Cousins, Rivals. A Wrestling Story Pt. 5 - The Final Fight for Alpha
I'm sorry this has taken literally years to write. It's ultimately based on real experiences, and some of this has taken a while to process. Because it is a true story I often get hung up on details instead of the action - this is the final entry and I have kept non-essential info to a minimum.
Just a quick note to say thanks to those fighters out there who have stuck with this saga over the years and sent such glowing praise / your own family stories, particularly rassler who encouraged me to finish this.
To make up for the delay, I have tried to relive ALL the action blow by blow. This is a very long story with several fights in it - it's designed for you to revisit. That said, if you do decide to read it all in one go it'll probably take you a couple of hours - so strap in.
The Story So Far (see previous blog entries)
As the two eldest grandsons in a hypermasculine Italian family, my cousin Tommaso and I have always shared a tension - namely, having to be the best at everything in the eyes of our grandfather. It didn't help the contest that we were almost identical - it's a family saying that we are more like twins than cousins. From toddler age we would get into scraps both in front of family and in private - lots of boys experience this growing up, right? Things started getting complicated several years later when Tommaso started dating a girl I'd liked at school. He knew it too. It reawoke our lifelong contest and the fight we had after that took a nastier edge, ending in an unexpected cockfight, and since then things have only escalated. We both started working out even more intensely than we did already. I slept with his girlfriend, Tom outed me as bi to the family. We clashed again more violently at the gym, closer to a fistfight, and the wider family became aware of our rift. Our dads got involved, and settled a dispute of their own privately in the storeroom of our restaurant. My younger brother and younger cousin had apparently faced off on the way home from school, scrapping in a field. It couldn't go on like this and we needed to settle the feud once and for all. The chance came when the whole family met back in Italy for our grandfather's 80th birthday...]
1 Challenge accepted
The summer of that year I was in the best shape of my life. I was single, so had the luxury and the drive to spend a couple hours every night in the gym. I'd had to buy a whole new wardrobe for the trip as everything had become embarrassingly tight. Of course, I had another motivation beyond getting beach-ready. Everytime I added a topless gym selfie to my Instagram story, I would check that Tom had clocked it. He'd reply to me with a matching pic in minutes. Growing up, he'd always had a slight edge in the abs department but now we were pretty close. Friends said we looked like Pietro Boselli knock-offs.
Time had passed and I hadn't seen Tom in the flesh in a while, though our messages were still laced with testosterone. Now, the whole family was flying back to our home town for this birthday bash. The summer pilgrimage to Italy used to be an annual thing, but we hadn't gone back for a number of years. The memory of having to share a hotel room, and, often, a tiny bed with Tom during our adolescence filled me with excitement, as did the thoughts of our many sweaty fights cut short by complaining relatives.
This gave me an idea. Before common sense intervened, I booked a small hotel room away from the rest of the family. The one bedroom flat was tiny - too small a cage to stable two alpha bulls. A perfect tinder box that would offer zero interruptions when things lit up.
I whatsapped Tom the link, swiftly followed by a middle finger emoji. After a while, he simply replied 'Perfect. Get used to sleeping on the floor.' Hilariously, the women in the family thought this shacking up was a sign we had reconciled. The men knew better, and while my father Jonas said nothing, he pushed me hard in the weights room during those last work outs before the flight.
2 Face to face
We flew separately but arrived pretty much at the same time. There was a tight schedule of daytime activities planned so this was no surprise. As the taxi pulled up to the apartment a felt a knot of excitement - and a rush of adrenaline when I clocked Tom alone for the first time since we had beaten the shit out of eachother in that gym locker room.
He looked pretty chilled, but bulging, as he waited for me by the door. I wasn't sure what to expect from all this, and as I paced up the path he gave nothing away, just maintained eye contact. As we came together he broke a kind of smile, "Hey! Just like old times huh". I gave a half nod and unlocked the door. I guess we were going to be pally for now - we did need to survive this week.
