Indecent Proposal
Fandom: Warcraft
Rating: T for language
Warning: Spoilers for several quests in Nessingwary's camp in Sholazar, lesbians, and implied sexual situations. If these offend you, please click the blue arrow.
Summary: A take on a quest in Sholazar Basin: Poor Purser Boulian doesn't know what she's in for when Chad contracts an adventurer to find his lost engagement ring. Femslash.

Being sent to Sholazar Basin as a direct request from Archmage Pentarus was an honor, in Alicia's opinion. She'd been questing at various areas and for various people across Northrend, and apparently her efforts had paid off in not just gold. A mage herself, she held the Dalaran scholars at a rather high esteem and was delighted that an archmage knew her name, much less sent her out at his bidding.

Which was why she was befuddled to arrive at Sholazar Basin only to find that her first paid mission was to find a lost engagement ring.

She stared at Chad, her contractor, in irritation. "You're telling me that you want me to somehow find this engagement ring somewhere in this entire basin, and return it to you just so you can propose to a woman that you followed out here for no other apparent reason than to marry?"

He stared back at her, wide-eyed. To her immense satisfaction, he went very red in the face. "Yes, well, please. I really want to marry her."

"You realize you could just ask her without the ring."

The man had the gall to look affronted. "I don't understand why you're being so difficult. I'll pay you eighteen gold."

She rolled her eyes and left with a parting shot, "I hope for your sake that I can sell the ring for more than that."

At least she could pick up other tasks in the meantime.

She killed wildlife left and right, slaughtered a few goblins—sheeped a few others—and collected up so much useless junk that she had to return to Nesingwary Base Camp without the ring in tow. Alicia pointedly ignored Chad's hopeful looks her way as she wandered over to the woman in charge of the "inn", or the largest tent in the camp. "I'd like to sell a few things."

The woman—with straight, glossy, auburn hair with sharp gray eyes, was both amazingly attractive and seemingly intelligent—nodded to her. "Let's see what you have."

They bartered for a while, and by the time they'd settled on prices, Alicia got the distinct impression she'd been taken advantage of. Instead of pitching a hissy-fit, she smiled and nodded to the woman. "Thank you for doing business with me. My bags are a lot lighter now." Care to weight me down again? Okay, the cheesy pick-up line wasn't appropriate, but Alicia could always entertain fantasies that this beautiful, strong woman was gay…or gay-for-Alicia. Right.

"No trouble at all. I'm the purser of the expedition so come to me if you need to make any exchanges. My name's Helen Boulian."

Alicia nearly choked on her own conjured strudel, all fantasies erupting into a puff of smoke. Helen shot her a startled look. "So you're the lucky woman," Alicia couldn't help but say. "Strudel?"

She excused herself and went back out to kill innocent wildlife. There was no way that Alicia was going to let that lazy lout Drostan beat her in the game challenge. She was a mage, for Jaina's sake, she didn't need a gun to kill something; she blew it apart with fire. And she sometimes pretended it helped with her sexual frustration.

When she finally got to Venture Company's dig site, she killed their leader and wandered back through the wastes she'd caused previously. Something golden caught her eye. Alicia made a beeline for a patch of upturned, bloody earth next to a singed corpse and bent down to brush it away from the object that she'd seen. "I'll be damned." It was the ring, single diamond, hard gold, and tacky as it was, it was what Chad had asked for. It must have fallen out of this cooked goblin's pocket. She sniffed it; yep, goblin-chops.

"What an unlucky girl," Alicia said, mounting her gryphon to fly back to camp.

Chad looked ready to embrace her for her find, but she sent him a glare that stayed him. She collected her rewards, sold a few more things to clueless Helen, and was on her way back out for some evening hunting. Eventually, she stopped to camp at Lakeside Landing.

It took a few more days before she was ready to turn in completed quests at Nesingwary's. She'd made a chest-load of money so far and was anticipating the returns she'd get for her ventures over the last few days. And, despite herself, a part of her was curious about Chad and Boulian's fate(s). Were they intertwined? Was there even a chance for the blooming romance under the watchful eye under Nessingwary's grizzled brow? Hardy-har-har, she told herself.

At first step into camp, she was quite unprepared to be pulled bodily from camp and back out into the jungle—by Helen Boulian herself, who did not appear to be a brushing bride.

"You found that ring, didn't you!" the purser cried.

"Um, yes. I take it I shouldn't say congratulations?"

Helen groaned and pressed her face into her hand. "I stole that ring and threw it overboard before our shipwreck. I cannot believe you found it!"

"I take it you don't want to marry Chad." Alicia paused at the revolted glare Helen sent her and lifted her hands in a pacifying gesture. "My mistake. There is a saying, 'Love is blind.'"

"Well, who would want to marry him? Besides the fact that I am gay and have told him repeatedly! He's a bigoted sexist and thinks that I 'just haven't found the right man'."

Wassit? Okay, that would have been a good piece of information to know at an earlier date. "So I take it saying 'no' hasn't worked."

"You take quite a few things," Helen replied in what seemed to be a softening of temper. "Yes, I have declined his invitations to marriage quite a few times. To top it all off, he continually tries to give me the same ring."

Alicia winced. "I'm sorry then. I had no idea."

"Would that have stopped you from giving it to him for gold had you known?" Helen asked knowingly.

It wasn't worth the effort to put up the façade. Alicia shrugged. "No use in pretending otherwise. Did he at least propose artfully?"

