he doesn't give a fuck.

Lex is almost entirely sure that he would throw Clark in a back room at the Velvet Lounge and sell lube for forty cents a pop, since hearing Clark sob would be an incredibly satisfying experience right now.

And nothing brings a fucker down a notch than to take it up the ass - a lot.

Lex should know. God, he was such a little bastard.

"Fucking karma," Lex hisses, and sits stubbornly in his car.

He's really glad he's angry. Because angry blocks out the other things.

Angry numbs the disgust with himself, because he thinks that he could have killed his father, and then he'd be just like Lionel. The only murder victim ever proud of his murderer for the act itself.

Grief because LexCorp is gone and Lex had Big Ideas, and employees, and he had to call Sheryl that afternoon and tell her she was being released, and listened to her cry and then comfort him for twenty minutes. Sheryl has five kids; Lex has a fucking trust fund. He is going to wire her money. He doesn't know how, he's just going to do it, because he hates this.

Exhaustion because everything is going so horribly, horribly wrong. And Lex can barely keep his eyes open, barely stay awake and keep fighting. He's tired of having to deal with Clark's temper tantrums, and he's starting to see why people make friends in their own age brackets: surviving adolescence once is bad enough, doing it twice is heinous, cruel and unusual torture. Lex isn't cut out for that sort of shit.

And a void, black and deep and very terribly scary.

He wonders what would fill it, what would make Lex better. "I'm sorry, Lex." Maybe. "Lex, I'm an enormous ass. Please, take back LexCorp, and while you're at it, why don't you kick Dominic in the testicles a few times, please." Possibly, but even if not, very fun.

And the tired takes over, seeps into his skin, melts into his bones.

He's walking up the barn steps now, shoulders squared but too-purposefully, like he's practicing what he's going to say in his head when really, all that Lex can think about is how Clark is a fucking jackass and how Lex needs him anyway, needs Clark because Clark is a piece of shit, and Lex doesn't care.

How does a Luthor love someone? He lets himself be destroyed.

His footsteps are loud in the room, and Lex knows that if he doesn't do this, Clark never will. Just stumble into and out of his life occasionally, bright-eyed and stupid, never really knowing that he's still holding the knife, dripping with blood.

So Clark looks up, green irises swimming with the want to apologize, and the same farmish pride telling him that he can't. Not to Lex. Not at the alter of Luthor.

Lex takes a deep breath.

Because Clark's only sixteen, and the fact that he keeps coming back has to mean something.

"How's your dad?"

It's that word: resigned.

And yeah, Lex has raved. Lex has razed. Lex has revolted.

Lex can work with this. For the time being, at least.

Many thanks to corrina_5 for the title idea. - Pru.