The moment we entered and I locked the door, Tom dropped the bags. I could feel his eyes on my back, sizing me up. The familiar Acqua di Parma cologne we both wore filled my nostrils. I tensed my back as much as I could and wondered how this was going to pan out. I turned around and found my doppelganger a mere foot away from my face. "I see you finally got a half decent body", he threw in casually, as he boxed me into the door and proceeded to feel up my arms, lightly squeeze my pecs. I gave him a mutual grope of the biceps, and he gave me a light smack to the abs. "Not bad cuz." I squeezed his shoulder - "You finally got traps!" He took a half step closer but I didn't back down - I'd be pressed against the door. Awkwardly, we found our hands on eachothers' waists, our pecs brushing through our shirts. From nowhere Tom gave me a full on hug, with just a mildly threatening squeeze. "This week is gonna be great".
I realised then this wasn't going to be a redneck wrassle. Like two prize lions, we showed a mutual respect, sizing eachother up. Oh, The Fight would come. But for now it was good to know we could shoot the shit. After all, this was our default setting growing up - best of friends, until we had to compete over something and all hell breaks loose.
That doesn't mean that small skirmishes didn't occur, under the veneer of a banter. That afternoon we decided to go for a run down the beach together, which of course turned into a neck and neck race. When we got back, we were heaving, all sweat, hair stuck our foreheads and hard nipples on show. We'd ran for so long that we were now late for the first family dinner. There was only one cube shower in the place, so we figured what the hell. It makes sense to jump in right?
We peeled off our tops but kept the shorts on. I took a moment to clock our pumped, sculpted torsos in the mirror before we crammed into the tiny cubicle. The last time we were in a space like this, Tom had his hands around my neck after I'd fucked his fiancé. The parallel wasn't lost on either of us as we lathered up. We were practically chest to chest and I couldn't resist bucking him into the tiles, only to find him standing firm and immovable, our abs coming together with a smacking sound.
My cock twitched to life and I got outta there before things heated up further.
It was a semi formal dinner and so we needed suits. Tom went to the bedroom to change and I towelled off in the bathroom, changing up into some briefs and a white pressed shirt that hugged me tightly. I lathered up my face to shave.
Tom re-entered in suit pants, topless. A silk tie was hanging around his thick neck. "That's my shirt dude." It was a fucking white slim fit muscle shirt, hardly unique.
"Can you prove it? It fits me perfectly" I laughed before going back to shaving.
Like lightning Tom slipped the tie around my neck, and pulled me back into him. He whispered "Always trying to take what's mine, you little shi-" but his breath was cut by my swift elbow to his abs. One, two. He didn't loosen, his grip, instead he applied a forearm around my throat. I could feel his semi pushing into my ass through the suit pants. We jostled wordlessly except for my choking gasps and Tom's grunts as I lay into his stomach as best I could. His other hand felt down my chest and returned some pounds of his own to my abs. I felt like I might pass out, so I drove a headbutt back into his nose, causing him to loosen his grip. I ran out of the room with him hot on my tail, and we squared off in the foyer area putting up fists and bobbing and weaving like boxers.
We socked a couple of blows to eachother without flinching, even though Tom had a bloody nose and it had spattered on my clean shirt. We met for a test of strength and neither could gain a vantage, our bodies vibrating with adrenaline as our hands pushed with all our might. I felt the back of my shirt start to rip, cleaved down the middle from the stress, but I didn't break our staredown. He psyched me out and released the grip, sweeping an arm through my legs and slamming me into the shag carpet. He was on top of me now and we had our hands around eachother's throats.
Just then, the phone rang. We both clocked it, and simultaneously released the hold. Family first.
It was 37 degrees and we were drenched from this short exchange. The prized shirt was ruined, but I covered it as best I could with a suit jacket.
A switch had flipped and we were temporarily mates again as we shared the elevator down to the lobby, but Tom was smirking at his small victory and our musk hung in the air. I checked us both in the mirror, suited and booted, like mafiosos - or future heads of the family. As the lift doors shut, it took everything I had not to jump him, slam him against the mirror and make him watch as I choked him out. But the family was waiting.
In the cab, I pressed my thigh into his and, as always, he was ready to meet it.
There were a few other taster clashes like this one as the week wore on - I'd jump him first thing in the morning and we'd bearhug on the bed, or he'd hold me under water a little too long as we jostled for 'fun' at a pool party. Topless sunbathing in our jeans became light grappling on the terracotta tiles. It was all a prelude to the real clash which would finally settle who was the real alpha male of our family generation.
3 An unexpected twist
Now anyone who's been on a long summer holiday will know that it blows your sex drive through the roof. There was no prospect of this during this trip, and it only added another edge to the testosterone fuelled apartment.
