Chapter Text
September 30, 2016
***|***|***|***
The Chedi Andermatt is the last thing on his bucket list.
It was Jensen’s favorite place to vacation on the planet. It’s the name of the hotel they stayed at for their very first getaway as a couple. Switzerland is the first ever country he visited outside the States, thanks to Jensen. This is also where Jensen got down on one knee before him and proposed.
Naturally, this is where the story must end.
He checks in on a Friday evening, having traveled for over twenty hours to get here. It wasn’t as easy to get here this time, probably because it’s the first time he’s come here by himself.
For one, there are no non-stop flights from Austin to Zurich, like there are from JFK. Then the first flight he’s on gets delayed, takes twelve hours instead of nine. Then he misses his connecting at Heathrow, and the stopover stretches from three to six hours. When he finally lands in Zurich, he doesn’t trust himself to drive down the winding mountain roads as well as Jensen could. So he waits for the right train to Lucerne, which takes another three hours.
He isn’t complaining though, too much. He’s just excited to have finally made it here. He’s been looking forward to this trip for ever, and the wait is going to be so worth it.
He doesn’t let the bell boy get his bag out of the cab, it’s just one duffel bag for God’s sake. He bounces into the warmth of the large and lavish lobby, and makes his way to the concierge desk. That is where he spots him.
“Misha, hey!” He calls out to the hotel manager.
A sharply-dressed and criminally handsome man looks up from his computer and his face quickly melts into a wide, alluring, grin.
“Ah, Jared, finally! Welcome back to the Chedi, my friend!”
“Thank you, buddy! So good to see you, it’s been a while.”
Jared contemplates hugging him but decides against it at the last minute. If Misha expects it, he hides it well. The man has always been closer to Jensen than to Jared anyway, surely he didn’t even notice.
“I’m glad you finally managed to get away for a weekend. We’ve missed you!”
“Aw,” Jared smirks. “You say that to all your returning customers, don’t ya?”
“No, no I don’t.”
Jared laughs him off, not believing him for a second. They chat for a while about his flight over, last night’s EPL game, renovations to the spa, and the snowfall this year which in Misha’s words, “has been especially bountiful, you will love the slopes this year, my friend!”
“Looking forward to it,” Jared thanks him again and they say their goodnights, promising to see each other soon.
He leaves feeling part impressed and also part puzzled. Misha didn’t ask him about Jensen at all.
***|***|***|***
He’s spending his entire life’s savings on this trip.
A Grand Deluxe suite here is exorbitantly, ridiculously, expensive, and when he steps inside he’s reminded precisely why. It’s an extravagant space, two times the size of his own apartment back in Austin – a luxurious bedroom and living area furnished in contemporary yellow lamps, chic alpine woods and supple brown leather, an en-suite bathroom as huge as the bedroom, and broad picture windows overlooking the majestic Gemsstock Mountain in the background.
Indulgence sure comes at a price. And for this very special weekend, it’s worth every Swiss franc.
Once inside the suite, he flops face down onto the bed with a tired grunt, ready to sleep forever. But there are things to be done first. Things he can’t wait to get done before his clock runs out.
Two days and three nights in paradise on earth. This is going to be awesome!
He buries his face into the Egyptian cotton sheets and breathes in deeply, pretending he can still smell Jensen’s cologne on them. Picking up the landline by the bedside, he thinks back to the wine Jensen had ordered the last time they were here. He squints, but for the life of him can’t remember the long, convoluted French name.
“Yeah, room service? Hello, grüezi… can you send up a bottle of red wine please? … What do you have that’s French? … Let’s start with the most expensive ones on the list… uh, no, that’s not it… Well, keep going down the list… no, no… keep going… come again? ... Uh, no I don’t think so… try stuff from like the early 2000s, at least I think it was from the… YES! That’s the one! …Yes please, merci, thank you very much.”
Jared stands up and stretches, then peels out of his travel-filthy clothes. Feels like the stench of airports, train stations and every form of public transport there is has seeped into him, and he needs to get rid of it yesterday.
He walks into the bathroom and turns the faucets in the expansive bathtub on. Water gushes out of the two taps torrentially and he stares at it for a while, wondering if it comes from the river Reuss that flows just north of this quaint little ski village. Probably, maybe.
He perches at the edge of the bathtub lost in thought, and loses track of time.
A stout knock on the door jolts him back to reality. He wraps a white towel low around his waist and it falls to like two inches above his ankles. Then he goes to let room service in with his wine.
The waiter is a young, dark-haired boy with beautifully symmetric Asian features. He couldn’t be a day past nineteen, at best. He greets Jared formally, and looks as disarmed as people usually do when confronted with Jared’s Texas-sized smile and bright, energetic greeting.
