What he knew about dance was confined to the dancers that he'd dated slept with, which generally sprang from the various shows for charity he'd attended. The appreciation for just what he'd been seeing, however, had been nurtured when his mother - who'd organized the charity galas around her own interests - who had been patient and bemused with a precocious and bored little boy's questions.
Just like up on the couch, it wasn't erotic - entirely. He could appreciate the lines formed by the very graceful leg lifts, but the engineer in him was much more interested in the strength and precision displayed: her entire weight focused on a single tiny point, a bone that by rights shouldn't bear that much weight, and held steady. Then there was the flexibility and fluidity of movement, the human body moving in ways that by rights it shouldn't, and yet there it was.
And she smiled as she preformed these feats, never breaking a sweat, making them look as though of course anyone could do it, the same way he and Reed could make it look as though anyone could twist physics to work for them.
She was a marvel to watch, but the joy came in seeing her light up as she danced; he'd seen her happy, particularly when he shut up and did what he was supposed to do without hitting on her more than was reasonable. But he'd never really had a glimpse of something that was - as she'd said - just hers, even if it came out of pain.
Neither of them had ideal childhoods; they certainly hadn't been as bad off as so many millions of kids, but she'd just about grown up in a cult, even a cult of her family, and he'd been a lonely genius with distant parents and few peers. They both had dealt with it, it seemed, by finding something that was just theirs that they could be proud of, and at least try to make others proud of in turn; him in projects because no one could take his genius away, and her with her dancing.
They'd both even found the space to share their things, in their own way. She offered a hand out to him, and he shook himself out of thoughts that had little to do with dance and more to do with his own way of coping to stand up and reach out to take her hand.
"You should be aware that trying to get my feet to bend like that will be an exercise in futility," he said with a grin, and for once felt right in his body - still too young, but at least felt like himself. Thinking about armor supple enough to dance in would do that for him. "When was the last time we danced?" he asked, trying to think back. "My birthday, wasn't it? We're going to need to have a memorandum that we have a dance at each and every one of our events."