First Love, First War, First Step |√|

Clever Manipulations

It was a beautiful day, a month after I turned sixteen, and Luke was once again in the green with me.

We were seated under the same tree where we had shared our first kiss almost seven months prior.  Luke was teasing my nose with a piece of grass while I laid on my back, staring up at the constantly changing clouds.

Just the night before, we had gone to Matthew's place, where we had discussed a few of the things that we were supposed to be working on during the next month.  I had the feeling that the young rebellion leader was starting to trust me even more, though there were still things he was hiding from me.

"I had an idea after I took you home yesterday," Luke said, startling me out of my musings as he set aside the piece of grass.

I turned on my side to face him.  Those cyan eyes were sparkling with a look of mischief that I had come to know well.

"Is this something that I'm not going to like, Luke?" I asked.

"You know how we've been talking about getting married after the Founding Laws have been taken care of?" He whispered after making sure no one was near enough to overhear us.  "I thought of a way that we could make it official before then."

I sighed.  "How do you propose to do that?  Enforcement has eyes everywhere, and you know that no one would even touch a document that has two people our age on it."

With a sly smile, he leaned over and muttered his whole plan into my ear.  I had to hand it to him; he had a good idea even though I doubted how we were going to account for all the variables.

"How can I help the two of you today?" The woman behind the counter smiled pleasantly at the two of us.

Luke and I were standing in the Cineres Registry later in the evening, about two hours before they closed.  We had timed it so that it was busy enough where the people involved in our plot would hardly remember us yet where it wasn't so busy that someone made a mistake.

"My sister has taken a dislike to my girlfriend, so I recruited one of her friends to freak her out.  We were wondering if you could draw us up a false marriage license," Luke said lightly, not hurrying his words.  "You understand it won't be real, but we want it to look as official as possible."

She looked towards me, and I gave her a shy smile before looking back towards the floor.

"You must have heard about that deception that Mr. What's-His-Name pulled on his whole house of invited guests!" She gushed, fluttering her eyelashes at Luke.  "Wasn't it simply brilliant?"

He nodded, and she saw that as her cue to continue.  "Of course, you want to do the same thing, only on a smaller scale.  I'll help you, sweetie, because I understand just how difficult young love is.  I'll even let the Officiator know that it's just for a joke, and he'll sign the certificate as a favor to me."

"Thank you so much," he said, accepting the piece of paper from her after we had slid our cards across the counter.  "My sister will much prefer my girlfriend after she sees this."

The woman smiled before fluttering her eyelashes again.  I realized that she was flirting with Luke, and I bit my lip to stop myself from calling her out on it.

We didn't even have to say anything to the Officiator despite what the lady seemed to think.  He barely glanced at the license before signing it and pushing it back at us.

After that, he leaned back in his chair and lectured us on our duties as a married couple.  Least to say, when Luke and I stumbled out of there an hour later, we were both blushing and quite embarrassed.