“Howdy!!”
"Er, good evening, Herr Padalecki."
"Call me Jared!"
The waiter ignores him completely. In the living room, he busies himself with opening the bottle, while Jared crouches beside the fireplace in wait. He watches the glowing embers intently, marveling how exquisite they look, crackling joyfully to their demise.
“Would you like me to add more kindling, sir?” The boy asks him politely, in an accent that’s typical to the German Swiss who speak French as a second language.
Jared looks up at him, almost surprised he’s still there. “Come again?”
“The fire, sir, would you like to keep it going?”
Jared turns back to the glass-encased hearth and swallows, his Adam’s apple undulating gently with the effort. “No, what’s the point. It’s… wasteful…”
Light from the flames sketches long, abstract silhouettes across his face, shields his eyes from the boy watching him curiously.
“All right then. Guet Nacht, Herr Padalecki,” the boy doesn’t wait for a response and quietly exits, leaving the guest to his evening.
“Thank you!” Jared remembers to call after him just as the door slides shut, not sure if he is heard.
The sound of overflowing water urges him to get back to what he was intending to do before. He fishes his iPhone out of the pocket of his discarded jeans and plugs it into the speaker dock. Browsing to that playlist he hasn’t looked at in years, he hits Play.
He ignores the fine crystal goblet the waiter brought up, and grabs the wine bottle by its neck. Then he walks back into the bathroom, sashaying to the jazz mix Jensen once put together especially for him… music that he sets free one last time to reverberate through the suite.
***|***|***|***
He goes skiing in the morning.
The tiny, cloistered village of Andermatt is nestled in the base of the Urseren valley. It is surrounded by the Alps laden with huge amounts of powder, generous for this time of the year. But winter hasn’t quite descended onto the valley just yet. Quaint cobbled streets and lush green landscapes sprinkled with the sun’s gold – these are some of Jared’s favorite sights, and he is grateful to be able to revisit them once more. But in truth, the slopes are what he really came for. Jensen wasn’t exactly the adventure sports type. So today the Gemsstock beckons and there is nobody around to stop Jared from getting on it.
He recalls the skiing trips his dad used to take him on when he was a kid. Driving eleven hours from Austin to the Taos valley in the winter – those trips are the fondest memories he has of his childhood. He remembers graduating slowly and steadily from the bunny slopes to the black runs under his father’s tutelage. He remembers how boisterously senior Padalecki would clap and cheer, how proud he seemed to be of Jared, even when he wiped out phenomenally. There’s a lesson in every failure, he would say, to learn it is a victory in and of itself.
“Atta boy, Jared! You got it, son, you got it…” he’d roar at the top of his lungs.
Then he’d casually turn to whoever was standing beside him and wiggle his bushy eyebrows visible just over his shades. “That’s my son, you know.”
Jared takes the cable car up to about the middle of the mountain, then a ski lift to get to the very top, just in time to catch the rising sun in all its magnificent glory. There, at three thousand meters above sea level, surrounded by nothing but tall white peaks glowing orange as far as the eye can see, Jared feels… safe.
Safer than he’s felt in a long while.
And once he pushes off, gathering momentum as he skids down the face of the mountain, Jared feels more connected to his father than he has in two decades. Almost as if Patrick is right there next to him, leaving an ethereal set of trails of his own in the snow, whispering words of encouragement, and of caution.
“Careful, Jared. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“It’s okay, Dad. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
***|***|***|***
After lunch, he decides a little golf is in order.
Golf is Jensen’s sport of choice. It’s clearly more his pace – relaxed, gentlemanly, and elegant just like Jensen himself. Jared thinks back to that time Jensen offered to teach him. The first thing they did – went shopping for his very own set of golf clubs. He remembers how they completely freaked the staff at Golfsmith out with their inability to keep their hands off each other. In the middle of the day at a store full of stuffy, middle-aged fathers of three…
Jared’s hands are around a nine iron and he’s tilting forward, feet set apart, butt jutting out invitingly.
“Jensen,” he mewls, blushing hotly as his boyfriend closes in from behind. The older man places his big hands on Jared’s narrow hips, pretending to help adjust his posture.
“Call me crazy but I don’t see how you fondling my ass will help fix my swing.”
“No? I’m sorry, I must not be doing it right then.”
Jensen leans in closer and blows softly into Jared’s ear, making him shiver. His thumbs move to slide closer to each other, and press down on the crease between Jared’s denim-covered cheeks. Jared can’t stop himself from pushing back into the devious hands wantonly.
“Oh, okay, yeah, I see it now...”
