#i couldn't make the handcuff in ep 13 make sense

[chalkrevelations]

So. Earlier in the week, I posted about Pete’s easy ability to get out of the ropes that he offers up to Vegas to bind him during their sex scene in Ep 12, and the way this makes every moment that he’s bound in that scene an explicit choice, and then I made kind of a throwaway comment at the end about how he also could have just as well gotten out of the handcuff Vegas put back on him at any time, because of the gd bolt cutters. Since then, I’ve seen in some of the tags and from other responses that not everyone is actually aware of the gd bolt cutters, which forced me to re-evaluate everything about two-thirds of Pete’s stay in the safehouse and particularly about the character and relationship dynamics between Vegas and Pete in the beginning of Ep 13, before Pete’s flight from the safehouse, back to the main family.

SO, the first thing I want you to do is go to Ep 13, at the 19:53 minute mark - just after Pete has KO’d Vegas in the safehouse and Vegas is down on the ground and Pete is getting ready to rifle through Vegas’s pockets literally for the handcuff key - and I want you to look at the low table directly behind Pete, within easy reach, and you’ll see the bolt cutters that Pete has ignored this entire time, including during this meltdown he’s just had. Now, go to Ep 12, at the 8:31 minute mark, when Vegas is getting ready to enter the room, and Pete’s leaning back against one side of the dresser on the far wall from the bed, reading the blood-type book. Look to the other side of the dresser, and you can see the low table is there, with the bolt cutters already just lying there - pre-hedgehog death, pre-Pete’s “escape” with the key, pre-Pete’s choice to return, pre-sex scene. Clearly, he could already reach those bolt cutters, if he’s already leaned up against the other side of the dresser, but he doesn’t. Ever. At any point. (At least that we see.) Now, go back to Ep 11, at oh, how about the 28:37 mark, when Pete has used the belt to pick his handcuffs and is trying to force open the locked door of the room, and look at that low table, where the bolt cutters are already lying, this early on in the game. At this same point, you also can see the oversized wrench mounted on that far wall, among other tools, that also remains in place, where Pete could later get to it at any time, which we know because it appears prominently between Vegas and Pete right in the middle of Pete’s Ep 13 meltdown, at the 18:50 mark.

I’m going to suggest that for most of Ep 11, Pete’s on a much shorter leash in that bedroom – his length of chain is kept a lot shorter, a lot of the time so short that all he can do is stand directly under where it’s rigged to the ceiling – and he can’t reach the bolt cutters, leading to his use of the belt to try to escape. What are those bolt cutters doing just lying around, I don’t know for sure – is it a threat (of more torture, to, say, cut off those clever fingers if Vegas gets angry and cruel enough)? Is it a tease, a means of escape left where Pete can see it but can’t (yet) reach it? At any rate, the bolt cutters have been there the whole time, and Vegas never moves them, even after Pete demonstrably has a much larger range of movement in the bedroom post-pill and -wound-bandaging near the end of Ep 11. Let me just repeat that – pre-hedgehog death, pre-Pete’s willing return, pre-sex, Vegas already has provided a means of escape to Pete at any time Pete wants to take it. And Pete doesn’t.

Submitted: Every moment Pete spends in that safehouse post wound-bandaging and pill kiss is a deliberate choice, every moment he spends handcuffed post-sex is a deliberate choice, just as every moment he spends bound while they have sex - when we’ve seen he’s literally trained in how to escape rope bonds - is a deliberate choice. You might make the argument that he’s too badly injured to try to escape and make it all the way back to the main family under his own power any earlier than he does, but 1) he tries to escape immediately after he’s beaten with the belt in Ep 11, 2) he tries to “escape” when he’s left with the key in Ep 12, 3) he “escapes” with the key after giving Vegas the beatdown in Ep 13. And at none of these points does he pay the blindest bit of notice to the bolt cutters that he could have used to escape in the second and third instances.

So, there’s a lot going on here, and I’m going to suggest that Pete’s decision to stay chained and handcuffed, even in Ep 13, has at least a couple of major components to it. I think first and foremost, Pete doesn’t want to escape, he wants Vegas to let him go. And he wants this not only because it’s proof of Vegas’s regard for him, proof that Vegas sees him as fully human, as an equal, as something more than a pet and a whipping boy, but also because it allows him to maintain some fiction that he was forced into this, that – as he tries to convince himself at the beginning of Ep 13 – he didn’t like it. That he needs to be freed, rather than that he’s able to make his own escape whenever he wants. This is why he prioritizes the key, twice, to unlock himself rather than going for the bolt cutters that are available 24-7 and would let him cut through his handcuffs and chains (and subsequently leave them useless if/when he comes back, unlike if he uses a key to unlock them). It allows him to duck his own agency in what’s happened, his own complicity in his desires and the ways he’s given into them with Vegas. In my previous post about the ropes, I talked about how, at no point was Pete able to fall back on some excuse of having to live with the consequences of a decision-point that he no longer had any agency over, because he continues to be able to get out of the ropes at any time. But he wants that kind of escape hatch when it comes to the handcuffs, he wants to be in a situation where he doesn’t have agency. But what do you do when the star of your rape fantasy roleplay insists that you consent, that you be complicit in doing the things that you’re trying to avoid responsibility for?

