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Lex was already out of bed when Clark woke up, standing in front of the screen, his hand faltering up sporadically to change the view, a sheet clutched around his shoulders. Lately Lex had groused every time they came here about having forgotten to bring a robe again. Strictly speaking he didn't need one, the temperature in the Fortress maintaining itself at a constant and comfortable warmth. Clark missed the Lex who had used to stride or lounge about so unselfconscious in his nakedness. He was equally unselfconscious in covering himself now, but it wasn't the same.
Stretching luxuriously, enjoying the feel of the unearthly-soft bedcovers against his own nude skin, Clark eased one leg, then the other, free from the sheets still on the bed and stood up. His movements had made enough noise that Lex must have heard, though he gave no sign, still staring into the image of the wind-blasted ice field outside. Clark padded up behind him, slipping the sheet gently down until it pooled at Lex's feet. Lex's chin lowered a thumbsbreadth or two, and he took a deeper breath, but that was the extent of his reaction as Clark ran his hands up Lex's just-bared arms.
"So soft," he whispered, making a caress of his breath at the nape of Lex's neck. Clark's fingers wandered down over Lex's pale back, lingering along the folds that had started to appear there several years ago, above his ribs. Lex dropped his head further forward, his stance shifting subtly, and exhaled a soft breath shaped like "don't." Clark let his fingers trail away from Lex's back, and pressed a kiss at the apex of Lex's spine by way of apology, punctuating it with a whispered "sorry" before he kissed the same spot again.
Moving closer, Clark wrapped his arms around Lex, pressing himself against the silkily-loose skin of Lex's back, blanketing him with his body in a way that emphasized his nakedness instead of hiding it. He placed a kiss on Lex's shoulder, then dipped his forehead down to cover that spot.
Lex's left hand came up to fix itself around Clark's forearm, squeezing once, then just holding it against his chest. A faint tickle teased the stripes of forearm exposed between Lex's fingers in time with the rhythmic rise of Lex's shoulderblades against Clark's chest, the way Clark's own exhalations must be teasing down Lex's back.
They stood that way awhile, minutes he neither bothered nor wanted to count, before Lex raised Clark's arm, kissing his knuckles then letting both limbs drop. Gently, almost coaxing, Clark turned Lex around with a lightly-enticing hand on one shoulder, and felt a smile warm his own face at the sight of Lex's face. He touched his lips to Lex's temple, brushed them along lines across Lex's forehead that would be faded almost to invisibility in repose but remained stubbornly etched across Lex's forehead now.
Lex stayed silent as Clark kissed away the line that pinched itself between his eyebrows, lingering first over the scar in the right brow that had given Lex his first silver hairs a lifetime ago, then across to the single still-new white hair on the opposite side, that had been put there by time instead of trauma. Lex's breath caught as Clark traced the softness and the one novel coarse strand with his tongue, and Clark felt him about to pull away from the intimacy, so he broke the contact himself, instead, capturing Lex's gaze with his own. Lex's grey eyes were unchanged, full of as much fire and mystery as the day they'd met.
Resisting the urge to tell Lex how beautiful he was — the words sounding too flowery even inside his own head — Clark let his fingers say it instead, tracing the altered-yet-familiar contours of Lex's face, the curves of lips that parted at his touch. Clark's fingers slipped down to tease Lex's collarbone, and Lex's parted lips were an invitation, tempting him in, but Clark's mouth found the lines graven beside them instead. Cupping Lex's neck in both hands, Clark tilted Lex's head back to lavish an open-mouthed kiss to the slightly-slackened flesh along Lex's jaw which, in just a few more years, would develop into defined, distinguished jowls. Lex found his voice at that, saying "not that," but Clark just shook his head in agreement and moved his mouth to Lex's, letting that be his answer for the moment.
Lex's fingers twisted into and gripped his hair, but pulled him away instead of holding him in the kiss. "Clark," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper, "let me—"
"Don't," Clark whispered back, though his vehemence gave more fierceness to the word than the same volume had lent it in Lex's mouth.
"Clark," Lex repeated, and breathed in and out in a long, slow sigh, his eyes closing. When he spoke again there was as much tired resignation in the word as pleading. "Please?"
