Author's Note: A quick drabble that came to me. Will have a second part written from Bellamy's perspective. This is also on my tumblr (thenotcanadian) and on my AO3 account.
She never says I love you. She can't. Somehow, those words always mean the end and I'm sorry and please don't leave. So she doesn't say them to Bellamy, and he doesn't ask her to. She likes to think that because he's her partner in all possible ways, he knows why, too.
She shows it in a million tiny gestures instead. Her fingers tangling in his hair in the early morning. The soft smile on her face every time he comes back from patrolling and pulls her into his arms. The kisses she eagerly presses against his lips. He's the lifeline that connects her to reality, because like she told Lexa, she is drowning in Grounder blood, soaked with it, and as Fi- as he once told her, there are some things that are so hard to live with that you wonder if you're even you anymore with the weight of carrying them. Clarke carries a lot of things with her, and Bellamy is the only one who can help her bear the load.
Bellamy tethers her, anchors her. If she wakes up screaming because there are so many faces floating through her head, Bellamy is the one to hold her in his arms until she stops shaking and can go back to sleep. She loves him for this. But she also told another boy that she loved him right before she killed him, and so she can't tell the one man who keeps her whole just how much he means to her. The first time she tried, the words turned to ashes inside her mouth, ashes that choked the life out of her. She doesn't try anymore.
People used to comment on it, before the dead look in her eyes convinced them that doing so was a bad idea. Her mother, Raven, and Octavia have all asked why she doesn't say it, but she has no answers to give them. Her reasons are her own (she just can't tell them that everyone she ever said the words to have left her in some way or another). Her father, her mother, Wells, and then him. 3 dead, and one who for a while was as well, to her anyway. She can't add Bellamy Blake to that list.
So she doesn't say the words, and she hopes that he knows just how much he means to her. Because maybe one day the words won't taste like death and broken promises and abandonment. She'd really like for him to be around for that day.