Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction. No profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing and online publication of this.

A/N: I'm not really sure where this came from, the first part just came as I sat down to write, and then the rest of it came today. I hope that you enjoy. Let me know...review.

"The story ends with a kiss. But don't let that fool you into thinking it's a happy story, because it isn't. Far from it. It's a story much like any other story, but it's best told from the end."

That's how Danny will start the story of him and Steve when he's old and gray and unable to see or hear clearly and his grandchildren are gathered 'round him to listen. He won't tell them about the first time he met Steve, or that he loathed the man - arrogant son of a bitch - on sight. It was an explosive beginning to be sure, filled with everything that makes for a good tale in which two people meet, hate each other on sight, and then fall hopelessly, even madly, in love. But for Danny, that isn't the true beginning.

He knows that's how Steve will start the story of how they met. Regaling their grandkids with harrowing stories of near death experiences and inevitably wowing them. He'll tell it straight, winking at Danny over the tops of their heads when he tells them of how their grand pop hauled off and decked him so hard that it made him see stars, and that he knew, deep down in his soul, that he and Danny had been destined to meet and to be something more than just frenemies, except he didn't know what they were destined to be until he'd almost lost Danny.

For Danny, the beginning starts when he and Steve are lying side-by-side in a hospital, barely clinging to life. Danny's deaf from a concussion blast that accompanied an explosion of a set of warehouses that the Five-0 team had been checking out sans backup.

Steve had been thrown into the ocean by the blast. Kono, who'd suffered a minor concussion as she'd been further away from the site of the blast, had fished him out and resuscitated him.

Danny'd landed atop a pile of wooden crates which had broken under the impact. Wooden splinters had littered his body, and he'd been skewered, right through his fifth and sixth ribs, by a sharp wooden plank. A stowaway splinter would give him years of aches and pain whenever the weather went wonky.

Chin, the least injured of the four of them, had found him. Kept him from bleeding out. Spoke to him about everything and nothing, and it had been a comfort, even though Danny couldn't hear a single word that Chin had spoken.

But, this is not how Danny will start the story of how he and Steven fell in love. He won't tell his grandchildren how, when the paramedics had arrived, he'd been dead in spite of Chin's heroic efforts. He won't tell them how Steven's heart had stopped en route to the hospital, or how their Auntie Kono had broken down in her cousin's arms, weeping, when they'd been told that the odds weren't in their teammates' favor. And, he won't tell them how the doctors had expected them to die before the sun started to rise on a new day.

No, that isn't where Danny will start their story. He'll start it at the end, when he and Steve had barely been clinging to life and the doctors had insisted that family be brought in to say their goodbyes.

He'll start it with being wakened by a kiss, like Sleeping Beauty, because Steven had somehow beaten the odds and had been the first to recover - ever the super SEAL, Danny's Prince Charming. And, Danny knows that Grace, even when she's grown to be as old as he is now, will like that.

Steve's whispered words of, "Danny, come back to me."

The man's broken, "Please."

The soft, yet firm press of lips against his. Warm, chapped and fixed to hovering, as though Steven had been attempting to breathe for him.

Steven's gasp of surprise when his eyes snap open, and Danny starts to breathe on his own. The knowledge that he'll never take hearing for granted ever again, fixed firmly in his mind as Danny realizes that he can hear. A lesson that he'll be sure to emphasize when he's telling this not quite fairytale to his grandkids.

The whispered wonder, "You did it; you came back to me..." as though Danny would not have listened to him and obeyed.

Danny's voice, hoarse and barely even there, so that Steve has to place his ear close to Danny's lips to hear. "Of course I did, you goon."

Steve's bark of laughter, the tears that fall unchecked down his cheeks, and the not so gentle kiss that takes Danny's breath away, are all a part of the beginning that is the end. The look in Steven's eyes when he pulls back, surrendering his mouth so that he can breathe again, was one that Danny hadn't seen in them before. Love.

That is where their story begins, with Danny playing the part of Sleeping Beauty. And, it was a kiss that woke him. But, it hadn't been an ordinary kiss of love, for Rachel, Kono, Grace, his mother, and his father, had all kissed him in turn. It had been Steven's kiss - one borne of desperation, and according to Steven, carefully suppressed feelings of love - which had broken the spell and taught Danny how to breathe on his own again.

He'll let Steve tell their grandkids the story of how they met, and then Danny will tell them about how it all began - the not so happily ever after that he and Steven are now living out. There'll be adventure, near death experiences, heartache, and, in the end, as it always should be, there'll be love. Which is why Danny likes to begin his tales at the end.

Reviews would be great.