Afterwards, Xander blamed it all on his new hormones.
Well, why not? If a 70-year-old Slayer who was proudly positive she had the cutest grandkids ever among all the Scoobies and the rest of the New Council nevertheless tried to use the PMS excuse for beating up an entire demon bar just because 'they looked at her funny', Xander thought that due to regaining his youth through a magic spell gave him an matching ridiculous justification for saying the absolutely wrong thing a couple of nights ago. And it'd been going so well between them earlier…
Before Xander transformed into a large dog for the rest of the night, he and Selina were then relaxing over a provided early dinner from the hotel restaurant in their Graycliff Hotel suite in the Bahamas, cheerfully talking about their day spent together diving in the clear Caribbean waters. It'd been nearly three decades before in his other life when Xander last had the opportunity to put on a scuba outfit and have fun like today. Prior to quitting this sport because of his age and increasing frailness, the Sunnydale native had gone diving around the world both for pleasure and on business while saving the world from the occasional underwater apocalypse.
Selina herself had dived for years for the same basic reasons as her companion, though in her case the 'business' she'd been occupied with often involved swimming through the sewers beneath art museums, castles with valuable historical artifacts, and diamond-filled jewelers as part of Catwoman's felonious plans. Between trading diving stories and trying to top each other, Selina soon abruptly stopped eating, fork frozen in mid-air above her plate while she stared in disbelief at a smirking Xander.
It'd taken just five words from him to throw Selina in such a tizzy: "The Nuestra Señora de Atocha."
Oh, she definitely knew what this was. Every single thief and treasure hunter in the world, whenever they had trouble sleeping, instead of counting sheep while trying to doze off would otherwise imagine the most priceless lost treasures out there to be found one day by some lucky searcher. At the very top of anyone's list was a certain Spanish sailing ship stuffed to the brim with precious minerals and gems from South American mines which had been sunk by a hurricane in the Florida Keys in 1622.
The Nuestra Señora de Atocha was partially salvaged back then until the primitive apparatus for cargo recovery used by the Spaniards failed to bring up anything more. Succeeding hurricanes and other storms soon covered the site, and the exact location was eventually forgotten. Despite, according to surviving copies of this specific ship's manifest, there were still missing close to 40 tons of gold and silver remaining inside the sunken ship.
"It was found, wasn't it?" whispered an awed Selina, at last dropping her fork with a clatter on the dining table.
Xander's grin grew even wider. "Yep, in 1985 by a guy named Mel Fisher who spent sixteen years looking for it. Even after a court case which went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, he kept most of the ship's loot, close to half a billion bucks."
Selina quivering in her chair appeared to be on the verge of an actual orgasm. She still managed to ask, "You wouldn't happen to know exactly where the Atocha is, maybe?"
"Even better," Xander casually tossed off after taking a nerve-wracking sip of his coffee. "They're still diving and recovering stuff from the place, well into the 21st century. It takes some influence and an escort's definitely required, but I got the chance to dive there and look around. Really a high point in my life which didn't involve in any way demons, vampires, magic-"
"Never mind that!" Selina shrieked. "Where is it?!"
Enjoying how much she was nearly going insane in her desperation to know this, Xander eventually took pity upon Selina and recited, "24 degrees 31.5 minutes north latitude, 82 degrees 20 minutes west longitude. Happy now?"
Instead of verbally answering him, Selina launched her body up from this woman's chair and then in a graceful arc through the air over the table directly towards Xander. This flight ended when Selina grabbed and held onto the man in an ecstatic hug as his own chair toppled over, sending them crashing to the hotel floor rug. Next, Selina proceeded to thoroughly ravage Xander in a sexual fashion while they were both lying there.
An hour or so later, a very relaxed Xander clad only in his thin tropical cotton bathrobe turned on the television set discreetly tucked away in a corner of the very expensive suite's sitting room. Physically changing the channels because tv remotes wouldn't be in wide use for a few more years after 1960, Xander's current good mood wasn't lessened the slightest by what was considered state-of-the-art electronics for a world two decades before his birth. He eventually found a news station and sat down on the couch facing the television.
