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Belle Reve, for lack of a better term, is an absolute shithole of a slum. It’s merely been one month and 8 days since he’s been sentenced, and the rot is almost tangible— he’s left half hoping Killer Croc will bash his head in tomorrow, in place of the 3 years he’s expected to serve for his “crimes against humanity”. He grimaces each time he glances at his reflection on the seemingly impenetrable glass barrier in his cell. His skin had gotten a kind of grey cast that is obviously caused from exhaustion, and the sight of healing abrasions littered all over his head isn’t helping. Nor do the sunkenness in his eyes. His once bright blue eyes had withered to an ashier hue. The dull ache in his arm is bothersome, too, especially when it turns from, well, a dull ache, to an electric pain that shoots from his forearm to his shoulder blade at the slightest jerk of his arm. Something definitely wasn’t healing right. He double takes at a more apparent scrape near his parietal lobe, and Jesus Christ, it looks like I have fucking cockroaches crawling all over me.
Together with his obvious physical decline, the lack of mental stimulation is enough to send Lex to the isolation ward sooner or later; they threw a rabid dog in a cage with no toys to play with. There was no television. No clock, no calendar. He had 3 things that the guards deemed “more than enough” to help pass the time. None of which were true. An autobiography of another painfully insignificant philanthropist he didn’t care to know about, a puzzle book that was obviously made for children under 10 years old (what was that doing in a maximum security prison, anyway?), and a chessboard. All three of them were foolish attempt at psychological torture, he’s sure, but more so the last one. The court had made it explicitly clear that all visitors are prohibited from entering his cell. Not that anyone really bothered to visit him at all, save for his legal team and Lena who simply came to reassure him that the company was safe with her, and to sigh and look at him forlornly, an expression he hasn’t seen on her since they were children. It only adds to his misery seeing his little sister look at him the same way his father did.
Left with no other option, Lex allowed himself to wallow in every disorganized thought that he normally would keep tucked in the back of his, although genius, very plagued mind, all day. He even started to reminisce and have full on conversations with himself at some point. No better company than your own, he rationalizes. Reason unbeknownst to him, his thoughts always seemed to drift back to his youth spent in Smallville— God knows he hated that place. A town filled with people so stupid he often wondered if the majority of them were inbred. He was sure that their rationale behind treating him as poorly as they did was purely from jealousy of his prodigious mind.
Prodigious, but naive. Naive because he chose to delude himself by believing in the concept of something good coming out of Smallville. Clark Kent . His best friend. His only friend, really. Objectively, he was nothing special. Your average boy next door, raised by another pair of unremarkable parents that are as dumb as they come, their worlds revolving around farm work rather than brainpower and chemistry labs.
And yet, he was the only one to ever give Lex the time of day. Even now, the memory leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He doesn’t really know why Clark even bothered to befriend Lex at all; the boy looked as though he couldn’t describe the difference between an ionic and covalent bond to save his life, while Lex spent majority his time slaving away in his own makeshift lab, trying to satiate his undying thirst for discovery— extraterrestrial discovery.
Their friendship ended theatrically, and rather poetically, Lex muses to himself, in a big fight, where Lex shoved Clark out of his lab, white hot fury coursing through his veins, after the boy made the same neanderthalic expression he often received from the rest of the town at the sight of Lex’s latest discovery and catalyst for the experiment he had dreamed of actualizing since he was a child; kryptonite. The disdain he felt for the simple minded folk of Smallville had now spread to even Clark, and it bubbled and burst out inside of him. Lex shot him a final look of angered disappointment before slamming the door, hoping it would whiplash and hit Clark in the face.
An explosion had occurred almost immediately after Clark was pushed out, waves of radiation emitted from his kryptonite sending each and every strand of his precious hair to be wiped clean off his head. Talk about instant karma. At least Lex got to keep his eyebrows, though.
That was the last of which they saw each other, in the context of Smallville, at least.
Lex was twenty-five when he learned that Clark had moved to Metropolis, too, got a job at the Daily Planet and was perfectly okay with pretending their friendship didn’t exist, preferring to interview just about any Tom, Dick and Harry over the billionaire that was Lex Luthor. Whatever. That was just fine by Lex— it didn’t come as a surprise, anyway; expect nothing less from someone from Smallville. It also came as no surprise when Clark had jumped to become Superman’s little lapdog the first chance he got.
Visitors aren’t allowed inside, which is why Lex’s pondering expression quickly turns to horror-struck when he hears the sound of the guards opening his door to let him inside. The seriously unflattering fluorescent lights of the prison makes even Superman look half dead, and the sight makes Lex jump to the thought that this was another one of the many nightmares he’s been plagued with ever since his time in Belle Reve, but Superman’s grating voice immediately knocks the notion out of him. “Luthor,” he starts, sounding like he desperately needs to get something off of his chest. Lex feels himself shiver at the sound, grasping at his peasant mattress so hard his knuckles were white and threatening to pop right out of his hand. How familiar . He hasn’t heard the real thing in awhile. It disgusts him so much he doesn’t notice the concern in his tone.
