Hello, here come chapter 2 of "Tricks of Love" and it's from Dima POV and have to confess it.. it's really funny to write under his POV, because he is a funny and easy-going guy :-)

Hope you'll enjoy it and like Dima :-) Let me know as usual what you think and want to thank you all very much for how you all welcomed this new story, it's been fantastic and was overly joyful to read your comments and messages!

On the right is a picture of our Dmitri-Dima --> Alexander Ludwig

I dedicate this chapter to all JIMA fans and in particular to DarkBlades, because I know how much you like Dima, so hope you'll enjoy it! xox

P.S. READ THE AUTHOR'S CHIT-CHAT AT THE END!

Enjoy xox

DMITRI POV:   Still November, but few days after that rainy day

I was about to storm out of the house to avoid another fight with that piece of crap that for some damn twisted luck was my twin brother.

Man, how screwed up was that? It sucked to have as a twin brother a mental and sick bastard that enjoyed going around the city and getting in troubles every time. For crying out loud, he even had a damn tattoo with the name of the gang he joined, I mean man that really sucked.

This morning I was about to jump to the other side of the table and slam him down and punch his ridiculous smirking face, but I stopped when mum entered the kitchen and tried to talk to him and tried to ask him something. Right, she really couldn’t believe how much Anatoly has changed in these past years and she suffered very much.

I hated him for doing this to mum, cause she has always been sweet and loving with us, making sure we never missed anything and had all we needed and that did of course included her love and affection. My dad as well was a constant present father, but you know how fathers are, less mushy and more like, “Son, if you need me, I am here.” He wouldn’t come to us and hug and tell us how he loved us, like mum would do. That wasn’t him.

Dad had actually already given up on Anatoly and told him to move out once he had the diploma in his hands, once he turned nineteen, so even better than eighteen.

Twisted bastard of a twin brother.

I simply stood up from the chair fuming, grabbed my school bag and stormed out, walking to my sweetheart, which look shining red and fierce as always. I didn’t want to pain more mum with another fight.

Why he has changed so much in these past years?

I even had to change school, man. Can you believe it? Well, we would always fight with each other and get on one another throats, and the principal got so tired that threatened some big deal major pain in the ass. Therefore I decided it was time to join my best buddies and have some good time with them. Ha, that had been a very smart decision. Sure, but man, school was such a smartass stuck-up place and given how much I loved studying, my grades weren’t exactly brilliant.

Oh well, who cares about grades. My parents didn’t, so why should I? Ice-hockey was what mattered to me. You bet. School was boring and tedious and had to concentrate hard time sometime to not fall asleep. One teacher had already given up with me.

Anatoly and I used to be very close when we were kids, we used to share a special bound that only twins have and he was also closed to Sasha and my other mates, but then everything changed and he slowly became the fucked up sick bastard he is now. Sasha hated his guts now and last month we had such a huge big fight with his other pieces of crap friends that we almost send them to the hospital. My best friend stopped only because he was still my brother; Sasha really was my best friend and he was incredibly trustworthy and always ready and there for us, his best friends. He would never let us down. Never.

I groaned at the memory and slammed the door, jamming some Motley Crue in the CD player. Why the hell I had them anyway in my CD player? Oh right, Sasha left it here the other day. Uhm, they weren’t bad anyway. Actually quite hot, bet this would be a cool music to try something with a babe and have her on the right mood. Better remember it.

I think I actually had a date this weekend or not? Couldn’t remember, whatever, I’ll ask Derek or River, they’ll know for sure. It would be pointless to ask Hayden, because he was worse than I was when it came to keep something in mind and Sasha would have just barked something like “who gives a damn about that. Dating is annoying.”

Right.

The glacial bastard didn’t even have to ask for it, because he had girls literally going at his feet, but he couldn’t care less. Especially after his last “girlfriend”, whom I am not even sure you could call in that way, he said he was done. Well, she sure was a pain in the neck, didn’t like her at all.

Man, you don’t even need to date; just go out, have fun and that’s it. Who wants to get serious at eighteen? Are you mental? Nah, not for me.

I checked my reflection and arranged better my very blonde hair and flashed a smug smile, which apparently along with my huge and bulky body was a magnet for chicks. I spotted Derek and Hayden and immediately joined them, surprising them with a sudden jump.

“Hey man, how is today?” I hung my arms around their shoulders and grinned at them when Derek cursed at me.

“Dude, you better stop that before I punch your funny blonde face.” Dee was clearly joking; he never got mad or pissed at anything.

“As if you could that do without a care.” I chuckled.

He laughed and elbowed my side.