Because here’s the thing: Vegas demands explicit consent from Pete before they can have sex, by threatening to walk out and leave Pete and his blue balls to their own devices. And this happens as Pete tries to create this scenario where he can continue to avoid his own agency and responsibility and complicity in what’s about to happen. When Vegas is initially all up on him, you can see Pete close his eyes, and I will go to my grave believing that he’s mentally and emotionally preparing himself to be “ravished,” at that point, because then he didn’t choose it. It’s not his fault. But then Vegas makes him admit that he wants it. Vegas makes him choose. I don’t know if there was a similar conversation about the handcuff post-sex. We don’t see everything. But I have to wonder if where Vegas fucked up with the handcuff in Ep 13 was that he treated it as something that was implicitly consented to, the way it had been all along, with those bolt cutters in play, rather than demanding explicit consent for it, the way he did with the sex in Ep 12. Which, honestly, is stupid and tragic but kind of understandable, because this is what they’ve been doing all this time! Prior to this point, Vegas had to “accidentally” leave the key for Pete in order to get Pete to go away, when Vegas became aware that everything he loves DIES if it doesn’t LEAVE HIM. And at that point, it was either leave the key or throw rocks at Pete so he wouldn’t stay and die, because Pete was apparently too gd dumb to take the hint and use the bolt cutters.

At any rate, Vegas, for all his flaws, turns out to be pretty good at forcing communication when he wants to, and maybe he should do it more often, because at the point when he apparently goes back to operating on his understanding of implicit consent, Pete ends up having a complete meltdown, because he’s got himself all fucked up in his head about his wants and desires and the things he’s done about them. Add to this, that Vegas is willing to uncuff Pete when Pete demands it! But what he asks in return is an explicit promise – explicit consent, again – from Pete that Pete will stay with him, even without the handcuff. And what Vegas gets in return for that demand for explicit consent is decked, for any number of reasons, but I’m going to suggest that one of them is that Pete is NOT willing to take responsibility for that choice right at that particular moment.

And Vegas? From Vegas’s side of this, I have to wonder whether part of the reason the handcuff is so important to him is that some part of him (the part that has to be good at reading people to be able to be a good manipulator) understands that the handcuff provides Pete an excuse. Whether some part of Vegas understands that Pete allows himself to stay because of this fiction that he’s being forced to. But at any rate, I think that for Vegas, the handcuff is the same kind of security as your spouse wearing a wedding ring. That ring isn’t ACTUALLY going to keep them from walking out on you, and they could take it off at any time. But their desire to wear the ring is seen as symbolic of their desire to BE MARRIED to you. To Vegas, Pete wearing the handcuff – for whatever reason - is a sign of Pete’s desire to stay with Vegas, precisely because Vegas knows that Pete has the tools available to get that handcuff off and to leave at any time. (You didn’t think we were done with the gd bolt cutters, did you? ) Why does Vegas do this, provide this “out,” for Pete in the first place, even pre-hedgehog death, pre-Pete’s return, pre-sex? I can’t say for sure, but it becomes a viable option for Pete after Vegas finds him unconscious with festering wounds from a beating Vegas has delivered - after Vegas sees that Pete could very well die by Vegas’s own hand, if Vegas goes too far. From that point forward, from Vegas’s standpoint, Pete’s got the bolt cutters to get free whenever he wants. He’s also got a giant wrench to catch Vegas by surprise and brain him with, if wants to. Let’s be fair, here – post Ep-11, when Pete has a longer length of chain and can roam the entire room, Vegas is putting a TON of trust in Pete by giving him practically free rein in a room filled with all kinds of stuff that Pete could KILL Vegas with. Hell, Pete’s got enough play in those chains, at that point, that he could probably garrote Vegas with the handcuffs. All Pete would have to do is take Vegas by surprise coming in the door one time. And maybe he could escape, maybe he couldn’t, maybe there’s guards out there at some point, maybe there’s not, but what does Pete care, right? He’s actively goaded Vegas to kill him, repeatedly, he’s refused life-saving treatment, he clearly has some kind of death wish, so what does he care if any guards take him out trying to escape, as long as he’s already taken down Vegas? Only, Vegas doesn’t take any precautions to avoid this. If he doesn’t actually trust Pete not to do it, he’s at least making an incredible show of leaving himself vulnerable. But then, Vegas’s insecurities don’t have a lot to do with his own physical safety, they have to do with his emotional vulnerabilities. And so we get the handcuff, which goes back on in Ep 13 as a paradoxical symbol – for Vegas – that Pete wants to stay.