Author's Note: Trigger warning for panic attacks.

Now

Once the Director greenlit the Op, Max and Alec and ten or so of Manticore's personnel acting essentially as a stealth production crew headed back to the harbor with haste and prepared for their shoot.

On the way there, makeup and wardrobe created and applied head and neck wounds consistent with being near an explosion and left to drown if the explosion did not kill her first, and colored Max's skin slightly bluish. Her clothes were torn up and her arms and legs filled with scratches and lacerations.

Alec kept peeking at her, nearly imperceptible emotions flashing behind his eyes, and then he'd swerve his head the other direction to try to hide whatever it was her image provoked. He seemed to be scrutinizing the quality of the makeup, vetting their deception. It must have looked convincing, judging by the fact that he did not request the makeup person to make any adjustments.

"What is it?" she finally implored. "Are you okay?"

She immediately regretted asking when she recognized that stoic facade of his slide quickly between them.

"I'm always okay, Max."

Apparently, her question was the wrong thing to ask, because he didn't look at her once for the remainder of the ride. Maybe he thought he really was okay, but she was not fooled. She also knew when not to push, and instead let the sounds of their team and the road fill the van.

There was a thin strip of rocky shore on which she was set to sprawl herself. Alec helped arrange her at the rocked area, head tilted just so, arms twisted and tied behind her back with taut wire. A bit of red tinted corn syrup and liquid latex made it appear that the wire had cut into her skin as she tried to break free. Her clothes were full of scrappy tears that could have been effects of being within blast radius. She legitimately looked deceased, and Alec did not peer into her eyes even once. He was emotionless and mechanical.

After the quick photo shoot, they moved to the opposite end of the harbor from the exploded boat. Alec and Max waded in the freezing cold water just off camera and waited for the production manager to tell them when to go.

They were alone in the water, and their comms were one-way receivers, so there was no way anyone could hear her when she asked him, "you know you can tell me anything, right? Anything. And I will always listen."

She thought maybe he didn't believe her or was caught off guard by her sudden sincerity, because he was struck speechless. He just locked into her gaze and they floated together for one heavy moment.

She smiled as she joked, "I may not follow orders to a 'T,' and I may come across as brazen." Her chin dipped under the water for a second and she spat out the small mouthful of water. "But I will keep your secrets."

He watched her mouth longer than just a passing glance, and were they not about to create a performance that absolutely had to be perfect and precise, she might've thought he would let his guard down and tell her his innermost thoughts. But then he looked at her fake head wound again and cleared his throat. "Um, yeah, thanks."

He seemed minutely uncomfortable, so she changed the subject. "I didn't see our strike team on the way in. Did you?"

"No, they probably already offloaded that container and took it all back to base. Cant say my interest isn't piqued to see a container full of expensive weapons." Alec studied her face a moment, his lips slightly downturned as if he didn't like what he saw.

Max almost touched her face in response, but she really didn't want to mess up her makeup. "Does it look okay?"

"It's very realistic," he answered, looking away.

So suddenly, he's squeamish? She tried a different tactic. "Thanks for what you did back there with Lydecker."

His shoulders moved as he continued to keep himself afloat. "What do you mean?"

Max bowed her head to avoid his stare. She remembered how attuned her body felt under his, how his hands knew just where to touch her, how he sounded when he groaned. She felt like her face was turning beet red, but she met his eyes anyway. "With the disk. You took the blame for my mistake. I was the one who-"

"Who trusted me to do what I was supposed to do," he interrupted. He was quiet for a moment, glanced down to her lips and back to her eyes.

Max could see his freckles darken a little. He was thinking about their rendezvous in Eilers' study, too.

"But instead of placing that disk, we were kissing and we were undressing each other and you were pulling my hair, and I just..." he paused to take a breath, unable or unwilling to elaborate what else she'd done that distracted him. "I lost control and I lost my focus, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have violated your trust like that. I shouldn't have..." He huffed again, struggling to apologize for his lack of professionalism. "I didn't take the blame for your mistake, Max. I owned up to mine."

Now it was Max's turn to be stunned into silence. Did he really just say he thought it was his fault that neither of them could hide that surveillance disk? Because he was so distracted by their... performance?

Oh, Blue Lady, grant me some-

'Action,' the production manager said in their comms, interrupting Max's thoughts.

Max turned and Alec wrapped his arm around her torso. It was almost tightly possessive, and she wondered why. She went entirely lax and closed her eyes, completely trusting her handler. She laid her head on his chest as he quickly swam closer to the dock and got his feet under him. He scooped her up and laid her on the ground by the currently deserted launch ramp, and she kept her eyes closed to help Alec stay in character.

"Come on, Max, come back to me," he said, touching her face. She felt the scraps of his shirt touch her chest as he leaned down in an effort to show he was waiting for her to breathe. Then he crossed his hands over the center of her chest and began performing the fake CPR.