“Oh yeah, the all mighty beasts from the hockey club. Dude, seriously, get real. You know, also football has some huge bastards playing there.”

“Please, Derek, don’t you even try to compare us to them. Football sucks big time if compared to hockey.” Hayden snorted.

“Hayden is right.” I grinned.

Dee simply shook his head and said we were hopeless.

As we entered school, a girl with pretty face, short wavy red hair and a quite nice pair of curves smiled at me and winked. I returned the smile and stopped a moment to exchange a couple of words. She lingered her hand on my forearm, because I knew girls enjoyed to touch my muscles. Told you man my body was a magnet for chicks. I never really made huge effort in flirting, it was too much of a hassle and too complicated and romanticism sure wasn’t my best friend. I had even been slapped a couple of times from girls for being too “tactless”. I think sometimes Sasha was right about that, but I still liked to hoarse around.

She gave me her phone number and I grinned wider. I returned to my friends and then tried to remember whether she was my date. What was anyway her name again? I forgot it.

“She is not, Dima. Seriously, can’t you even remember your own dates? You’re hopeless.” Derek chuckled and punched my arm.

“Yo Dee, you just read my mind? Are you what, some under covered Jedi and you didn’t take the time to inform me? What a bad friend you are.” I laughed at his face and he punched me harder.

“Since when Jedi can read your mind? I lost something here…” Muttered Hayden, scratching his dark short hair.

“They can’t exactly read your mind, but they can trick it and make you do stuff.” I explained.

“Dude, don’t start with that…I mean, how old are you? Seven years old?”

“Hey, don’t touch “Star Wars”, it’s a masterpiece and we should all study that at school and not stupid and boring biology, history or whatever the hell we have to endure. We should all learn the way of the force.” I said smirking at him and fishing out a book.

They should anyway for sure consider suppressing biology and any sort of literature, if that wasn’t sci-fi. Uhm, that would be awesome.

“Sure mate and why is that you still can’t use such amazing skills to trick teachers and give you awesome grades?” He said back, leaning against the locker and looking in his usual smart and clever way.

That sucked, he was such a smartass that didn’t need to study much. Just like Sasha and River. The world was unfair, I’m telling you.

“I’m still working on it.” I defended myself, rolling my eyes.

“Still working on what?” River asked, coming from behind with Sasha, which looked still pissed and annoyed.

What crawled up his ass recently? This past week he had been restless and harsher than usual during practice. He almost knocked down two of our teammates, good for him they respected and worshipped him as a god, because let’s face it, he was one of the best at hockey and sure the best captain ever. I think he had something in his mind, but it wasn’t easy to get a single piece of information out of that glacial and hermetic beast.

“Blabbing about bulls.” Dee answered.

River chuckled and then told us to move our butts, since he didn’t want to get a note or anything for arriving late to class. Another smartass.

I was about to fall asleep, seriously. Why did I bother to choose this subject? I mean, I couldn’t care less about American literature; I wasn’t going to read any of those books. What was he talking about? Damned if I knew. Suddenly something start pocking my head, like wanting to tell me something. Uhm, did I forget something? Uhm…something, something…yeah, I forgot something, but what was that?

“Oh shit.” I had forgotten the bag in the car with all my hockey stuff.

“Mr. Denisov?” The teacher stopped in front of my desk and arched his brows, placing a hand on my desk. Man, what have I done now? “Are you by any chance experimenting a new controversial form of hermetic poetry?”

“Err…what?” What the hell was he talking about?

“Mr. Denisov, try to refrain from shouting aloud what is in your mind, if something is in there.” He looked down on me and I didn’t like that one bit, I went to talk back and say something really smug, but River kicked my shin and had me shut up.  He walked away and I snorted something under my breath.

When God finally decided to ring the bell and let us free, I ran to the car and fetched my bag and then ran back to Sasha’s locker. I saw him talking to Derek and a new guy, someone with white bleached hair, some black stuff on his eyes, skinny and ripped jeans, and a quite open and friendly smile. He seemed a cool guy and I think I saw him around school, but wasn’t sure. Wasn’t very good at remembering dudes, even if this one sure was someone out of the ordinary.

I greeted my buddy in Russian, as usual, and Dee snapped at us. Man, he should just suck it up and learn our smartass language.

“That’s Dmitri, Travis. Another beast from the hockey team, as you can see.” He playfully snorted and then smirked.

“Yeah, are they all that huge?” The white-haired guy asked, eyeing me and then back Sasha. I couldn’t help my laughing, this guy seemed really funny and blunt and I decided I liked him immediately.

“You got that right man. Nice to meet you, Travis?” I hope the name was correct, I really sucked at remembering names.

