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Penny was just a weird person in general. She spent too much time at her job, and when she’d come visit Beat, she’d ramble on and on about whatever experiment she was doing. Beat never minded, though. She loved to hear Penny talk.
She’s not sure when she started to notice the changes. Penny’s eyes became more dilated, and she started getting frequent nosebleeds. With how much she was sniffling, Beat just assumed she was sick.
Beat realized she had assumed wrong when the paranoia started blending with too much overconfidence. Something deeper was going on with Penny.
“Are you...okay?” Beat asks one day while they’re sitting on the couch together.
Penny sniffles and wipes her nose. “I’m fine. Why? Am I acting weird?” She’s talking too fast.
“You seem sick,” Beat says. She gently puts her hand against Penny’s forehead then cheeks. “Geez, you’re burning up. How are you feeling?”
“Maybe I’m so hot because you’re so hot,” Penny mumbles, climbing into Beat’s lap. She cups her girlfriend’s face with her ice cold hands. “You’re gorgeous. D’ya know that?”
Beat blushes. “Stop. You’re sick. We can’t-,” she stutters, completely flustered.
“Okay,” Penny whispers, smiling and kissing Beat on the forehead. “Okay.”
Penny got weirder and more erratic as time went on. Her usual self was fading away, becoming less and less noticeable.
“I think my coworkers know what I’m doing,” Penny tells Beat one day. Her leg is bouncing rapidly. “They definitely know what I’m creating, and they definitely are going to get me for it.”
“What are you making?” Beat asks. “You keep telling me about this thing you’re making, but you refuse to tell me what it is!”
“I call it pencane. I made it. I am the pen. And the cane. I think. I don’t remember. Where was I going with this?”
Beat stares at her blankly, jaw partially dropped. “That is just straight up cocaine.”
“No?” Penny says, confused. “It’s pencane. I just told you that. Are you accusing me of lying? What do you think you know?”
“Oh my god. You’re snorting cocaine,” Beat mutters.
“Not just snorting it!” Penny replies happily, grinning. “I’m also smoking it.”
“That doesn’t make it any better!”
“But it’s a lot more fun,” she explains. “I have options. I can do whatever I want.”
“Penny, you fucking made cocaine. As in, the drug? The very, very illegal drug?” Beat tries to reason. Penny laughs, standing up to pace around Beat’s living room.
“But it’s fine. I like it. And other people do too,” Penny says.
“Are you selling the cocaine?”
“Pencane.”
“Whatever the fuck. Fine. Are you selling the pencane?” It was like talking to a genie with her.
“Yes.” Penny is far too cheerful for this.
“For how much?” Beat asks. Her curiosity always gets the better of her.
“Seventy bucks. For one,” Penny replies.
“One what? One cocaine?” There is no way Penny will say yes to that.
“One pencane, yes.” There is a way Penny will say yes to that.
“Do you mean a gram? Are you selling a gram of cocaine-”
“Pencane.”
“-for seventy dollars?”
Penny just stares at Beat, eyes wide and pupils dilated. She’s still pacing back and forth, except now instead of turning around once she reached the wall, she’d just walk backwards. It was a bit freaky.
“Yes. I’ve made so much money.” Penny stops for a brief second, doing math in her head. “A billion.” She was doing bad math in her head.
“No you absolutely have not,” Beat says.
“Two billion.”
“You’re too high for this conversation,” Beat mutters. “Go to bed. We can talk about this whenever you decide to wake up.”
“No. No sleeping,” Penny replies. “I’m too powerful and excited to sleep.”
“You look exhausted,” Beat argues.
Penny sighs and sits down on the couch. She leans her head against Beat's shoulder and sighs again.
“I love you,” she mumbles. “You know that, right?”
“I know. I love you too,” Beat replies, running her fingers through Penny’s tangled hair.
A moment later, Penny is snoring very loudly. Beat laughs, kisses her forehead, and lays her down on the couch. She looked so peaceful for someone who was completely and utterly coked out of their mind.
The next morning, Penny is back to somewhat normal, although she seems antsy. She’s constantly looking around and itching her arms.
“Okay, so you sell cocaine?” Beat clarifies.
“Pencane,” Penny corrects, but she still nods in confirmation.
“Do you seriously not know what cocaine is?” Beat asks. “Whatever. How much money have you made off of this?”
“A few thousand dollars,” she mutters. That was a lot more realistic than the billion she was insisting on last night.
“How much is a few? You’re giving me nothing here, Pen,” Beat says.
“I don’t know. Fifty thousand? Somewhere around there.”
Maybe Beat can get behind this whole creating and selling pencane thing.
“And no one else knows you’re doing this?” she asks. Penny nods. Her arm is bleeding from how much she’s been scratching it.
Beat pauses for a beat. On one hand, it is literally just cocaine. Penny has been creating her own version of cocaine and has been dipping into her own supply. On the other hand, fifty grand is a lot of money that she could definitely use. She hadn’t been able to find a full time job here yet, and her part time job only paid ten dollars an hour.
“Okay. And how are we selling these?”
“We?” Penny asks excitedly. “You mean you want to sell pencane with me? Like, for real? For real life?”
“I need money,” she replies with a shrug.
“Oh, and, uh, we use drones,” Penny answers.
“Drones?”
“Drones.”
“Alright, sure. Whatever. Jeffrey Bezos type shit or something,” Beat says. Penny tilts her head, confused.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind. Okay, and you make this all in your lab?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Penny mutters.