"No. He waited until we were all drinking heavily and asked me, as if my answer drunk would be any different." She paused. "Actually it was that awful brew you were passing out before you left."

"Yeah, okay, I really am sorry—about the ring and the alcohol. You could always leave Nesingwary and quest with me."

Alicia couldn't tell if Helen looked touched or amused. "As tempting an offer as that is, I get paid too well to want to leave it behind."

"I've made over one thousand gold in the last two days," Alicia countered. Helen's eyes went wide. "How is that possible?"

"I do a lot of things for a lot of people. Do you have any skills in combat?"

"I was trained as a paladin before I went into accounting. My old plate set is back at camp. Though I can't say I'm in your league with skill and killing ability."

With a smirk that smoothed away quickly, Alicia stepped forward and caught Helen's hand. She pressed a kiss to the back of it and said, "It would please me greatly if you would consider accompanying me on my ventures. I grow very lonely on my way, and you're so enchanting that I know I would never regret you coming with me. I think that if you gave me a chance, you would never regret it either—I would make sure of it, Miss Helen."

Helen's eyes had gone wide, and her face was caught in a blush. She looked both shocked, touched, and enchanted all at once. Alicia smiled gently at her as she held her gaze and turned her hand over, pressing a kiss to Helen's wrist. Helen let out a muffled gasp. "Say you will," Alicia murmured there. She lifted her eyes up to Helen, who now looked thoroughly seduced. "Say you'll marry me."

It only took a split second before Helen snatched her hand from Alicia's grasp and looked positively infuriated. "Fuck you!"

"I'm sorry," Alicia replied dishonestly. "I was just teasing, but I did mean it. I can't help it if I find you outrageously attractive. It also helps to know you and I are of similar persuasions. Plus, you're apparently a top-notch accountant."

Helen stopped her progress back to Nesingwary's. She glanced back at Alicia. "You're gay?"

"Gay as a blood elf."

And, to Alicia's delight, that was all it took.

Several years later, Alicia was disturbed to find a familiar face in the pub at Dalaran. Usually she didn't mind meeting old acquaintances, but this man was one she had no desire to speak to. Unfortunately, he saw her and recognized her. "Hi, you're that woman who found my engagement ring in Sholazar Basin a few years back."

With a dejected sigh, she sat down next to him. "How did that go?" she couldn't help but ask. If she had to talk to the idiot, then she might as well enjoy what she could.

Chad sighed forlornly. "She disappeared right after. I haven't heard of her at all since then. I hope she'd alright." Of, not from, the stalker.

"Mm, well..." She cast him a sidelong glance. "She turned you down, didn't she?"

He groaned. "Yes."

"Chad, buddy, while she was the woman for you, maybe you weren't the right man for her."

"I don't see how that's possible. It's not like she was seeing another man."

"There are plenty of other factors, some of which she might have mentioned." She made a show of looking at her (very, very expensive) pocket watch—anniversary gift—and started to get up. Helen was due to meet her any minute now, and as much as this meeting might amuse her for ages, she really didn't want her girlfriend to go paladin-crazy on her for letting it happen. After a few years with her, and Helen could sniff out her constructed "coincidences". As innocent as she was now, this definitely rang of something she'd put together for her own amusement. "I'd better go."

Just as she rose, Helen's strong voice came over her shoulder. Her plated hand gently closed over Alicia's cloth-bound arm. "Hey, you. Where are you going?"

There was a simultaneous pause as Helen glanced at Chad and Chad glanced at Helen. They stared at each other in shock before Chad lurched to his feet. "Oh, my God, Miss Boulian!"

Helen leveled an outraged stare at Alicia, who winced. "That's where I was going...away, so you wouldn't look at me like you wanted to rip me a new one."

"Miss Boulian, please—" To both of their shock, Chad was fumbling in his pocket. He pulled out a battered golden engagement ring and held it up beseechingly.

"Um," Helen said.

"Look, Chad, there's something to be said for tenacity, but you really should know when to quit."

"Stay out of this, you, you," Chad sputtered at Alicia, turning back to Helen—rich, intelligent, beautiful, powerful paladin Helen, whose one earring was worth more than that engagement ring—and demanded, "Marry me."

Helen's face turned to stone. If it weren't so scary, it'd be outrageously hot. "Chad, listen to me. I will never, under any circumstance, marry you. I'm gay—that means that I love women romantically, that I like to have sex with women, not men—and I'm going to marry Alicia within the month."

"Wha?" Chad gasped. Alicia managed to pull her jaw off the floor just before he turned a dumbfounded look to her. She offered him a smile and put her arm through Helen's. Helen said, "Don't follow me anywhere else. Just, please, go back to Goldshire and make your living there." They walked out, and Chad (mercifully) stayed in the pub.

"You're from Goldshire?"

"Not all of us are from lofty places like Theramore."

"We're getting married?"

Helen cast her a guilty look. She stopped and sighed. "With all the complaining I've done about Chad, I go and do something like that. I have been thinking about it for a while though, and I'd like to marry you. I don't ever want to be with someone else, and I don't ever want to not be with you, Alicia. What do you say?"

"I say that all the bad timing in the world couldn't keep me from saying 'yes'." She paused and touched Helen's chest piece on the belly. "But I would have thought I'd be the one asking."

"You took too long," Helen replied, in the height of irony.

-end-