The third time Ziggy's back met with the mat he decided to say something. "Want to talk about it?" he breathed out heavily. It took a lot to wind him, but Santana had put him through some serious work outs over the past several weeks, and this day in particular she was really going at it. Although he loved the passion and aggression Santana was bringing to the table, he was also not an entirely spring chicken. If this kept up, he was going to have some serious back problems by the time he was 40. In the words of Santana, 'no me gusta'…though…the perception of chronic pain did have its benefits…
Santana rolled off of him, sitting cross-legged beside him, as he rolled himself up into a sitting position, too. "Nothing to talk about."
"Really? Because as much as I enjoy a good work out, and I really enjoy a good work out, you've been going hard every day for more than a month. I've had to cut back on my naturals to make sure I can keep up with you."
Only Ziggy could say that sentence in that oh so casual way. "You're a federally employed employee. How are you possibly able to 'naturally consume' anything?"
Ziggy gave a serene smile. "Ah, my young, tiny grasshopper. When they ask you about your drug usage on your clearance form, they don't ask because they actually care; they ask because they want to see if you're going to lie. I don't lie."
Santana did a flip to get on her feet and heard her body give a slight groan of protest. She winced, feeling a little old. She fully righted herself and helped Ziggy to his feet. Inwardly she gave a small smile at his own, slight, wince at being righted. Ziggy gave a small sigh, but he didn't hesitate to get in the proper position. They started to circle each other. "Is this sudden physical assault because you're in your head about having your first kill?"
Santana momentarily straightened out, until a disapproving look put her back in her stance. "No."
Ziggy was the first to enter Santana's space. He saw an opening and aimed a punch at her midsection, more to set up the counter attack than because he actually expected it to land. "You fired your revolver the last time you went out into the field. If orders hadn't been to apprehend, would you have aimed a little higher? Taken the kill shot if necessary?"
Santana aimed a kick at Ziggy's head, which he countered. His question reminded her of the interrogation that she had been submitted to a few weeks prior. A similarly worded line of questioning had been posed to her by her moderator. "Your partner was detained, she was being handled," Santana let loose a series of jabs and punches that Ziggy easily volleyed. "There was a gun pointing at her, a gun pointing at you. If you're in that situation again, would you take the shot?"
She landed a punch to the ribcage, and a kick to the shin, that Ziggy merely absorbed. "Are you asking as a friend, or as an agent?"
"Merely curious," Ziggy replied. "It's not something that's easy to do. Take a life."
He caught her off guard with a jab to the body, slipping in a hook as well. It disoriented her for a second or two as her head snapped around violently.
"Have you ever killed anyone?" The next blow Santana landed was a lot more forceful. It took Ziggy a little longer to recover from it, giving Santana time to get in a few more punches and kicks.
"Yes," Ziggy said to her surprise. "Three times." She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't seem inclined to do so. So when he did respond, it took her by surprise. "I was in a kill or be killed situation." Santana thought back to the moment in the warehouse, because it had been on her mind ever since she got back from Arizona.
Santana's legs were swept out from beneath her. Discipline and training was the only thing that prevented her from automatically rolling as soon as she landed, giving Ziggy her back; an instinctual and fatal move. "If it was an emergency situation, to save me or my partner's life, yes I would have taken the shot."
"Would you still?"
That question, in a more cut and dry form had been asked, too. Santana and Bryne's professional relationship was currently being evaluated because Paulson didn't believe that the partnership between them had remained intact after Hazel and Phil went into the program. There were other agents for Santana to work with, and she had worked with other agents in the past, it was just that Bryne had trained her, she worked the best with Bryne, she had always liked Bryne. But while their partnership was in question, they wouldn't be sent back out together, thus the need for the dinners.
It was Santana's turn to end up pinned down on the mat, and after a brief struggle to free herself from the hold Ziggy had on her, she tapped out when she felt her head start to swim from lack of blood flow. This time they decided to both stay down.
"So this new found aggression is about the job?"
Santana tilted her head in a non-committal gesture. She felt how sore her body was, and decided she could be a little more open. "I'm scared," she admitted. "I know I'm not supposed to be scared, but I am."
"Fear is a natural response. It's what keeps us alive. Do you think that you're the only one ever afraid?"
"No."
"Do you think that Bryne's never scared?"
"No. It's just that I'm supposed to be so tough, and I'm supposed to seem like I'm in control, and right now I feel like I lost that."
"Because you were shot?"