Jared smiles nostalgically, staring away into the unknown distance. His caddy assumes he’s just studying the lay of the land, getting ready for his next tee-off. Although what the strange American vacationing alone finds so amusing, the kid will never know.
Golf was also his mother’s sport, at least that’s what he’s been told. He never got to know her. Teeing off sometimes makes him feel like he’s got something in common with the woman who gave birth to him. The woman who also died giving birth to him, actually. She’s probably up there sitting in heaven sighing to herself, thinking, what a waste…
He isn’t smiling anymore.
“Herr Jared, sir? Is there a problem? Do you want to try another club?”
The caddy tries to catch his attention, for the third time or so, apparently. Jared looks down at the ruddy-faced teenager and shakes himself back into the now. He has two days and three nights left (well, technically one and a half days and one night) – no point wasting them being melancholy over things he cannot help.
“Hey, can I ask you a favor?” He hitches his bag of clubs onto his left shoulder even as his caddy stutters because technically that’s his job.
“Last time I was here, my idiot hog of a husband wouldn’t let me drive one of these.”
Jared doesn’t wait for permission and gets into the driver’s seat of the golf cart. Once again the caddy throws his hands up in the air, probably wondering what he’s being paid for.
“You don’t mind, do ya?”
***|***|***|***
For dinner, he decides to walk to Toutoune, the only Mediterranean restaurant in the village.
Shockingly, the maître’d, Kimberley, still remembers him and folds him into a hug. “Oh my God, Jared! It’s so nice to see you again!”
She’s American by birth, but has made a home here in this fairytale village with her Bolivian girlfriend of nine years. Jensen and Jared had instantly hit it off with her the first time they met. But then again, she’s probably this chatty with all her fellow Americans who come by the restaurant.
“Look at you! You’ve lost a little weight there, kiddo. Burning the candle on both ends, are we?”
Jared laughs and just shrugs, not sure what to tell her that wouldn’t be an outright lie.
She looks past him, left then right, expecting to see another tall Texan with piercing green eyes and a hand resting protectively in the small of Jared’s back.
“Will… you be dining alone tonight, dear?” she asks, keeping her smile neutral. But her curiosity and concern ring loud and clear.
Jared holds her hands in his, hoping the tremors don’t pass through his skin into hers. “I’m on my own now, Kim.”
“Oh, I’m so–”
“Hey, guess what? I’ve been dreaming about that lamb shoulder special for three years! Please tell me you still got it.”
“O-Of course! Come on in, sweetheart. I’ll have Antoine prepare it just for you.”
She leads him to a cozy table that lets him put his back against a wall. It’s also closer to the kitchen and farther from the crowd. Privacy is still precious to him, so glad she remembers that. The chef walks out a second later – a short, mousy looking man who looks thoroughly hassled until Jared waves both his hands exuberantly at him.
“Antoine! Mon ami!” Jared infuses all the cheer and over-the-top zealousness expected of him into his greeting.
“Monsieur Ackles! Hullo, hullo!” the chef comes over, shaking the tourist’s hand and craning his neck pretty high up to meet Jared’s eyes.
The words are out of his mouth before Kimberley can signal him, as she obviously tried to do. But Jared waves it off, remembering how Jensen had introduced them the first time they met Antoine.
Mr. and Mr. Ackles – It was meant to be a joke. (Even after they got married no names were changed legally.) Jared hadn’t pretended to mind, but that was then.
“It’s just Jared now, buddy,” he says, shrugging again with a nonchalance he’s been feigning for so long it’s almost believable now, almost.
And of course the lamb shoulder is absolutely delightful, more so than the last time even. Antoine and Kimberley’s not-so-subtly overflowing sympathies have seen to that.
The sun is on its way down by the time Jared leaves the restaurant. Instead of walking back to the hotel though, he detours north.
Jared has always been a runner. Having lived in Manhattan for a good part of his life, he’s used to walking or running pretty much everywhere. The first time they were here, it was in the summer. Across those four days, Jared ran up and down and across pretty much all of the village and the valley beyond. One trail in particular is his favorite – the one that leads up to the Schöllenen gorge. That’s where he is headed now.
Under the cover of the dark, he easily slips past the little security check post, and makes it to his favorite spot at the edge of the gorge. He leans over the tensile wires that form a flimsy protective barrier to look down. The steep granite walls of the ravine gleam dangerously in the full moon above. As does the wild river Reuss, furiously carving its way through a narrow tunnel towards Lake Lucerne. It’s really more jagged rocks than actual water down there. The radiant yellow lights decorating the village’s low-set skyline do not reach this far.
