It All Began With a Very Bad Day

Title: It All Began…
Author: AkumaNoAngel
Summary: Kinoru, and everyone else for that matter, thinks that he’s just an ordinary guy, until one bad day makes him think that there’s something special about him after all.
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Dominic X Kinoru
Feedback: Please send all comments and feedback to AkumaNoAngel@yahoo.com
Characters: Kinoru Ashman, Dominic, other’s as the story evolves.
Betas: I wish I had a beta...
Author’s notes: Hello everyone! I hope you like this first chapter and it wets your interest a little. I’ve always liked to write, and of course I love to read, so when I was having problems finding something to do, I decided to write this. As funny as it sounds, I always make up stories in my head when I’m trying to sleep. And this was one that I thought I should put onto paper. I might upload a couple others that I haven’t finished… maybe I’ll decide to!
Disclaimer: All of the characters and ideas for this story have been dreamed up by me. Any likeness to real or fictional characters is completely by mistake and a coincidence. If you would like to use this story on a different website, please ask me and give me full credit for it.


“It Began with a Very Bad Day.”
Chapter 1


Kinoru sighed and ran his slender fingers through his long hair, most of which had escaped the hurried ponytail and that he had placed it in earlier and the bandage that he had needed later. Groaning at the state of his hair and the aching feel of the myriad of bruises that covered his slender form, he let his forehead drop to the polished wooden door he was standing in front of and gently removed the rest of his hair from the less-then-effective hair restraint in defeat. He sighed again and took a few moments to try and comb the messy hair, the only thing he seemed to be able to control right now, before standing back from the door a little and reaching into his pockets to try and find his keys.

It was a particularly difficult task considering his right arm was in a sling and his keys were in his right pocket. It took him a few minutes to successfully pull his keys out without further injuring himself, but after he was able to hold the small bundle of keys in his hand he felt a slight sense of victory at having been able to accomplish the small task without disaster. And that, considering the state his body and mind were in, seemed like a little victory over the horrible day he had been having. Sighing again, Ki slowly opened his eyes. Nothing had gone right that day.

* * *

The entire mess had started even before he had awoken. He’d been dreaming that he was flying through a sea of clouds that looked like giant puffy cotton balls and the wind had been cold and crisp and flowing past him in an exhilarating way. He couldn’t remember very much, but he remembered looking out and suddenly seeing that the sun had started to set and with it the sky had been transformed into a rainbow of colors. Fiery reds blazed on the mountain where the sun was slowly sinking turning into a mellow yellow that shifted into greens the blues and even the tips of some of the clouds seemed a bit purple.

He had remembered how breathtaking it had all appeared to him at the time, still soaring amongst the vermillion clouds. But that, no that wasn’t the bad part, that had been wonderful and a full testament to the beauty and wonder of nature. The bad had started when he began to wonder what was below him and he had looked down expecting to see something equally wonderful. Only there had been something wonderful, instead there wasn’t anything! And when he had tried to fin the sun again there was nothing, and he was surrounded by nothing and then he had been falling, into nothing. Only the nothing had begun to pull at him, ripping and tearing his flesh. Hands that pulled at his hair and tongues that snaked around his body leaving a wet and slick trial that made his skin crawl. Then, everything had suddenly left him alone and he had realized that he had stopped. And he cried, sobbing into his own bleeding hands and the pain, the fear, and the humiliation that he had just suffered.

“Hush now child, you need not fear anymore. I am coming for you.” The voice was deep and resonated in the surrounding darkness; it left a cold fear in the pit of Kinoru’s stomach. Fearing what he might find, but unable to stop himself, Kinoru had looked up to find the speaker of the words. However, there had only been darkness, and just as suddenly as before, he had found himself dropping into the abyss. Only this time he knew there was sometime below, something that had caused him to scream in fear as he had plummeted.

That had been the terror that Kinoru had awoken into; he had awoken just before he had hit whatever it was that had been lying in wait for him. Woken up, though, sounds a bit gentle for what, in Kinoru’s mind, had been a generally not at all pleasant transition from nightmare into the sudden reality of morning. He had awoken screaming, sobbing and tearing at his blanket and sheet tangled body, desperately searching for a way out, a way to not fall into the terrifying portal to the unknown. After trashing for a few moments he had been able to untangle himself enough to fall off of his meter high bed to the hard wooden floor below him.

He had once again found himself breathless, only this time it had more do with the air being forced out of his body from the impact rather than the stunningly beautiful colorings of a sunset. All in all, not a pleasant transition in any way shape or form. This had all been made even more unpleasant by the fact that he had soon found that his alarm hadn’t gone off, and that he had woken up an hour late for work on top of having a horrible nightmare.

“SHIT!” had been his only words that entire morning.

It had taken Kinoru a record setting thirty minutes to prepare that morning for work, but even those few minutes had not gone smoothly. When he had gone to relieve himself in the bathroom the toilet had over flown, the shower had had no hot water, his shirt had had a strange red stain, his coffee had come out tasting like garlic, and his toast had burned beyond any attempts at redemption. It had been a very bad start for a day that, at that point, he had felt could only get better.

Of course that was before he was made 30 more minutes late because his car’s battery had decided to commit suicide and before he was $100 dollars poorer for the taxi ride that would normally have only taken 10 minutes, but then again, he had had to sit in traffic for 30 minutes; “sorry folks there’s been an accident but we’re working as fast as we can to get it cleared.” Needless to say he was very late to work. However, despite all that had happened in his morning, he was still trying to be optimistic; which, had he been a psychic, he’d have stopped the moment he had fallen out of bed that morning.