Max waited for him to get to thirty, knowing that the typical CPR included that mouth to mouth part where he'd blow air into her lungs. She anticipated his lips touching hers again and felt her chest heat up a little. She had to purposely keep holding her breath despite the fact that her instincts wanted her to curl her hands in his hair and press her body to his and kiss him. It was true, she longed for another one of his passionate kisses, but that's not what this would be. She opened her eyes at twenty-five, and saw something she did not expect.

Alec's face was riddled with anguish. He looked to be on the verge of tears, and that made no sense to her. The faraway camera would not be able to detect their facial expressions, so why was he about to break? Was he just now realizing he really could have died before? Or maybe this was some kind of trigger for him and he was experiencing some PTSD?

Hurriedly, Alec pinched her nose shut, pressed his mouth over hers, and breathed twice into her. It seemed as though he was actually trying to revive her, now. He was pumped full of adrenaline, breathing fast, and Max took a breath of her own as he started chest compressions again. He pressed so hard he could easily crack a rib. She coughed violently and sat up, taking deep breaths just as someone who'd been revived would do. She turned her back to where the news reporter's camera was and coughed more.

'Cut,' came the production manager's voice in their ears. The reporter and her team started to pack up, completely oblivious to what was happening in the other side.

Alec braced his hands at her jaw and looked into her eyes, bored into them as if making sure she was truly 'back.' Both his hands pushed away the chunks of hair that'd been stuck to her cheeks.

Goddamn, he's a good actor, she thought, her fingertips coming up to his forearms and sliding up to his hands. "I'm okay," she found herself saying reassuringly. "I'm okay."

But it was as if he couldn't hear her. He continued checking her pigment, which had started to come off from the water, and touched her bare knee. He frantically checked as many parts of her skin that he could see through the tears in her jeans, patted at her hips and ribs and shoulders on the way up to her head wound.

"Alec, I'm okay," she repeated.

Still, he seemed to be on a mission to catalogue all of her injuries, even though they were fake. He inspected her wrists, and she let him. The latex was peeling off and looked a little like burnt skin coming off, and he started to breathe a little faster.

"Alec," she tried again. "Come back to me. Alec, I'm fine," she urged.

In a kind of fugue, he reached out to touch her neck and came away with some of the latex. His eyes grew wider, horrified.

"I'm okay, Alec. Look in my eyes." She tried to lift his gaze to her eyes. "Try to cam down. Listen to my voice."

He was still having trouble. His eyes darted around and his breathing became shallower.

The initial plan had been to 'incapacitate' him and take off running, but she couldn't very well hit him now. He was having a panic attack and she couldn't just leave him there. She'd read about grounding techniques but had never had occasion to use them, until now.

"Try to focus on five things you can see," she began, using one technique that centered around using your senses and counting.

Alec looked at her head wound first.

"Five real things," she amended. And when he stammered for one thing, she turned his face toward the rising sun.

"The sun," he pushed out, still breathing heavily. They'd been in cold water and the sun's rising felt like a promise that everything would continue on, that he could handle whatever came next. "The trees... rocks..." he paused, not sure where to take it from there.

Max's brows lifted in sympathy. Her eyes drew his attention. They seemed expansive, and the chocolate of her irises felt rich and bottomless and warm.

"You can see my eyes are open and alert," she assured. She looked down to her chest as if instructing him to follow, and when he did, he felt his body temperature rising. "And my chest is moving."

Once she was satisfied he could see what she was showing him, Max continued. "List four things you can hear."

He felt his breath slow down a little. "Water... lapping at the ramp," he began. "Wind rustling the sails on these boats..."

"What else?"

He took a deep breath and spoke in a low tone. "I can hear you, your voice." Her voice moved over him, slow like honey.

"Enhance your hearing," she directed. "Can you hear my heartbeat?"

The blond spy closed his eyes and honed in on the woman in front of him. "Yes, I can hear your heartbeat." It was a little faster than usual, but it was steady.

Max relaxed a little; this seemed to be working. "Next, list three things you can smell."

He inhaled through his nose, mouth slightly agape. "Crisp air, the dirt under the rocks. I can smell your skin. It smells like seawater and... vanilla and cherries?"

He was right, she'd washed her hair two days ago with fragrant shampoo, but they'd been through so much since then, and she was surprised he could still smell it.

"Two things you can touch," she guided.

Opening his eyes, Alec reached out to her temple and pushed his thumb against the edge of her fake head wound. She could feel the latex trying to separate from her skin.

Softly, Max hooked her fingers on his hand and pulled it down to rest flatly over her heart. She pressed his hand there with hers and held it in place, her quickening heartbeat pulsing through both their palms, matching the staccato of their breath.

He didn't seem to be hyperventilating anymore, but his chest rose and fell as quick as hers. Just one more sense left.

"One thing you can taste," she nearly whispered. Heavy with depth, Alec's eyelids started to close, and Max leaned forward to push her lips against his.