After her shift Olivia arrives at a training facility to put the required number of rounds down range. She is surprised to find Adam waiting for her. "What are you doing here?" she asks.
Adam shrugs "Can't I be here to encourage you to punch holes in paper?"
"Sure, but it can't be too exciting for you. I'm going to have to wait awhile. I try to get this out of the way early, but by this time in the month every procrastinator in the Department will be here. Why don't you go get something to eat?"
"I'll wait. Do you want me to heckle the other cops to get you closer to the top gun slot?"
"No. These guys…. Just, no." Olivia scolds much to Adam's amusement.
Once inside, Olivia and Adam watch other officers using the range. "Want something to drink?" Adam asks.
"That would be good. There is a coffee machine in the lobby."
"No coffee for you, it might make you jittery. I'll get you water." Adam says. Olivia starts to object, but nods yes.
Stabler has completed his shooting and is in an optional training session on defense from knife wielding suspects when Adam spots him. Hearing the class begin, Adam is curious and watches from the hallway door, drinking his coffee and holding Olivia's water bottle. Adam watches with some amusement as the instructor demonstrates various techniques he's learned in an "advanced" training class. When the instructor mentions that a knife can be thrown Adam suppresses a laugh. Noting Adam, he instructs Adam to come to the front of the class.
The instructor has made a serious blunder. After being instructed to menace the instructor with a practice rubber knife, Adam responds. "What you must know is that a knife at close range is a more terrifying weapon than your automatic. Yes, the round can do a lot of damage, but the knife bypasses the brain and speaks directly to the heart. You've seen what a round can do to ballistics jell in slow motion on film, but it is something the mind must process. It take's little imagination to know what a knife will do." Adam tosses the practice toy knife onto the table which contains several knives taken from suspects and selects a Bowie knife with a knuckle guard. "Train like you fight; fight like you train." Adam says as he picks it up in his right hand.
"That's for a lefty." The instructor says, trying to regain the upper hand in front of the class. The sharp side o the blade is on the opposite side than the knuckle guard, making it look backwards.
"No. It's for a right handed person that knows knives. Besides, the sharp edge of the blade would still be up." Adam says moving toward the instructor with a calm menace. "When held in the hand, the guard protects the knuckles and the sharp side of the blade is up. Because I'm either going to come in low and rip open your belly or come in from the side of the neck and tear out your throat. The damage will be made by pulling from the inside out." By now Adam is right up to the nervous instructor. "Feel the fear?" Adam asks with an ice cold grin. But he turns away from the instructor and demonstrates the two strikes he described on a dummy, ripping out stuffing from its belly and throat while simultaneously striking with his left hand to stabilize the dummy. The officers in the class are stunned at the speed and severity of the damage. It is brutally efficient. The more astute notice that both strikes were extremely precise and just clear of where the backbone would be allowing the soft flesh and organs in front to be lacerated.
"Whoever said a sword was a more elegant weapon from a more elegant age didn't understand the reality."
Adam returns the knife to the table, and starts to leave. "Oh, one other thing, no serious knife fighter is going to throw his knife. Would you throw your gun? Of course you wouldn't. You'd use it as a bludgeon if it wouldn't fire, but you would never throw it." With that, he picks up a knife and throws it at the dummy. His fingers halt the spin of the blade and it flies straight and true into the sternum of the dummy burying itself to the hilt.
Adam calmly picks up Olivia's water bottle and starts to leave. "Never believe what you see or hear in a fight. There are no rules."
"How would you defend yourself?" an officer from the class calls out. Adam pauses "Shoot him before he gets close or be better with a knife than he is." He answers without looking back as he walks out.
The following day Stabler is driving Olivia to their next interview and he says "I don't know who your boyfriend is, but he's somebody, probably not a SEAL, Green Beret, Marine Recon, Ranger, or Delta, but … somebody. They are secretive but you can still see the swagger. He stopped in the knife training class for a couple of minutes and there was a hell of a lot of discussion after he left… plus the Department needs a new practice dummy. Some of the new guys looked a bit green, but he scared the hell out of even some of the veterans, took me back to my Marine training. What was sobering was how violent yet coldly precise he was."
"Really?" Olivia asks.
"I'd bet money he's seen actual combat… hand to hand."
"I'm not seeing it."
"Olivia, perhaps the reason he seems so oblivious to dangers is that they aren't threats to him."
"Doctor Warner knows him. She said they used to live together. I'll ask her. I doubt she'll answer, but it is worth a try. She said if I ask him about his past, he won't answer and it will drive him away."
"I thought you wanted to let him go." Stabler asks.
"I did. Now I don't know. He's like a mystery. He's good to me. I just want… I don't know… I want him to be more demanding…"
"More like all those other guys that didn't work out?"
"Yeah, I guess." Olivia says troubled.
Olivia lies in bed with Adam massaging her upper back lost in thought. "Doctor Warner said you two used to live together."