In between his occasional bemusement about what he was watching (there were still cigarette commercials?) and the shock of actually hearing an announcement of a Massachusetts state senator's bid for the Democratic presidential candidacy (got to visit Dallas a few years from now), Xander still enjoyed listening to Selina gaily humming to herself behind him elsewhere in the suite's bedroom. In between the talking heads on the television, Xander also heard from back there the rustle of paper and a pen scratching onto sheets of these, all part of Selina at the bedroom desk putting down the initial notes of her strategy to turn them both into multi-millionaires.
At least in their hotel bed earlier he'd successfully persuaded Selina to privately offer the government a one-third cut of the treasure recovered from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha. She'd been quite willing to plunder the entire site and sell all the gold and silver from this on the black market without the authorities ever knowing about it, but Xander pointed out there was so much potential riches available that they could just pay off the IRS in full. Besides, no matter how hilarious it sounded, he could easily do without sharing a his-and-hers wanted poster with Selina.
It took close to a half-hour of Xander's 'special' tongue work to get her to agree to that. Blissfully soothed by how her entire lower body was tingling, Selina even went along with Xander proposing that sometime in the future they'd investigate to see if Mel Fisher existed in the DC universe. If so, a rather large check would be anonymously mailed to this startled treasure hunter. Fair was fair, Xander argued. The other guy had done all the hard parts in this Scooby's world, so he deserved some recompense even if that meant him never finding the Spanish ship here anytime in the future since it'd already be discovered by a pair of clandestine adventurers.
At that point, Selina was inspired enough to get out of their bed and look for a pen and paper to write down what she thought necessary to start things off in their search for the Nuestra Señora de Atocha. This was soon followed by Xander doing the same, except a loving caress of Selina's bathrobe-covered shoulder while she was at the bedroom desk produced only a distracted grunt, indicating she was busy for the moment. Accepting this, Xander headed for the television to watch something until they went to sleep together.
In fact, Xander felt his eyelids growing heavier as the news program ran into its final minutes. He abruptly shifted into full wakefulness at observing someone now presented on the tv screen that he'd never thought to see in real life who wasn't an actress best known for an alliterative comic book character. Staring in amazement how that genuine Amazon female dressed in a skin-tight colorful outfit and gliding through the air was built even better than Lynda Carter, Xander unthinkingly exclaimed out loud, "Damn, Skippy, but Wonder Woman's really got a helluva set of tits!"
From behind Xander, the noise of a woman's handwriting suddenly ceased.
From his position on the couch, Xander closed his eyes in weariness. He was a dead man, for sure. Going over in his head how to properly grovel his way out of this, Xander finally twisted around in his seat to look over the back part of the couch. This was done just in time for him to see how the bedroom door finished swinging closed silently, without even being slammed shut. Now, that proved to him exactly how mad Selina currently was and if he even knocked hopefully on the door to avert his just-decreed exile, she wouldn't bother to answer. And if he still dared at all to try to enter the bedroom with its occupant of a furious cat burglar with serious martial arts training and more than capable of holding her own against Batman for a time, Alexander LaVelle Harris was going to be very, very sorry…
Glumly moving his body to lie flat on his back there upon the couch, Xander crossed his arms over his chest, glowered up at the ceiling, and tried to ignore how the television set was presently showing nothing but snow after signing off the program. It appeared to be good for nothing now except as a night light. Which figured. All he needed next was to discover in the subsequent couple of minutes after turning into Ace the Bat-Hound was that this German shepherd had just contracted a serious case of mange.
A couple of days later, an extremely depressed Xander wearing only a damp bathing suit slouched himself prone on a chaise longue by the hotel pool. Ever since waking up late the next morning with an aching back on their suite couch, this man hadn't been able to find Selina. Entering with the same due care a bomb disposal expert would show dealing with a ticking blockbuster device, Xander found the bedroom totally empty but for a woman's clothes mostly still hanging in the closet and packed in the drawer. The French door leading to the room balcony had been open, but other than this, there was no sign of her.
