Sex for Bellamy has always been a means to an end.
When he was young and living on the Ark, he'd help supplement his mother's nefarious income by getting guards off and using his body as a tool, as a commodity.
He watched men use it for power, swaggering around with women hanging off their arm, a way of saying they were in charge, that they owned the metal they walked on.
When he went down to Earth, that's what he became.
Girl after girl enter his tent and left pleased. He kept his head high, flashed his well-defined chest and swaggered about camp. He was in charge, he got all the girls, he was King.
After a while, he didn't need it as much. Sex became less important to hold his position, so he stopped doing it.
The first time he did it after that was Raven, stripping in his tent and climbing on top of him, moving her body in all the ways he'd taught himself to respond to. When she was done he asked if it helped.
"No."
It seemed to help other people, made other girls happier or made them feel free like Earth did, but not her.
He wished he'd said no.
He falls for Clarke slowly, over a period of weeks. He falls for her strength and her kindness, he falls for her ability to bring death as a mercy and save life as a talent. His heart beats a little faster when she smiles at him or when she says his name and he finds himself ducking his head just a little when she looks at him the way she does.
She says it first, after Mount Weather, after it's all over and they feel safe again, and he says it back, a smile on his face.
That's when she kisses him.
Kissing is sweet and soft and he's always wanted to kiss for the purpose of affection rather than as a commodity, so he does that now. He catches her hair in his hand and keeps his lips closed as he kisses her slowly, his thumb tracing patterns on her jaw.
"I want to do something for you," she says, in that slightly coy way she has of seeming older than her years and innocent and inexperienced all at once. She puts a hand on his pants, dips down and he can make himself react, he can.
He just doesn't want to with her.
"Is something the matter?" She looks up at him.
"I..." He's exposed in ways he never has been before. He scratches at his hair, resisting the urge to shuffle away, or to lie to her like all the girls before her. "I don't really want that."
She tilts her head a little, trying to understand. "I thought guys liked it when girls-"
"Yeah, I guess they do," he said. "It feels good, I guess?" He pulls a face. "I just don't really... like it."
She blinks slowly at him a few times, looks out at the gaggle of girls who he suppose are a metaphor for his numerous one-night stands, then looks back at him. "Is it me..."
"No!" He sits up further, reaches for her, but that's a lie, just not the way she thinks. "Yeah."
Her face falls, the light in her eyes fade. "You said you love me."
"I do," he says and takes a breath. "That's why it's different with you."
Confusion returns to her face. "Bellamy, I don't understand."
He swallows, trying to find the words to explain. "I can make myself like it," he says. "I can make my body... respond? But it doesn't come naturally to me. It was... useful when I was on the Ark, and when I wanted to be... who I was when I was got down here. People like my body."
Her face takes on the expression he recognises as lopsided lust and she offers, "I can't blame them," which makes him laugh, just a little. "But you don't like it?"
He eyes her. "My body is fine," he say. "It just doesn't like other people's bodies. It's not disgusting. It's just not... something I enjoy for myself. I like making other people happy with it." He's never expressed that before and doubts he ever will again, but it seems to make her smile.
"You don't want sex," she says after a moment and he supposes this whole humiliating and yet intimate conversation could've been avoided if he'd just said I love you but I hate sex straight up at the beginning, but here they were.
"No," he says. "I really don't." He swallows. "I don't have anything against making you feel good... I can have sex with you for you. But I don't... want anything for me."
"Take your shirt off," she says and he complies in complete trust, and maybe just a small dose of wanting to make her happy. "Lie back." He takes a breath, lies back on his cot and looks up at the ceiling. She strips down to her bra and lays down beside and slightly on top of him, her skin touching his. "There's intimacy in sex," she says. "The act releases hormones that help with bonding and love. It's the intimacy I'd like with you."
He relaxes, wraps his arms around her and smiles. "Like this?"
She nods, tucks her face into the side of his neck and presses closer to him. "We don't have to have sex, Bellamy," she says softly. "I love you for you, not your body or the way you wander around with your shirt off to get a following." He chuckles lightly beneath her and she looks at his face. "Thank you."
He meets her eyes. "What for?"
"Letting me be the one you don't have sex with," she murmurs.
He smiles a little, kisses her lips just gently because he likes that, he truly does, then buries his face in her hair. "Welcome," he says softly and pulls her close.