"Doctor Warner?" Adam asks.
"Doctor Melinda Warner."
"She told you? Yes we did, but it was a long time ago."
"Why did you two split?"
"She didn't need me anymore."
"Are you two….?"
"We're good. I hear from her occasionally. Actually, she suggested that I meet you and she told me the bar you frequent. She thought perhaps I could help you….." Seeing Olivia's shock he continues. "She didn't tell you that part huh?"
"No she didn't... You were stalking me?" Olivia says annoyed.
Adam works his way down to the small of Olivia's back. "Don't be too annoyed. If I didn't like what I saw and heard about you, I would have just moved on."
"She set me up."
"No, she suggested that you were somebody that I should meet. I hung around in that bar full of cops until you got curious. If you recall, you made the first move... the only move."
"I got curious about this guy who obviously wasn't on the force sitting alone in the shadows every night. You were making some of the guys edgy."
Adam's massage reaches Olivia's tailbone and all of her concentrated tensions release in a shudder. It is her favorite part of the nightly massage. Olivia relaxes into the sheet as Adam continues down her body. Her tensions increase again as he works her buttocks and upper thighs. But she knows before she gets rolled over she'll have plenty of time to enjoy the foot massage.
Once Adam has moved beyond her more sensual areas, Olivia asks "Did you do this to Doctor Warner?"
"She didn't take to it right away like you did, but eventually something like this. That was between us though. Shhhhh just relax. Let the detective in you take a vacation."
Olivia enjoys her massage for awhile. As Adam works on her feet she asks "How did you meet Warner? She said she was in a bad situation."
"Shhhhhh." After a long pause Adam says "Yes, she was."
"Like me?"
"Much worse. But you needn't worry about it. Roll over."
Adam continues to work Olivia's feet, but from there he'll be working up the front her legs. "Are you going to leave me if you decide I don't need you?"
"I'm here until you decide you don't need me… or you get bored."
Olivia reacts to the last part. "Why…?"
"I'm probably not as exciting as most of your previous men. But think of me as a distance runner instead of a sprinter. Relax…"
"Where your hand is right now… relaxation isn't an option."
"So stop thinking and enjoy." Adam skips her pelvic area and moves to her stomach.
"Do you whisper to me in my sleep… to change my dreams?"
"Guilty as charged. You're full of questions tonight. Now shhhhhhhhhh." Adam puts a finger to Olivia's lips.
"Why that fantasy?"
"Because it works." Adam moves away from Olivia losing interest in massaging her since she has become more interested in asking questions than receiving the massage.
"But where does it come from?"
"I think I'd better go." Adam says as he gets up.
Olivia gives Adam a full body hug. "Please stay. It is just that I want to know more about you."
"No, you don't, you really don't."
"I do. Stabler thinks you were some sort of military operative. You can talk to me… unless it is something classified."
"Let's say that it is all classified and let it go at that."
"Have you killed people?" Olivia whispers.
"Let it go." He says slowly.
"I want to help you as you're helping me."
"You are. No more questions."
"It helps a victim to talk. It hurts at first, but it helps."
"I'm not a victim."
"If you were forced to do things…"
"It helps me to help you. I'm not going to discuss my past with you or anyone else. If you keep asking questions, I'll leave."
"Don't leave." Olivia wraps herself around Adam. A thought crosses her mind and she reverses positions with him and begins to perform the massage she normally receives.
Olivia and Adam stroll through a nice area of the city on a pleasant evening. Olivia is comfortable and relaxed. There is no sign of anything illegal going on to attract her attention, but she is ever vigilant. Suddenly she senses Adam grow tense and he guides her in a different direction. "What is it?" she asks.
"Call it intuition."
"If there is trouble, I should check on it."
"It isn't the sort of thing that you would need to be concerned with, I just get a feeling of dread sometimes and I've learned to trust the feeling; at least I've never had reason to regret avoiding areas that give me that reaction."
To Olivia's surprise, Adam guides her to the steps of a church where he stops and looks around carefully as if searching for a familiar face. After a moment he relaxes. "Are you okay?" she asks.
"I am now. The feeling has passed. But let's go a different way."
"Sure. Do you know what caused the panic attack? There was no danger I could see."
"You wouldn't, it isn't the sort of thing that you would recognize. Have you ever had a feeling about a place or a person that was just… The feeling that things were about to go wrong."
"Yeah, but in my job I can't let that stop me."
"But, you'd call for back up or change your approach, right?"
"If I could…"
Adam stops and grips Olivia's arm tightly. "Listen to me carefully, if I say we leave, we leave, no questions asked. All right?" He says with an unusual intensity.
"I can take care of myself."
"I have no doubt you can, but some things are best avoided."
"But…"
"No 'buts', if I say we avoid an area, we avoid it."
"If it makes you feel better."
"It does."