"I'm not really freaking out about getting shot as much as I thought I would, you know? In the back of my mind, I always knew that it could happen. And shit, it hurt like a bitch when it did. I guess the weird thing is that I'm more afraid of Quinn being told that I've died than I am of actually dying. If it were to happen, I've done my part in that equation. I'm done. I don't have to be there to deal with what that means. She would. I've never worried about that before. I've never had to worry about that before."
"So this is more about your personal life?"
Santana's brow furrowed as she tried to rationalize her thoughts. "I didn't think that it was. I thought it was about the job, and what went down, and about life in general, but I think I'm mostly just hiding from my wife."
Ziggy waited in that quiet manner of his, one where you didn't really feel that he was waiting for you to talk, but you knew that if you did, he would listen, and probably offer some Zen-like advice, but only if he felt like you needed to hear it. He stretched a little, showing off how incredibly limber he was.
Santana sat staring off at nothing. "We're not having sex-," She nipped slightly at her lip, playing with her lank, sweaty hair. "And I'm used to it fairly frequently, so all of this extra energy is me having the need to exercise it out."
"I know marriage kills sex, but isn't it too early in the marriage for you guys to not be having sex?" Ziggy joked.
"It was a personal choice."
"For how long?"
"How long will I have the need to exercise it out?"
"No, how long have you gone without sex?"
Santana gave him a slight smile. "It's been a few months, and we've still got a few more to go. We've fooled around, like I'm not a martyr, but we haven't done the actual act."
Ziggy didn't seem like he was particularly shocked by such a revelation, which Santana was intensely grateful for because everyone else acted like she announced the end of the world. It was nice having someone not acting like it was the only thing that Santana knew how to do. Part of her desire to keep going with this was that it made her feel good that Quinn was willing to wait for her. She hadn't had too many people in her past willing to do that. Even her and Brittany's relationships seemed to get strained when the sex wasn't frequent.
"Denying oneself pleasure allows for a more intimate examination of oneself," Ziggy tossed out casually bringing Santana away from her thoughts. Santana's eyes remained fixated on the mat she was sitting on. She thought about all of the people who had rested on it before her and wondered how often the gym actually washed them. The thought was slightly more depressing than the conversation at hand. "Self-examination allows us to become more whole human beings, which in turn makes us better partners to our partners." Ziggy gave her a placid look; she wondered if he knew how to get angry. "Is your desire to get more intimate with yourself or your wife?"
"It's both. Me and Quinn have always used sex as a means to not have to communicate with each other. I didn't say 'I love you' because I kissed it into her and expected her to understand that it was true without me having to say it. We would have an argument and have sex instead of saying 'I'm sorry'. When one of us wanted something from the other, instead of asking, we'd fuck. There were times when one of us wanted to confess our feelings, and the other would kiss and fuck the words away, which ultimately did us absolutely no good because later we'd wonder if the other cared about us as much as we cared for them, and it'd leave us angry because we felt alone in our feelings.
"People who aren't able to communicate with each other, relationships that don't have communication in them, they don't last. Communicating through sex is all fine and what not, but what happens when we stop having it down the line? Be it "Lesbian Bed Death" or just because it eventually tapers off, if we never learned how to actually communicate our love and appreciation for the other, what's going to hold us together?"
"Common interests and community property?" he joked.
"What if sex was our common interest? I mean it's not…me and Quinn are so alike it can be kind of scary, but we just…I just kind of threw us into this marriage thing, and we did it before we worked out the things that had hurt us in the past that had kept us from each other. Quinn's been in love with me since high school, and I've been in love with her for nearly 10 years, and it took us until we were already married before we could even say I love you to each other. We missed out on so much because after that one weekend all either of us let us be to the other was fuck buddies."
Ziggy nodded to himself. "I can understand wanting to fix that. It seems like you gave up sex to learn how to communicate with each other, yet you're not communicating these things to your wife."
"I am. I'm being open. I'm telling her I love her, and we're talking things out. I shared with her my heartbreak over what happened with my son. I talk to her about my job. I explain myself a lot more than I have in the past."
"But-,"
"But the big things that have been bothering me lately, it's not something I can talk to her about."
"Job related things?"
"No. That would be easy. It's more personal. Quinn's never been lucky in the love department, and her mom and dad did a number on her growing up, so she's insecure. Like really insecure. Far more than she lets on. If I told her what I'm feeling, no matter how I say it, I know she'll react badly. She won't hear anything after I tell her what's bothering me, and she won't remember anything before it, either. She'll internalize, she'll pull away, she'll beat and bottle herself up, and I'd probably lose her over it."