Kinoru’s chosen profession was in the business of arts and artifacts. Procuring, selling and trading as it were. Normally it was a profession that he greatly enjoyed; the hunt of those rare and obscure (and highly desired) pieces, the negotiations to see that nobody (least of all himself) got taken in for a ruse, and the satisfaction of being able to see and appreciate something that very few people outside of the rich and fabulous got to get their grubby fingers on, however bejeweled they that they were. It was one of the few things that Kinoru did that really gave him a sense of satisfaction; except, of course, on days like these, when even the toast comes out bad.

His day at work had started with a thorough tongue lashing from his boss for being three hours and some odd minutes late for work, it was then followed by a healthy panic due to a memo on his desk saying that, “Mail carrier Flight 2456 out of Cairo to New York was forced to land for an unspecified amount of time while it is being searched for terrorists. We’re very sorry as we know that you had a parcel, one Mysteries of the Babylon Gardens, that was to be given the highest priority. We will update you as to the status when we know more…” and the fact that the said purchaser of “one Mysteries of the Babylon Gardens” had been breathing down his neck for the last month. Problem after problem continued the entire day, a statuette wasn’t yet cleared from customs, a rare Minoan necklace was found to be a fake, a book was mishandled and the binding was broken, and still Kinoru clung to the hope that things could only get better.

That was when his boss had called him into his office. Kinoru had slowly made his way to the large polished oak doors that lead to his boss’ office, dragging his feet in and attempt to evade the inevitable and trying to slick back his hair and adjust his suit to make himself look, at least a little bit, somewhat presentable. When he had finally reached the doors and had raised his hand to knock, he’d suddenly felt unsure, intimidated and unable to swallow through the lump that had formed in his throat. Finally, knowing better then to keep the boss man waiting any longer then he already had, he had closed his pale blue eyes, taken a deep breath, and rapped carefully on the hard oak surface. Only what he had rapped on hadn’t been a surface, instead it had been warm to the touch and only a little firm. With a growing sense of dread and after a very indignant squeak form the “oak door” Kinoru opened his eyes and faced what was definitely not a door.

At that point Kinoru had known that he was having the worst day in his entire life. This day had already far outshined the day he’d told his parents that he was gay. And so it was, with weary resignation that he had faced his red-faced boss and had received yet another tongue lashing, one that unlike the other had been heard throughout the entire office. After the very belittling “talk” with his boss, he had been told that he was to accompany the man he had used as a door to his lawyers’ office to sign some papers and to take into custody a small statue of Athena. Kinoru had meekly nodded his acceptance of the task, regardless of whether or not he actually had a say in doing it, and followed the other man, his door, out of the building and into a shiny black limousine. Even the car ride had not gone well as Kinoru had again found himself in traffic, not to mention the silence inside the vehicle had been utterly… silent and oppressive and had made him squirm in his seat and made him feel like he should be trying to make some kind of attempt at conversation, “So a… Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“IF you hadn’t noticed Mr. Ashman, it’s raining, cold, and not at all “nice weather.”
“Oh…”

It was a fact that he was soon to become very familiar with. Surprisingly enough, Kinoru had been able to sign the paper work required of him and had picked up the statue of althea with no problem, and for a moment Kinoru had felt that things might actually be looking up. So without a dark cloud in his mind he had gotten into the seat next to the driver of the truck that would transport the statue to the warehouse where the statue was to wait until its\' buyer would be able to pick it up. And so it was that when Kinoru heard the screech of tires and the honk of a horn he had actually looked around to see what un-lucky bastard was getting into a car wreck now.

The wreck had been quick and terrifying and completely unexpected after that small lucid moment before. Later the doctors would tell him that a Ford truck had lost control while going 80 mp/h and impacted with the driver’s side of the small truck carrying him, the driver and the statue. Later they would had him a bottle of pills, instructions to change the bandage on his head, keep his fractured right arm elevated, and get plenty of rest. Which was all well and fine for later, but in those few moments after the crash while blood had been dripping in his eyes, pain had been exploding in a hundred places around his body, and he had been looking at the twisted and mutilated body of the driver; he had begun to wonder if this was it. The “it” where he died and everyone would say “that guy sure was having a bad day.” So when everything started to fade away and his vision started to turn black, he just accepted it and he closed his eyes as being time for “it.”

However, when a strong and commanding voice of a paramedic had told him to open them and “stay awake so we can get you out of here” he had, deciding in the back of his mind that “it” wouldn’t claim him today. It had only taken the paramedics and police 20 minutes to get him out of the wreckage of the truck and into the waiting ambulance. It had still felt like the longest 20 minutes in his entire life as the paramedics had poked and prodded him, stuck needles in his arms and checked his pulse and blood pressure, confirming him finally as “Stable.” It had all seemed just too surreal to him in those moments, and when the truck had suddenly just blown up due to leaking gas mixing with severed electrical wires… he hadn’t even jumped, he had just turned his head and waited for them to take him away. The next few hours had been spent in a bit of a daze, being poked and prodded some more, drugged and bandaged and sewed and set until he was finally cleared to go home. Finally freed, they had told him his instructions to care for himself and called him a cab to go home.

Still in something of a daze, due to the drugs, he had walked into his apartment complex. The doorman had given him a sympathetic look and an “anything I can help you with Mr. Ashmen?” which he had ignored. And he had waited for the elevator before someone had been kind enough to point out the sign that read “out of order”. And he had climber all six staircases with a white knuckled grip on the banister. And when he had reached his door, he had laid his fore head against it, sighed and undone his hair, pulled back from the door and dug out his keys with his left hand, and after slowly unlocking his door, he went inside.

“Hello Mr. Ashmen.”

TBC...