Hayley's body tensed in response to Kon's change in posture, though it wasn't something she consciously recognized. Some small part of her had been hoping for a fight, for an excuse to yell at him about how terrible Superman was and how he could be so much more - but the rest of her knew she had made a mistake. She grimaced slightly with his words.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean- You're nothing like Lex, okay? But you're not like Clark either and you shouldn't be trying so hard to suck up to someone with his own issues." Not that she was biased and harboring her own issues with the hero or anything. "And, I mean, wouldn't you rather I say it than just think it? Isn't that basically why we're friends?"

Their honesty with each other, their willingness to disagree and to argue, those things seemed to make them friends more than anything else. Having mutual friends helped, but, at least as far as Hayley was concerned, she didn't really feel the need to pull her punches and watch her words as carefully as she did with basically everyone else here.