“Yeah, Travis. Same here.” He smiled and then shifted his eyes on Sasha, who looked back at him in quite a way and don’t know, but something was strange with my friend.

Someone jogged towards us and called for the guy with white hair and when he stepped in front of him, my eyes stopped at the person and saw a kid and man, he was cute.

I didn’t even think it was weird to say it, because I was used to River and the way he talked about guys and couldn’t care less if someone was gay, hetero, bi or transsexual; it didn’t make any difference to me and hated with all my heart homophobes, they were just pieces of junk. 

I mean, even someone as straight as me would notice how cute he looked, with those big chocolate eyes, messy hair and shy smile; he even had dimples while smiling. And he was so fluffy and timid, I mean, fluffy because he made me think of some cute puppy. I chuckled inside, thinking the guy reminded me of those sorts of little teddy bears in “Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi”. You know what I am talking about, right?

But the moment he spotted Sasha he froze on the spot and went suddenly pale and clearly in distress. Right, my friend had quite an effect on people here and it was actually quite amazing how that guy, Travis, could simply stand there and look completely relaxed.

“Your friend, dude?”

“It’s Travis. Travis, dude. Yeah, meet Jasper.” Travis turned to the kid and introduced us. “Jasper, that’s Derek and Aleksandr and … Dmitri?”

“Right there, man.” I grinned and waved to Jasper wanting to ease to atmosphere.

Honestly, he really seemed in some sort of painful tension and distress and that made me feel bad for him. He was clearly a shy and introvert person and bet standing here in front of Sasha didn’t help much. Plus my friend eyed them in such a glacial and dark way that made him cringe and pale even more.

“Uhm, err, ni-nice t-to m-meet ya.” He blurted under his breath.

Seriously, this kid was really something; I never met someone as shy as him and I couldn’t help but grinning wider and try hard to contain my laughing.

Travis then grabbed his sleeve and after greeting us, they walked away and so did we.

“Sasha, you scared the crap out of Jasper, you know?” I told him, nudging his side with the hockey stick.

“So what?” He grunted.

He was still in a bad mood.

“Mate, what the hell is wrong with you? You have been in this pissed off and annoyed mood for quite few days recently. Is everything ok?” I asked stopping our walk and studying his icy eyes. He shrugged.

“It’s nothing, Dima and everything is ok, don’t worry.” He simply said with a tone of voice that meant to not ask longer.

Well, he knew that if he needed me, I was there for him.

“Dude, did you just remember a name you have just heard? Are your Jedi skills actually improving?” Derek joked.

“What do you mean?”

“Dima, you never remember a name, you suck at that and you just remembered a name at first. We should really think about celebrating this day.” Dee kept making fun and I simply chuckled and punched his arm. Yeah, I sucked at remembering names.

“Oh big deal, my mind is improving. Anyway, the kid was cute and the other guy surely looked out of ordinary and quite attractive for a guy. You can’t simply forget two like them.”

Sasha halted and looked at me with a storming hard face. Err…did I say something wrong?

“You just said that you thought the little thing there is cute and Travis is attractive?” He asked, eyeing me strangely and quite menacing, and stressing the last words with harder tone of voice

“Man, chill down. You don’t need to be gay as River to notice the fact that Jasper was cute and shy. You honestly scared him to death.” My best friend rolled his eyes and muttered something in Russian.

“Whatever.” He took off and went ahead of us.

“What has crawled up his ass?” I asked to Derek.

“No idea, mate.” He said that, but saw he had a strange look, so I scowled at him and my friend exhaled. “Honestly, no idea. I think he has something in his mind, but don’t know what.”

Guess he was right. I said him bye and he went to basket practice, while I walked towards the school ice rink.

Now I couldn’t wait to go and play hockey. School was finally over and now it was time to skate with my friends and have fun. I thought for a moment again to that little kid and hoped he was already feeling better and more relaxed, he seemed someone easy to stress and tense, something that sure wasn’t easy with me, given my easy-going and laid-back nature.

I checked once more my skates and they were fine and tight, then pushed down the helmed and entered the ice rink, ready to kick some ass and try to foul Hayden.

Author's chit-chat:

How did you like Dima and his POV? How do you find him? I have fun writing under his POV, honestly :-D

Ok, quick note about the name in Russian. They have a specific way to shorten them and nickname. So,  for Dmitri is Dima and for Aleksandr/Alex is Sasha. Any questions, ask me!

Ok, next chapter will start the story our cute Jasper and funny Dima. The story will skip a couple of months from this last chapter...so it will start again in January, after what happened to Travis in "Fire and Ice" with Collins..

See you all next chapter!