Uh, wait-
Glancing at the bed, Xander felt his heart lift slightly at seeing a folded-over sheet of paper lying atop one of the pillows there. Reaching out, Xander picked this up and unfolded it to read the curt words set down in an angry feminine hand: Suite's paid for the rest of the week. Amuse yourself.
Instead, Xander spent the whole time since then searching throughout Nassau, the Bahamian capital, all without the slightest bit of luck. There weren't even any horrified police reports of someone working out their bad temper by stealing the entire country's gold reserves. Eventually, Xander went back to Graycliff Hotel and waited for Selina to show up there again. If she did, he was going to unreservedly tell her he was sorry.
"Mistah Harris! Mistah Alexandah Harris!"
Jolted out of his complete funk by that utterly unexpected declaration of his full name, Xander blinked at where a teenage skinny black kid dressed in a blue shirt and snow-white shorts plus an odd-looking flat cap with a bill was standing on the other side of the pool. Tentatively raising his hand, the kid caught sight of where Xander was doing that and bustled over there, pulling out from the leather pouch strapped diagonally across his chest a small envelope and offering this to a puzzled American.
After taking the envelope with both the hotel's name and his own typed on the front of this, Xander watched with equal bewilderment as the messenger kid scampered away with the same energy he'd shown in delivering a…telegram? Xander gawked at what he was holding, a honest-to-goodness Western Union telegram. For someone who'd only seen them in old movies, it was almost like receiving a pre-Civil War Pony Express message. He opened the envelope and extricated the small slip of paper inside.
In the usual terse style of these communications, Xander read: ACE BE AT AIRPORT 8 PM TONIGHT HANGAR 6 TO APOLOGIZE OR NOT STOP JULIE.
Xander let out a loud, whooshing sigh of relief. Both 'Ace' and 'Julie' meant the telegram had to be from nobody but Selina. Even if Bats back in Gotham somehow figured his missing German shepherd was in fact a magically transformed human and tracked Xander down, there was no possible way for this caped crusader to know in another dimension that Julie Newmar would become a legendary Catwoman on a campy television show dating from the mid-sixties. Except, of course, Xander blabbed about them all to a very amused lady, even when these actresses should've definitely known better (coughHalleBerrycough!).
So… She wanted him at the airport? To apologize? Sure! But… Xander frowned. Why there? Wasn't Selina coming back to the hotel? And why so late at night, just an hour before he'd be forced to change into a dog?
Sitting up on the chaise longue, Xander had to wince at some unwelcome guesses. From the sound of things, maybe they were going to have to leave in a real big hurry by plane with as few witnesses as possible. Come to think of it, Selina once mentioned she had her own pilot's license to cover all the bases if ever trapped by the police anywhere with no other means of escape except by air.
Okay, Xander nodded to himself. Make a casual trip over there right now, just to check things out at long range to know exactly where to go later on. Then come back here without mentioning to the hotel he'd soon be leaving, pack up their stuff, discreetly arrange for a rental car parked near the hotel, and sneak out for good a few hours after dark. A motor scooter would be even harder to see at night, but it'd be impossible for Xander to take along their suitcases with Selina's clothes crammed in there. He was already in enough trouble that this man wasn't going to risk mentioning to Selina he left behind her prized possessions, including all her shoes.
Once had been enough with Buffy. Even now after all his other injuries in his old body, being wished into another dimension, and magical transformations from dog to man and vice versa, Xander's left thumb still ached at random intervals.
Leaving behind the yawning watchman napping in his hut who'd waved him through the open gate without bothering at all to open his shut eyes at the car passing by with its driver, Xander had to shake his head in disbelief. The lack of security was astonishing for someone from his time, but then it'd be at least another decade here before terrorists and drug smugglers started making people nervous. Besides, he was at the opposite end from the main Nassau airport with its terminal closed for the night. Out here were only the private hangars for housing personal aircraft, with those buildings undoubtedly locked up tight against casual thievery.
