The glow is pale, like moonlight on mercury, and it seems to shift as he moves, twisting to look at me.
The muscle ripples with movement and the silver flickers, clouds over the moon, flickering in and out of view as the valleys of his body are thrown into shadow from the light streaming in his window. His arms are wrapped around his body, his hands tightly holding his sides, ridiculously demure before me.
I don't know why he's showing me this, these pale marks of silver light and damnation. I don't know why his eyes are closed against me, face turned softly over one shoulder, as though he would see my reaction by sheer force of will.
"Why?"
It's all I can think to ask. I'm not ever sure what I'm asking, staring at his skin, too battered to be beautiful, too pure to be anything less.
He looks back to the window, over his other shoulder, and his hair goes silver in the moonlight, grey no longer a sign of stress but the marking of a creature that was never meant to walk on the ground.
He reaches up and closes the curtains, so only the fire in the hearth casts light on us and I know I just stopped breathing, staring at him.
The light continues to radiate from him, the wounds in his skin shimmering a pale white in the darkness. He turns around and frowns and I want him to turn back so I can see those crescent tears again. I want to watch the moonlight inside of him pour out through those decade old marks.
"I don't want these marks to keep the distance between us. I won't let them be your excuse." He cocks his head, and his eyes radiate light too, warm and alien to me.
I wonder if he even knows the light he shines, or if his eyes are unable to see it anymore, and I wonder if the dark in me would devour until he shone no more.
I do not want to contemplate the other possibility, so I leave.