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She's not entirely sure she ought to be here.

Except that she is. This isn't like with her date with a chess machine prodigy and it's not like Charley. It's not even a date, she keeps reminding herself to keep that part of her brain quiet so it doesn't go into a kind of overload that sets her at unrest. It's two friends going to see some music together. And she might have made sure she doesn't look half bad -- there's no blood anywhere on her clothes and she's combed her hair through past the usual 'laissez-disaster' that it likes to mimic.

And now she's outside the hall with a wool coat drawn tight around her shoulders. The desert and sea have been in her blood for too long, now, and she's not used to the cold. She's fought so many enemies, but it seems as if the weather and her nerves are combining to do her in, this time.

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"Not as often as I might like. I din't exactly get a lot of time off back home." He led her to the floor and put his arm around her, pulling her close, but not uncomfortably so. He was a little rusty, his last dates had been awhile ago and he reminded himself again that this wasn't a date so that didn't matter.

"My Grandmother taught me."

"Did she?" Sarah murmurs, giving him an approving look. "You definitely must have been the hot commodity back home," she says, taking one hand to his hip and resting the other on his shoulder to try and remember how to do this. She hasn't exactly had much chance, outside of Charley, to do this. "I learned on my feet. Sometimes, I had to be classy," she jokes.

"Everyone learns on their feet, even if it's by standing on someone else's." It's not the best joke, but he hoped it relaxed her a little. He really wasn't an Astaire himself, so as long as they managed not to fall over, he figured they were doing well enough. "I give points for effort, not result at these things."

His comment draws a laugh from her and she almost looks surprised that she's done so. It's been a long time since she laughed so freely, but with cancer in her rearview mirror and a new lease on life, Sarah's beginning to figure out that she's not going to die.

She gets to live and she gets to choose what she wants to do. "You are very good," she praises.

"Grandma would be happy to hear you say it." He was happy to hear her laugh, glad that if this wasn't her usual night out, she was still enjoying it. He was too, for that matter, and it had been awhile for him as well.

"Was she still alive?" Sarah asks, not sure what prompted her to ask the question. She's not sure why she wants to know -- maybe because her own family is so small and has been for so long. She's always wondered what her life might have been like if her parents had been there for her longer.

"No, she passed years and years ago." He spun her out with a smile, hoping Sarah wouldn't feel guilty for asking. In truth, he didn't think about his family too much. It was usually just safer to keep his distance and so what contact he had with the family he had left was as brief as his relationships.

She opens her mouth to apologize for bringing it up, but he spins her before she can manage. In the wake of the dizziness, she shuts her mouth, apology lost in the movement. Once she finds her balance, again, she manages a smile. "You've got more moves than I expected!"

"I get that a lot." He got her to smile and not have to apologize for bringing up a dead relative. Win-win in his book. And he managed to keep her on her feet, too. "So, does the waitress from LA like jazz from Harlem yet?"

"I think I might still need a little convincing," she says, but she's teasing as she speaks the words. "It's not bad," she admits, which, coming from Sarah, is high praise indeed.

"You're a tough sell, Sarah, what's it going to take to turn not bad into actual good?" He led her over the dance floor, keeping her on the edges so she didn't have to worry about running into anyone.

"A different past," she admits with a wry smile, happy to lean into his lead and even more grateful when that takes them away from the majority of the people there -- even if they aren't really people. "Dancing was never something I ever thought of doing. Even before everything got complicated."

"Well, they do say this place gives everyone a blank slate, you get to start over." No one has a past if they don't want it. Well, until it comes back to kill you on Halloween. But other than that, no past.

"It's been trying to do that for me, but I keep resisting," Sarah confesses, given that she still doesn't know that her old life isn't going to come crashing down into her life. "I guess I'm averse to change."

"Maybe not averse to change, just averse to chaos. This place isn't change so much as a complete overturn in places." He spun her out into another turn, sympathetic even if he didn't entirely feel the same. He was designed to change as he needed to, be what the job required.

"It's peaceful compared to what I'm used to," she says, and when she spins out, she comes back in with one of her hands pressed against his chest where she can feel his heart beating. It's steady and warm and it's enough to make her slide her hand away, ducking her head down to avoid any inappropriate looks. "I keep waiting for the fight," she says, her words spoken to their feet.

"There's nothing wrong with that, Sarah, except, maybe for the part where you forget to live in-between them." It's easy for any SHIELD agent to forget that there's life outside the Helicarrier. He might not be the best at keeping up relationships outside of work, but it usually didn't stop him from trying.

It mostly didn't stop him from trying. His own workaholic tendencies notwithstanding.

"There was no in-between for me," she admits, shrugging when she thinks about her life. "Though," she says, not entirely sure she's telling the truth. "I suppose there were a few years when I did nothing but live in the in-between and I miss it. I miss it so much, sometimes."

"Then maybe that's what we should aim for? Find a way to get you back to that." He wasn't sure, but he thought she was fighting it just to have something to fight. He'd seen agents burn out from not being able to rest.

She's not entirely sure she can get back to that so easily, but she does want to try. "We should aim for?" she echoes, keying in on that particular part of his sentence. "I didn't realize I gained myself a sponsor."

"I don't think there's a twelve-point program for having fun, but I guess we could try it." He was more than happy to help with that, he was enjoying himself, enjoying adult conversation with a beautiful woman without wondering if someone was going to shoot at him tomorrow.

"If there is, step one is admitting I have a problem, isn't it?" Sarah jokes wryly. "Although, I think I've already acknowledged that. I don't think someone who doesn't have fun goes out dancing in New York City, do they?" she asks, squeezing his hand tighter as a way to say 'thank you' to him for the invitation.

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