Marc gave a quick whistle to let Nell know where he was by all the boxing gear. Because using words was overrated, apparently.

"Yeah, fine," Marc said. He and Steven had slept at all, which was always the win there. "You doing okay?"

"That's because you use a burner phone as a phone," Marc told her. After all, all smart people used phones which they could leave in do not disturb mode 24/7.

"One you use when you're trying to fly under the radar," Marc explained. "Meant to be temporary."

Not that Marc knew from experience or anything.

"Or something, yeah," Marc said, giving her a dry look.

"You tell me," Marc said. "We could keep it general or start with s - things you've dealt with before."

Again, doing a great job on avoiding the swearing there, Marc.

Marc immediately held his hands up in front of him, much as he had when trying to reassure her back in her shop that he wasn't going to even come close. "I figured as much. It's not a formal class. We can take it however you like. That's what I'm asking. What do you want to learn first?"

And, just so it was clear, he added, "And we're not doing a freaking thing where I come at you. Not for a while. If we do any one on one all action would be you to me, got it? I'll be on defense, not you."

Frankly, depending on Nell's comfort level, Marc had a couple of people in mind to ask for help if Nell was more comfortable working with a woman for that practice. But they could cross that bridge when they came to it.

"Don't apologize," Marc said. Then even he realized how that could sound. "I mean you don't have to." Besides, Nell being okay with throwing up boundaries was good, but Marc didn't want to make her feel self-conscious about it by pointing that out.

Marc gestured towards the heavy bags. "How about we start by you learning how to throw a punch?"

"Anything gets to be too much you let me know, okay?" Marc said. He wanted to make sure that was understood. "Don't even need to give a reason. You don't want to do it, you want to stop, whatever. You're in charge, not me."

"I'll give you options to choose from," Marc said. "I know you like research so try looking up Wing Chung. It's a good one for people with smaller frames. We can go in that direction if you think it'll work for you. But that's for next time. Today we can do basics."

Please ignore the part where Marc had noticed a detail about somebody's preferences and bothered retaining that information for later. Again, this implies that he cared about people and everyone knows he does not do that.