“You make a lot of cocaine.” Penny glances at her. “Sorry, pencane. I can't believe you don’t realize that this is coke.”
“Like the drink?”
Beat sighs. “Nevermind.”
They head over to Penny’s lab so Beat can see how she’s doing everything. Once they’re there, Beat notices that there’s no one here, and it seems like there hasn’t been anyone here in a long time.
“Are you sure you have coworkers and you’re not just making pencane by yourself?” Beat asks. This place has an extremely eery atmosphere, and it gives her goosebumps.
“When I’m not on pencane, there’s no one here, but the moment I am, they’re here. It’s like they know,” Penny explains, sounding very accusatory and suspicious. She squints her eyes and glances around.
Beat has nothing normal to say about any of this, so she just keeps her mouth shut and reaches for Penny’s hand.
“This is where I make everything,” Penny says, gesturing to her lab equipment. They were the only pieces of equipment that Beat had seen that weren’t completely dilapidated.
Beat is, like, ninety seven percent sure that when Penny smokes some crack pencane, she starts hallucinating colleagues. That’s a new level of insane, even for Penny.
“Where do you keep your drones?” Beat asks, ignoring the thought of Penny making up people by being high out of her mind. “And do you attach a box to them or?”
“Yeah, yeah, I attach a box to them. With strings. It’s a little gift box thing,” she explains. She grabs Beat’s hand and guides her to the stash of three dozen drones she has. “It’s been hard getting the pencane to people by myself, even though these are fully automated.”
“What happened to your actual job?” Beat starts looking through the papers on Penny’s desks. They’re full of strange math equations that she’s pretty sure don’t actually make sense. “Do you still have it?”
“Of course,” Penny assures her. “Yeah, no, I still work in my main lab. This is just my side gig. Pencane.”
“Right. Pencane.”
This was insane. There’s no way this is real, right? Pencane isn’t real, but cocaine definitely is.
“I have this computer right here where I get all the orders,” she continues. “Then I send the addresses to my drones and tie the pencane to them. The drones take it from there.”
“And why did you decide to make pencane?” Beat should not be asking this, but silence forbid a woman gets curious.
“I figured that I could make you love me more if I did,” Penny admits quietly. She nervously plays with her fingers, not meeting Beat’s eyes.
“What, making drugs or selling them?” Beat asks.
“Making something new! But when I tried this and felt super fucking awesome, I figured I’d make other people feel awesome. It turns out, people really like feeling really fucking awesome, so they keep buying!” she explains. “I just wanted to impress you.”
“By selling cocaine,” Beat adds.
“Pencane,” Penny corrects. Beat sighs.
“Pencane. Whatever. I’m, like, ninety nine percent sure that it’s the exact same thing,” she says. “Regardless, why would I be more attracted to a drug dealer? Also, why the fuck would you try it? What were you even trying to make?”
“You talk with your hands more when you’re like this,” Penny flirts.
“Wh-! Don’t change the subject!” Beat sputters, even though she’s red, flustered, and enjoying this.
“No, no. I like it. I like how expressive you are,” Penny continues. She gives Beat a once over then smiles. “You look so pretty when you’re like this.”
“Shut up!” Beat practically squeaks. “We’re in your drug empire room. Your meth lab.”
“Not meth,” she corrects. “Pencane.”
“Okay, so why do you know what meth is but not cocaine? Of all things, methamphetamine? Seriously? What’s up with that?” Beat questions incredulously, one hand on her hip.
“Well, meth is a drug that you smoke. Cocaine isn’t...real?” Penny sounds as confused as Beat, if not moreso.
“Ugh, nevermind! Whatever!” Beat shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose, eyes closed. “Do you get, like, notifications of when people order?”
Penny nods and turns on the computer. Immediately, they are bombarded with seven loud pings.
“Wow. Seven orders of pencane,” she says. “People must really like my invention!”
Beat closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to restrain herself from saying that this is literally just cocaine.
It’s fine. She’s fine.
This is completely normal girlfriend activities. Dealing drugs together.
Yup.
Penny clicks on the first order and starts ordering Beat around, telling her how to package the pencane and how to attach it to the drones. Beat has never been more attracted to her (and it’s because of being told what to do. Not the drug dealing.)
It’s honestly fun for her. She likes the monotony of doing the same thing four times over, with Penny doing the other three next to her. Penny then inputs the addresses into all of the orders, and they break out of a window to fly to their destinations.
“Couldn’t you just...open the window for them?” she suggests, staring at the shards on the ground.
Penny is staring at the glass shards, unblinking. “Huh. Yeah, maybe.”
“Oh, well. I know a guy.”
The guy is Treble who cannot, in fact, fix windows. But knowing him, he will sure as hell try!
“Did you at least have fun with me today?” Penny asks. She grabs Beat’s wrists and gently starts swaying them.
“Unfortunately,” Beat admits quietly. She pulls Penny closer to her since she’s so much taller and thus slightly cooler. Penny rests her head on Beat’s chest.
“You should try some with me some time,” she whispers. Beat hums in consideration. “I’ll take you out to dinner first.”
Beat sighs. “Maybe. But I don’t think I’m really a fan of cocaine,” she says. Then, “Sorry. Pencane. Whatever.”
Penny laughs. “Well, maybe you should let me try some cocaine. It seems really fun and cool,” she proposes, looking up at Beat with big, pleading eyes.
Beat smiles warmly and kisses her on the forehead, then caresses her cheek and moves hair out of her face.
“Absolutely the fuck not.”