There's really only one thing he knows from experience will work, with someone he cares for, and somehow it's even more awkward with Molly than it was with John.

He steps close, hesitant, and slowly puts his arms around her.

This is the awful thing about being human. Sometimes the people who make their way into your life and improve it die for no reason, and sometimes you hurt so deeply you want to destroy yourself, and sometimes you feel so unworthy that even a small kindness seems like a weapon turned against you. There is no logic that fixes it. There is no guarding against it.

It is what it is.

But Molly is warm, she's solid and flawed and somehow the only person he wants, and she knows he's a monster and loves him anyway.

"It's horrible," he murmurs, the most sincere sympathy he can offer, and presses a kiss into her hair.