"What's so big that would do all that?"
Santana thought about going another round with Ziggy just so she wouldn't have to verbally say the thing that she'd been thinking about for so long. Speaking it out loud would mean that she actually believed it, and if that were the case, what was she supposed to do then?
"I don't think that getting married to Quinn was the right thing to do." She felt guilty even saying the words, as if their very utterance was a betrayal to her wife and best friend. She had stood by her wife's side and vowed to love her forever, she had told Quinn, how many times now, that she was the only woman for her, that she would be with her, and stand by her side, and support her, and cherish her? And she did. She really did. She loved Quinn. She was in love with Quinn. But she couldn't shake the feeling that, just like always, she had just powered through without properly thinking things through. The worst thing about it was that this wasn't even something she could talk to Quinn about. Quinn would only hear that Santana was doubting the marriage, and that would be it. Quinn would go to one of two poles, both equally damaging. She could ask for Quinn's reassurance on just about anything, just not this.
She looked over at Ziggy, halfway expecting to see a condemning look on his face, but she never got it. Ziggy didn't comment, either, just waited for her to continue.
"I guess the best way to explain how I'm feeling is to compare it to a toy that you fall in love with in January. You really want it, so you ask your parents to get it for you, and they tell you that if you're really good maybe Santa will bring it to you for Christmas. So you stay on your best behavior for the rest of the year, anxiously waiting for this thing that you're sure you want more than everything else, and finally Christmas comes, and you're so excited."
"Only she's not just that one gift that you wait for, she's every gift for the past 10 years, and suddenly it's in front of you and you can finally open it."
"Are you scared that when you 'open this gift' you're not going to get what you want, or that what you want isn't what you thought you did?"
"In high school I dated my best friend, and I thought she was everything, the world, but I was wrong. She was just my first love. After me and Quinn had sex for the first time, it was like things just clicked, like I suddenly had an answer to a prayer I didn't even realize I was praying, but even then I knew that I had to wait for it to fully be answered, that I couldn't have it right away. But instead of waiting patiently for Christmas, I…I don't know, peeked, I wasn't good. I didn't do what I was supposed to. Or maybe she's just the kind of gift that you're supposed to want, but you're not allowed to have.
"I just feel so wrong lately. Like I'm doing everything wrong. I don't know, Zig. People like me and Bryne aren't supposed to get married."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because being with her makes me happy, but being with me may cause her pain."
She looked at Zig in anticipation. "That's the funny thing about love. We love our partner so much that we declare that we would do anything for them, and wouldn't want to ever cause them pain, never taking into consideration that they feel exactly the same way about us. Do you know what I really think?"
"That's why I'm talking to you about this, all wise and knowing Yoda."
Ziggy seemed to be contemplating either some loose skin on his foot or the universe; it was often hard to tell with him. "I think that you suffered a major loss, two really-"
"Two?"
"Your son and the loss of your invincibility. So you have these two big losses, and in the face of that you're subconsciously trying to sabotage the other good things in your life by manifesting problems that aren't there because you have this mistaken belief that it won't hurt as much if you give something up before it can be taken away from you."
That unfortunately sounded too right on. Quinn wasn't the only one who knew how to self sabotage. "Or?"
"Or, like you said, you had to introduce your wife to this big, scary world and you feel bad about it, but you really shouldn't because it's a world that exists whether or not Quinn knows about it, and at least your wife has you to help her navigate it."
Ziggy picked at the skin on his exposed foot. "Honestly, though, I really think you're merely freaking out because in a few days you'll be turning 30, and you're just starting to realize that you've been on this earth for 3 decades, and that's inwardly freaking you out."
Santana was a bit taken aback by this unexpected prognosis because she hadn't thought about her upcoming birthday at all. "You think that all of this is just about me turning 30?" she questioned doubtfully.
"30 is a big life change. It really hits you that college is over and you can't turn back, you start having families, kids, if you've already had kids they're no longer in that baby stage, you don't drink and hang out as much, you find you like being at home more, you're more serious about your job. You're serious about life in general. It can be scary. So can the possibility of facing the unknown. But the universe knows how to take care of itself, and the sooner you learn that, the more at peace you get with life, the universe, and everything. My suggestion to you, smoke a fat one, hug your wife, and curl up in front of the fire, because yeah, things are about to change, but that's just an everyday thing."
He leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead to her surprise. "Oh, and happy birthday."