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There’s this new thing about them—touch.
Clarke has been an essential part of him for nearly a century and a half, and he thought their dynamic had finally settled into something he could expect: doing anything for each other and their people; serving as the other’s emotional, political, and sometimes physical support; and providing the sort of forgiveness only they can give. Sure, after six years, their alliances and priorities shifted and there was a bit of an adjustment period and a little betrayal here and there, but he thinks that they finally found their bearings again.
(Of course, learning of her devotion to him and his radio over those six years did help to re-establish. It takes all of his being to not contemplate the impact’s it had on him, his psyche.)
He wonders if they changed then, or if it took her dying for the second and third time to affect them in this particular way. Because when they finally let go of each other in Gabriel’s tent—when their tight, tight grips on each other softened and the tear stains on his shirt and her tank dried and their lungs seemed to work again—the air is charged, different.
They’ve always used physical touch as a means of solace, with Bellamy usually taking the initiative, but there’s something new here. There’s something more. After Gabriel runs a myriad of what he calls “routine” tests, Bellamy holds her hand in his until she falls into a fitful sort of sleep. He finds himself unable to part from her for long, hovering near and offering a soft palm to her leather-clad leg as comfort or an anchor with which she can steady herself.
But it’s not just him.
Clarke usually relies on words—on teasing and forgiveness and promises that serve to soothe him, to provide that sort of affirmation that no one else will provide. Now, though, her approach to him as changed, if ever so slightly. Almost always, he finds himself in her proximity and she in his, and she touches him more, without prompting. Her fingers covering his when he hands her a cup of water, a comforting hand on his shoulder, his arm. Her shoulder bumping into his, light. It’s casual in a way that Clarke usually isn’t, and there’s a freedom to it that should be out of place; instead, it feels more natural and righter than before.
Maybe it’s why he also gravitates her more than normal. Part of him chalks it up to losing her and needing her near because there’s this nagging feeling that nips at his heels of what if something is wrong what if her brain experienced too much trauma what if he’s really going to lose her this time), but. But. It’d be dishonest of him to ignore the way he lets his thumb caress her wrist, her knee, smoothing soft, soft patterns on the skin there, or the way he rubs the small of her back when he passes, or the way automatically reaches out to her even with his hands literally tied.
However, he doesn’t think it wrong, per se; he and Clarke have always been close, and their bond is something that he can’t quite describe. She’s his best friend, and he is hers. But there’s more there, an easiness to them that others have commented on—Josephine’s malicious taunted, her noting of their “weird relationship”—and an inherent lack of boundaries that allows them to care about and know each other so well, so deeply. No one has pushed him about it, though, and for the most part, he’s able to separate Clarke from normal laws of relationships, unable to fully give her a label apart from Clarke.
Really, it’s not until they meet again that he’s forced to recognize it, when there’s the briefest of respites and God, Echo is dead and replaced by Russell’s wife and Bellamy should be wrecked—and he is, wracked a bit with guilt, but there’s not the deafening grief in the way he’s felt before. But he catches Clarke-as-Josephine in the hallway, and she’s alive even though her acting can be shit and for all intents and purposes, she should definitely not be fooling Russell still. And no one is around, at least not right at this moment, so she takes his hands in hers, uses her left thumb to rub a comforting pattern onto the inside of his wrist.
“How’s Madi?” he asks, low.
Clarke nods, “She’ll be okay.” She bites her lip. “Echo is okay, too. Just pretending. So is everyone else, for now.”
He doesn’t respond, just wraps her up in his arms and he’s so fucking grateful that she’s alive, that everyone is alive (is it wrong for him to lump Echo in with everyone?). It’s the calm, the eye of the storm and he feels at peace. He knows it’s fleeting and that it can’t (maybe shouldn’t) last much longer, but he burrows into her, into her collarbone, into her warmth.
Then she’s pulling away, abrupt. “I have to go,” she says, and she does, and his heart aches as she watches her gait morph into something more arrogant, entitled, as she resumes her guise as Josephine.
Echo is in the exact same situation as Clarke, but he fears more for the latter. He tries to tell himself that it’s because Echo is in her element, has more experience, so it should be easier.
But that isn’t it.
And he thinks it’s all over—their people are safe because Russell is dead and Priya has surrendered and Bellamy thinks everything has gone back to normal and he’s poking around the Anomaly with Clarke (who has returned to only touching him when necessary, which is to say, not nearly enough) and Echo and Octavia because what the hell happened to Diyoza. In an attempt to give he and Echo space (and perhaps separate him from Octavia), Clarke pairs off with his sister as they try to find the other side of this big glowing light.
Octavia warns them that the Anomaly will try and manipulate them, that whatever visions it produces are not real. For the first few minutes of their paired exploration, Bellamy is too focused on Echo’s suggestion that they get a house together, here in Sanctum, but it doesn’t feel right and he’s trying to articulate why (sure, he knows why—he wouldn’t be able to sleep without Clarke near, and he doesn’t think Echo would be okay with bunking).
And then he sees Clarke maybe twenty meters away from him and only a few from the Anomaly, her hair tinged with the green of the wispy light, he thinks she looks strangely beautiful. She’s smiling and her eyes are bright and she calls out to him, waving, and Bellamy doesn’t realize he’s moving until Echo’s pulling on his arm, trying to stop him.
It’s then that Clarke’s face morphs into something twisted, something fearful, as she steps back into the Anomaly. She screams, “Bellamy!” and it’s so pained that he surges forward, only stopped by Echo, again.
Desperate, he shouts Clarke’s name, and Echo is yelling, “It’s not Clarke, Bellamy” and he doesn’t understand, because Clarke is right in front of him and he’s going to lose her again if he doesn’t move. Now. He breaks out of Echo’s grasp, and he’s running, he’s running towards the green green light, and feels his heart sink as he watches Clarke become consumed by it.
And he runs straight into it, too.
His memory is fuzzy, after that.
He remembers the image of Clarke dissolving, and instead, he can hear her voice, muddled yet clearly anguished, screeching his name again and again and again and then it’s all black. He wakes up outside the light, on the ground, but his head is in someone’s leather-clad lap and he feels thumbs padding against his wet cheeks and hands cradling his chin and when he opens his eyes, all he sees is bright blonde hair and even brighter blue eyes, rimmed with tears and she cries, BellamyBellamyBellamy.
“I saw you go in,” he says, simply, because what else would he say?
Her face is so close, and her chest wracks with sobs. “You can’t do that to me, Bellamy,” she tries to convey between staggered hiccups. She leans in, and he can see her eyelashes and his heart stops, but instead of kissing him, she presses her forehead to his. Their noses brush as she shakes her head, slight. “If I can’t die, you can’t die.”
And he nods, nods hard, because he understands. He understands the pain she’s feeling, understands how broken she must feel.
Later, when they’re back at Sanctum and they have a moment (a moment) of peace, Clarke’s still attached to him, and he to her, and he isn’t surprised when Echo asks to see him alone.
(She ends it, and he should feel heartbroken but all he feels is guilt. But maybe she sees that in his eyes because she tells him, in a voice that’s much more emotion-filled than he’s used to, that she gets it. That she’s not surprised.)
After just being dumped by his girlfriend of a year, Bellamy really shouldn’t slide in next to Clarke again, on the couch where she’s braiding Madi’s hair, and she looks back at him with a questioning lilt of her brow.
He doesn’t say anything, just presses a faint kiss to the crown of her hair as she leans into him.
(He could get used to this.)