This spot is perfect in every way – secluded, shielded by a little shrubbery and a pile of rocks, completely silent (except for the water), and absolutely unremarkable in every which way. Nobody will run into him here.
Jared breathes deeply to still his heart that’s furiously hammering away against his rib cage.
“One more night, just one,” he whispers to an audience of one. It’ll soon be here before he knows it.
***|***|***|***
The next day passes in much the same way – re-capturing the experiences of some of Jensen’s favorite things, and some of his own as well.
He spends half the day skiing again. When he returns, sweating profusely, he heads straight to his booking at the spa, and gets himself pampered by the healing hands of a world-famous masseur called Armando.
He eats like a moose, a herd of moose actually. For every meal, he orders multiple cuisines at once: Korean barbecue with steak and sushi for lunch, Lebanese with Greek and Indian for dinner. He overdoses on chocolate and candy and truffle fries. He tries four different draught beers on the menu. And he plays Pearl Jam all day long in his suite, and on his headphones as he strolls around the hotel like a tourist with all the frigging time in the world.
Every inch of the Chedi is a work of art, from penthouse to the parking lot. Jensen would know, being an accomplished architect himself. Jared always suspected Jensen harbored a secret crush for Gathy, the architect of this hotel.
He wonders for the millionth time what Jensen ever saw in Jared to begin with. They had so unbelievably little in common. Maybe, if he’d been honest with Jensen, they wouldn’t have gotten past the second date, let alone have a committed relationship for fourteen months, followed by a marriage that lasted another two and a half years.
Nine weeks ago would have been their five-year wedding anniversary.
His left eye twitches and quickly he rubs it away. He decides it’s time to head back to the suite. The waiter from the night before walks past him. Jared immediately breaks out his grin along with his usual “Howdy!” leaving the kid flabbergasted once more, before heading upstairs.
He’s been composing the letter for weeks now, months if he’s being truly honest. He must have written forty drafts before settling on the one that sits on his desktop right now. In situations like these, it’s best to leave a handwritten and explicitly signed note – that much he knows from watching all those procedurals on TV that Jensen despised so much.
“Aww man, they doing NCIS re-runs again? And you’re watching again?!?”
“Oh shush. This one’s my favorite. It’s where Tony gets framed for killing and severing the legs off a woman and…”
“Can’t believe I’m in love with a dork like you.”
Jared remembers how they both froze for a couple minutes. He remembers how Jensen suddenly found DiNozzo’s air-drumming absolutely riveting. It was the first time one of them actually said the words out loud.
Besides, handwritten letters will never go out of style.
He uses the hotel’s fancy stationary to copy the note from his laptop, signs and dates it at the bottom. Then he leaves it on the study table in plain view, held down in place by his passport, phone, wallet, his box of emergency pills, and the sterling silver string he’s been wearing around his neck ever since he signed the papers, with his platinum wedding band threaded through it. He leaves his key card too.
He wouldn’t be returning to this place again.
Jared looks at his watch – it is one AM on a Monday morning. Well after sundown, late enough for the tourist crowd to have dispersed, and for the locals to have gone to bed. Jared shrugs into his jacket and boots and steps out of the suite.
It is time.
Time zone conversion always confuses the hell out of him but roughly speaking he knows the sun is about to go down, back in the States. The few people he knows – friends, co-workers, the last foster family he stayed with though he’s hardly in touch with most of them – they might be having dinner or relaxing in front of the TV right now.
In all likelihood, his presence will not be missed for another ten hours, not until he is expected to check out of the hotel, at least. And then who knows what the waiting period here is by law, before one can be declared missing. If he’s lucky, the currents will whisk him away, delaying discovery for a little while longer. He’s leaving all identification documents behind so that should buy him another few hours, if not days. He just wishes nobody gets disturbed by needless phone calls in the middle of the night. He remembers how grumpy Jensen used to get if he didn’t get his full eight hours’ worth of sleep in the night.
Of course, all that’s presuming anyone would even care.
“Black lenses, Jared, remember?” Dr. Beaver used to say. “You can take them off, son, but you must choose to do so.”
Jared lingers in the memory of the good doctor for a bit, then stubbornly pushes it away and heads out of the suite.
It’s a good thing he’s already done the reconnaissance around the gorge. He knows exactly how long the trek will take on foot, and exactly how many guards man the poorly resourced and wholly unnecessary security post, his own nefarious designs notwithstanding. Everything’s going according to plan. He sees it as a big, thrilling adventure, really. All this sneaking about, plotting and scheming.
“How very James Bond of me,” Jared mumbles in a fake English accent, smirking his way from one end of the corridor to the other.
