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Moonlight
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," John murmured, almost absently. Harry, burning cold under his mantle, glared at him.
"And what's wrong with pride?" he asked, with that neck that wouldn't bend, even with the weight of metaphorical shackles around it.
John smiled, perhaps a little sadly. "Nothing," he said, in all honesty, and knew it for the scourge it was by Harry's flinch.
Starlight
Something about starlight made him think of winter. The clear crispness of it, how cold and how clear and how far into the darkness you had to be to see it. Starlight was winter's domain, in the shadow of the new moon, air and darkness and all her power.
John met him there. A challenge, or a reassurance, or a claim, or a reminder. Harry wasn't sure. All of the above. But John met him there, in the heart of her power, and the razored edge to his smile glinted like starlight.
Sunlight
They were different in the daytime, Harry thought. Looking at himself and John, the shabby wizard detective and the well-cut, honest businessman. In the sunlight, they weren't the same as they were in the darkness, down where the bad things were.
Looking at John's faint, deadly smirk, he had the alarming (reassuring) impression that John prefered the darkness, and the honesty there.
Candlelight
A flame was never a safe thing, around Dresden. Any and all. The smallest candle flame could stand a reminder of the destruction the man could wreak with just a word. All the romantic imagery of candlelight crumpled against the reality that was Harry Dresden.
Ah well, John thought. Smiling for the heat between them, in that tiny, flickering flame. He always had appreciated the frisson of true danger beneath the world's warm illusions.
Streetlight
They were equals, here. For all their differences, for all the threats and lies and challenges beneath other lights and in other shadows, here, here, they were equals. Simple, in their way, and as close to united as they ever came. Here, in the sodium of the streetlights, standing in the city's heart.
Chicago. Whatever else they were and saw and did, that ... they had in common.