“What… are you doing here,” Lex’s voice comes out as more of a wheeze than the snarl he intended, and when Superman’s mouth presses downward with discontentment, with a glimmer of sadness in his eyes, Lex has to swallow the bile pooling at the base of his throat. That rush of bitter hatred starts to pump like blazing lava in his veins again, starts to make his heart pound so wildly he wouldn’t be surprised if he died of a stroke at 3pm on a Sunday. “I wanted to see how you’ve been holding up— clearly not so good,” Superman says rather brusquely, his tone of perceived pity making Lex want to hit him even more (if that were even possible).
“Oh, how solicitous of you, Superman,” Lex sneers, “You’re quite wrong. You see, I’ve been having just the most golly time. I’ve been coloring and humming love songs all day. Now that you’ve been made aware, can you please leave?” His brows shoot up as accentuation for every syllable of his derision.
Superman looks more and more miserable as each word of disdain leaves Lex’s mouth. How dare he? As if he couldn’t get any more self-righteous; he humiliates Lex, tosses him in a living hell and expects a warm hug and a tray of freshly baked cookies from his unannounced, and most certainly unwelcomed visit?
“Look, Lex, I would’ve thought that whole fiasco, you’d finally realise I’m not a bad guy…”
Lex nearly feels his jaw dislocate from the force in which it dropped; is this fucking guy serious?
“You’re joking,” he scoffs, the sneer on his face so deep it could burn a permanent wrinkle on his face.
“Let me make this absolutely crystal clear to you, you pibble-brained, arrogant deviant— I abhor you. I loathe you. I detest you. Every inch of you. With every fibre of my being. There has not, and never will, be a day where I don’t regret having that humanoid periodic table shove kryptonite against your face and kill you. And— and, and I swear, if you start running your mouth on your humanity, and mine, and that it’s not too late and to take a chance and whatever other manipulative nonsense you spit out like the Bible, I’ll fucking lose my shit. So, again, I hate you. Always have, always will. I’ve hated you since the very first moment I had the displeasure of seeing your face.”
Now, Lex was hardly a poet, nor did he mean to be so vulgar, but the sludge of hatred that projected out of his mouth felt so relieving. He had been red faced the more he rambled on, and the flush leaving his cheeks left a beautiful afterglow on the peak of his temple. Hopefully Superman would finally take the hint and leave him in peace. Maybe he would finally sleep peacefully. However much to his dismay, Superman’s expression of pity hadn’t changed, except the deepened furrow of his brow and tightening of his jaw. “That… isn’t true, Lex.” he says, and any sense of satisfaction Lex had briefly felt was taken away and replaced with an even bigger chip on his shoulder.
“Why?! Why is that not true? Do I have to manually drill it into your brain?”
Superman, who’s tail has gone fully between his legs, sighs and reaches into the breast of his suit, and pulls out a pair of glasses. Lex has always been confused at the physics of that costume; how did he fit that in there without the outline of it showing through the material? But again, the thought is discarded from his brain and is replaced by shock when Superman puts on the glasses, and his face changes entirely. The bile rises to the base of his throat once more as he blinks stupidly. No fucking way.
…
“Macdonald?” Oh God, he was going to throw up.
“…E-I-E-I-O,” Superman says, like the weight of the world has finally been lifted off of his brutish shoulders and slammed right onto Lex’s.
No. No way, that’s… “Impossible.” is the only word that Lex is able to croak out, suddenly forgetting how to use his respiratory system.
“I’m so sorry, Lex. I wanted to tell you for a long time. You were the only one who I knew would understand me, but I was so scared, we were just kids and things happened so quickly and I—
I failed you, Lex. I failed my best friend.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lex murmurs, now feeling extremely cautious to breathe so as to not actually have a heart attack. Everything was piecing together so quickly his blood vessels were on the brink of constricting, and an abhorrent, throbbing ache was starting to take shape behind his eyes, and—
No wonder he reacted that way to the Kryptonite.
Perhaps it was the fact Lex hadn’t slept in 2 days, or that he remains restless even in his slumber, or that he eats maybe once a day depending on the kind of slop they were serving that day, or the revelation that childhood his best friend had been living a double life and was secretly Superman, of all fucking people, that causes Lex’s eyes to roll to the back of his head as he collapses onto his pathetic little bed, although not even that could compare to how pathetic he probably looks right now, as the last thing he hears is—
“Lex? Lex, Oh God, we need a medic in here!”