He reaches the elevators, or lifts, as they call them here in Europe, and hits the down arrow. As he waits, he reviews Plan B once again. Not that he’d need it. By the time he gets to the gorge, it’d be almost two AM. The guards are kind of lax to begin with, no way are they even awake to spot Jared, let alone cause any trouble. But if by some miracle they do spot him, he could just keep going past them, pretend he’s out for a late night run because he can’t sleep, and head over to the Devil’s bridge not too far.
No security there, not to the best of his knowledge.
The elevator bell dings, and one of the cars opens. Jared steps in, hands digging into his pockets. He pulls his skull cap out and dons it, fixing his long, brown hair under it. The descent down the elevator shaft seems to take forever. Now that this moment is finally here, he can hardly wait to get to the other side of it.
The elevator stops two floors above the lobby level. Jared huffs softly, and looks up as the doors start to slide open. He wasn’t expecting to see anyone at this time of the night, but schools his face to greet whoever enters the car with one last smile. One last performance before the curtain comes down.
Jensen is standing outside.
Jared freezes.
The other man stands with his head bowed, completely engrossed in his phone. He looks up briefly when the doors open, goes back to reading something on his phone, then does a double-take when he realizes who the passenger inside the car is.
It’s obvious he wasn’t expecting to see Jared either.
He doesn’t make a move to board the car, and with his body turned away, glued to his spot, it doesn’t look like he ever intended to.
Jared’s mind races, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. Assuming he’s not hallucinating. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried that fourth draught beer after all. He blinks repeatedly, subtly shakes his head then narrows his eyes. And Jensen is still there, standing not twelve feet away.
If Jensen didn’t press the elevator buzzer, who did? Nobody else steps in to join Jared, in fact there is nobody else there. So why is Jensen standing here, at the end of the hall where folks only go to board a fucking elevator?
Maybe he pressed the Up button, intending to go up somewhere. Maybe back to his room. But if he is here on this level, maybe he has a room right here? Impossible, Jensen always books one of the penthouse suites. So maybe he came out for a stroll – like Jared did earlier that evening to admire the hotel’s renowned architecture. Except, Jensen already knows every nook and corner of this place, as if he’d designed it himself. And strolling at this hour in the night? That’s not like the Jensen he once knew. It doesn’t make sense. Unless the man is looking for something. Or… someone?
Can’t be.
And how come he is standing so precisely in Jared’s line of sight when there are like nine other cars he could have been standing in front of?
They continue to stare at each other, frozen in space and time, until the machine decides to intervene. The doors slide close as if in slow motion, but neither makes a move to stop them or even say anything. Jared stands numbly until the car banks on the ground floor and the doors open again. He walks out, entirely on auto-pilot, his feet well aware of their destination as they start to carry him towards the reception and the front gates beyond.
He has a plan. He must stick to it.
A plan that has been coming together for months, maybe even years. An idea that lay dormant in the recesses of his mind for as long as he can remember, awakened in spades over the course of the past two years, and solidified nine weeks ago. And once it did, there was no shaking it off.
Because it’s the right thing to do. Like Seneca said, a wise man lives as long as he ought, not as long as he can.
The Stoics argued that there is nothing inherently valuable about life, since its value comes from it being of a certain quality. David Hume also wrote that when an individual’s ability to be a productive member of the society is so severely undermined, that all they’re doing is consuming valuable resources and giving nothing back – that qualifies as a justified reason if there ever was one. Hardening his jaw, Jared picks up the pace and strides on into the dark night.
And no, no theological arguments can stand up to Hume’s irrefutable logic either. Human rights trump religious rights, far as he’s concerned. Like Schopenhauer said, there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person. Nietzsche, Herodotus, Thomas Szasz, Jean Améry, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius… everyone fucking agrees.
Of course Jared has thought this through! This is a rational decision, not an emotional one.
He’s done nothing but think for months and months and months. It’s what he does best, or worst, depending on who you ask. It used to annoy the hell out of Jensen, heck he even had a nickname for it – ‘Gilmore Girling’ he would call it – for all his endless analytical rants that would never stop and never go anywhere.
Except this time they did. This time he arrived at a decision, one he intends fully to follow through with.
And yet, here he finds himself, in this moment, watching his resolve flap uselessly like a plastic bag in the wind. His legs shake violently, refusing to carry him past the ‘safety’ of the village. Why is he hesitating now? Why is he unable to take that final leap, and put an end to his protracted misery?
Jared sighs and comes to a full halt mid-step. He didn’t even make it a mile past the hotel. And he knows exactly why.
Jensen is here. His ex-husband is here. In Switzerland. In Lucerne, in this very hotel.
What the fuck is he doing here?
***|***|***|***