Xander puttered in his rental to the furthest hangar of them all, pulling off the road running behind the hangars to park in the space between Hangar 6 and its nearby neighbor. He turned off the engine and lights, waiting in the car for his eyes to adjust to darkness. Half expecting Selina to join him at any second, Xander soon got out of the car when nothing of the sort happened.
Carefully closing the rental's door, Xander then eased his way towards the front of the hangar. He poked his head past the building corner, looking from side to side where concrete strips led ahead to the secondary runway built for smaller planes. Except, there wasn't any such aircraft in sight in the illumination cast by an attached lamp mounted directly over the hangar door.
Frowning, Xander glanced around at the deserted vicinity again. No plane, no Selina. Could she be inside the hangar? Was all this some sort of practical joke by her, making him track Catwoman down? He studied everything in view much more warily, all the paranoia a lifetime growing up in Sunnydale had given him telling Xander that there was something he was missing-
At the very dimmest edge of the pyramid of light produced by the hangar lamp, what looked like nothing else but a note was floating at around head level with the top portion of the note attached by a strip of Scotch tape to…something invisible.
A slack-jawed Xander lurched out from his hiding position against the hangar, out into the light. Wildly glancing around at every step, he continued heading towards at the note, right up to the point when this man walked directly into an unseeable object a few yards away from the note. Groaning with the unexpected agony running horizontally across his ribs, Xander stumbled back a few paces and rubbed at his chest. When the pain there died down a little, Xander held out his hands and cautiously inched forwards. He soon felt a metal edge, slightly curving, with a flat top and bottom, yet he still couldn't see any of it. Tracing with his fingertips what Xander soon realized to be the left wing of an extremely advanced jet, the man worked his way to where the note was attached. Making sure he wouldn't bash his head against anything hidden from view, Xander leaned forwards and squinted at what was written on the note barely discernible in the low light.
If you're so impressed with the owner of this plane, enjoy your little chat with her. She'll be showing up sometime soon. Should you actually talk your way out of this, though, I'll consider your punishment over and done with, and we can get busy finding our treasure. Just remember in the future to keep your damn mouth shut about other women here, no matter who they are. I'm definitely not going to share you in any way.
Kisses
S
Resting his cheek against what he thought was the side of the aircraft's canopy, Xander muttered under his breath, "Just be glad you didn't meet me when I was sixteen, Selina. I was even worse back then. Hell, I wouldn't have known how to act around someone with the chutzpah to steal Wonder Woman's invisible plane, set me up to be caught red-handed with this, and hole up close by to watch everything after that simply for the sheer fun of it."
Click.
That odd sound abruptly coming from behind Xander made him close his eyes in absolute resignation for a moment, before he opened them and turned around in a half circle while plastering a very sickly grin upon his visage.
Standing where she'd landed in her boot heels onto the concrete strip, Wonder Woman put her fists upon her hips and glared at that shamefaced male culprit about to receive in full his deserved chastisement. Right now, he'd better have a really good explanation as to why that idiot thought he could get away with helping himself to an Amazon princess's personal means of transportation!
Clearing his throat, Xander knew he'd have to surpass virtually all his previous fast-talking accomplishments in order to avoid being pummeled into unconsciousness and then taken into custody. On the other hand, this was nothing compared to one time conning the whole Cleveland Slayers House into believing Buffy's real first name was something else and at the celebratory party with the cake brought out getting them all to simultaneously sing 'Happy Birthday' ending with "…to you, dear Elizabeth!"
The look on the Buffster's face had been glorious.
Brightening up at such a savored memory, Xander grinned at a suddenly taken-aback Wonder Woman and he said-
Author's Note: The Graycliff Hotel at Nassau really exists, though around the time of this story it was a private residence in our dimension. Similarly, the Nuestra Señora de Atocha is a historical fact, including being famously discovered by Mel Fisher. Part of that sunken ship has yet to be found and salvaged by Fisher's heirs, with it thought to possess even more riches than what's already been recovered.