When it comes to Ben Braeden, Claire is of two minds.
She wishes her relationship with him was as easy to define as her relationship with Jesse Turner. When it comes to the Antichrist, her opinion is simple and straight forwards: she means it when she calls him “Assbutt”. She doesn’t care very much for the magical misfit, and doubts that will ever change. There are just too many years of mutual antagonism between them.
She doesn’t care for his relationship with Ben, either. Although the boys are closer in age to her, it grates on her nerves that Jesse has so much more influence than she does.
But Ben himself… her feelings for him are so difficult to pin down. Jesse is dislike and mistrust but she has no word, no definition for what Ben means to her. It is something… more than anything she’s ever felt. She cares so very deeply for him, enough so that she would and has dropped everything to come when he calls for her. She has gone to him when he needed a shoulder to lean on, and when all he wanted to do was share a beer in celebration of his mother’s birthday.
The part that frustrates her is that Ben doesn’t quite feel the same pull.
(She would be absolutely devastated to learn just how similar her relationship with Ben is to the one that Castiel once had with Dean Winchester. She would be horrified to think that of all the things that Castiel had to leave her with it was that.)
She hates the unknowing hold that he has over her, but she can’t find it in herself to hate Ben. She has kissed him and lain with him. She has hit him and run from him. She has caught him in bed with others, and he has cheered her on as she flirted and teased her way across the country, scoring them cheap eats and cheaper beds.
She loves him, but she hates his effect on her.