"Everything always has to be your way, is that it? You won't even consider what I want, but you expect me to help you with this... insane immortality idea of yours." Clark knew he wasn't being entirely fair, but he couldn't keep his frustration from winning out at having failed, yet again, to get Lex to see his changing body the way Clark does. And he wasn't ready to accept the idea that he couldn't win Lex over to his own perspective.
Lex let go, folding his arms over his chest, and Clark moved his own hands down to cup Lex's elbows, just lightly enough to be a touch rather than a grip. Lex's expression softened; Clark found himself fighting the urge to mirror it on his own face. "Let me at least try, Clark. If it won't work, then," he paused for several short breaths, almost panting as if in pain or on the edge of hysteria, or both. "I'll look at making your way work."
"Why do we have to try your way first?"
At that, Lex twitched and dropped his gaze, his jaw muscles working.
"You don't trust me? At this point in our relationship?" Clark accused, and since he couldn't take the words back, he might as well go forward — a lesson he'd learned, fittingly, from Lex. "What do you think, that once you figure out how use Kryptonian technology to extend the human lifespan, I won't give you the access you need to — realize your goal?" Clark only stumbled a little over the last few words as he swerved away from saying, again, how he truly felt about Lex's plan.
"My 'insane immortality idea,' you mean?" Lex snapped, the volume of his voice remaining quiet but every word clipped, and his eyes were back on Clark's now, fired with frustration and fear.
"People aren't supposed to live forever, Lex," Clark said tiredly, feeling like an old skipping disc from the dawn of their relationship. He'd spoken that phrase, or variations of it, enough times it was starting to lose its meaning. "It's not natural. It's not right."
"You don't know that I would live forever, Clark; we don't know that you would." Lex's tone was still low, calm and even as ever.
Clark resented that calm, with a ferocity that rivaled the way he wished he could master the same trick. His own voice always gave too much away when his emotions were involved, and the way Lex's didn't just made the twin frustrations worse, especially with the way their arguments about their relationship's future had increased in both frequency and fervor over the past weeks — no, months.
"There's no way to know unle—"
"No, Lex!" He yanked his hands back from Lex's body, turned and walked a pace away and then spun to face him again. "Look at me." He gestured at his unlined face, his as-yet-dark hair. "Time bounces off me like bullets. I haven't changed in so long I've forgotten what it's like."
"You say that like it's a bad thing." Lex said, his tone unreasonably reasonable, a wry smile audible in his voice despite being absent from his face.
"You aren't the one who had to give up having a norm—" Clark bit off the words too late. That was a tactic he'd tried and failed with before, and he needed to retire it.
"I never had a normal li—" Lex started to retort, just like the other times, but then shook his head and ran one hand over the hairless top of it. "Clark. Dying won't make you normal."
"Isn't that my choice to make?"
Anger finally showed on Lex's face and he raised his voice for the first time in... Clark realized he couldn't remember the last time it had happened. "Not when you're asking me to help kill you!"
"Lex, that's not fair," Clark said, Lex's palpable anger paradoxically making it easier for him to regain his own equilibrium. "It's not like I'm talking about committing suicide."
"Aren't you?" Lex demanded.
"I want there to be the possibility of death — not the immediate certainty," Clark reasoned. "It's not the same thing."
"You think I want Schrödinger's husband?" Lex asked, eyes avid on Clark's.
"Do you think I do?"
"If you don't, then let me work on extending my lifespan," Lex said, his tone the precise flavor of pleading that had always worked best on Clark, belying the way he'd neatly defeated Clark's position. "Let me, and — and, once I've made progress, I will look into at least getting you to age."
Clark had gotten better at chess over the decades, but he was still no match for Lex. In some ways, he was still just as helpless to deny a Lex in need as he had been during the years before their relationship had graduated from friendship to love; he remained just as prone to being outmaneuvered by Lex's always-scheming mind.
Clark nodded and flew the short distance into arm's reach of Lex again, holding his own hands out between them — the way he has been reaching out for Lex, this Lex, this manipulative and maddeningly-vital man, for nearly all of their lives. "A compromise," Clark said, making sure all the relief he was feeling resounded strongly in his voice.
"Yeah," Lex agreed, taking Clark's immutable hands in his own frighteningly-frail ones. "A compromise."