Author's note: Written on my first anniversary of getting to know DHMIS. The brief food and belly theme moment in the "Jobs" episode inspired me enough to come up wth a ficlet. This time no fishy dish goes to waste; Red gets fed, and his new secretary Miss Fax gets to hear even more voices she had no idea he can communicate with. She's a machine and knows very little about living magical creature's anatomy, please forgive her that.

"…Don't get me wrong," Miss Fax Machine finally confesses, having praised Red's unexpected scream at the end of a phone call. "It's just been… myself and the Trash Bin here, no one else, for days. There's only so much the Bin can do. Open the window, or the door, when it gets too quiet in here, but not take me off the table. I started to really miss hearing more voices."

"You did her a big favor, sir!" Mr. Trash Bin's face breaks into a flattering grin.

"You're, erm… Welcome, I guess?" Red reaches to scratch the back of his neck, and all of a sudden, his paw meets — a shirt collar? A… blazer collar? Just a couple minutes ago he had but his own fleecy hide on. A glance below leaves no doubts — formerly bare legs are covered in a dignified way with tailored trousers, and yes, there's undoubtedly a white shirt over his–

Grooooaaaaaargl…

"…Ah," nods Red, taking a quick glance at the clock (oh come on, like there's time for listening to you rumble now!). "I– I think I'll better go? It's lunch time and all that…"

"You can talk with your mouth closed?!" Looks like Miss Fax's eyes grew three times bigger. "Looks like… I got it, okay, I got it: you said you need a refill. A refill, yes!" She corrects herself. "That is- f–od! You don't even have to go get your lunch. We'll bring it right to your desk!"

And so she does, pulling out of nowhere what she thinks would be a haute cousine dish to the mop monster's taste: salmon with asparagus, hollandaise sauce and…

"…Diamonds?" A flabbergasted Red lacks words: the fish looks delicious, smells beyond any praises, but how he's to say that diamonds may plain hurt his gums and break all his fangs without his lovely assistant taking offense? Yet somehow he utters, "How does one even eat diamonds?"

"Really?" Miss Fax doesn't even seem all that phased. "All right, we always can replace it with something else…" She reaches to throw the dish off the desk, but — "sssh– wait–" — a fleecy paw lays atop her gloved hand.

"…we always can just pick them out," explains the patient Red, pulls an empty ashtray with "BOSS" engraved on its side to the plate and, not even caring about his paw getting in the sauce, gets down to business, one by one. With an understanding "Ah–", Miss Fax joins him, her much thinner fingers delicately picking out the smaller gems, while Red's mitten paw barely getting out five bigger ones.

"…'Fraid I have no tissue," admits Red, once all the diamonds — some still covered with sauce, but who cares — are in the ashtray. "So if you don't mind…"

The Trash Bin utters an "ack" of surprise from his corner, but only because he haven't yet seen any bosses with tongues that long in his life. Sure, surprises from a boss who's a monster are inevitable, but a tongue as long as Bin's own arm that just sticks out of Mr. Red's mane all of a sudden and cleans both his own paw and Miss Fax's hand in one lick?

"…The hollandaise's finger-licking good," concludes Red finally. "And paw-licking, I admit–"

A slightly more irritated grrroooarl interrupts him.

"…ah yeah, yeah," the mop monster nods. "You can't wait till we get to taste the rest, I got it."

Miss Fax takes notice of the hint of warmth in his voice. It almost seems like another, slightly more impatient being sat inside of her new boss – why else he addresses it so warmly and even runs a paw over it, as if calming down a living thing. Of course he has to eat — eat and not get distracted to some silly diamonds, however precious they look. To the very last bit of asparagus she can't quite figure out whether he eats or feeds this unknown creature, only sees that he truly savors her food.

"…Simply delicious." Red finally sits back — white crisp shirt in an inch from Miss Fax's reach — and lets out a contented sigh. "My compliments to the cook. Or should I say, assistant?"

"Anything will do," chuckles Miss Fax. "You've been feeding it with such care… I mean, may I–"

Red expects anything but her resting a hand on his shirt-clad belly and whispering to it, "Hello…" Did she really just mistake his hunger pang for some other voice? But a gentle "Didn't mean to have you wait; don't get angry, please…" leaves no doubts. And even less he expects her to — rest her own headset onto it and ask, "Would you like to talk to me?"

Miss Fax expects anything but a sudden wave of many different voices to rush over her dynamic. Large pearls tumbling about — or, are they small bubbles popping? Growls, similar to the one she heard twice — some being higher-pitched, some lower; what, is there several of them in there; was it enough food for them all? One particularly sudden and creaky growl almost makes her drop the headset, but almost immediately shifts to just peaceful gurgles, like the ones she sometimes heard coming from a water cooler, and — even made the fuzzy surface under the crisp white slightly bulge out into her headset, as if rubbing against it? So, whatever is in there, it's — friendly?

"But…" escapes Miss Fax's lips at last. "…But just– whose are all these voices? You don't look like a type to carry a whole crowd inside y–"

(Ah, that.) "Still mine," admits a slightly amused Red. "Voices of whatever I'm made of. And you know what? They were saying thanks." Not waiting till his assistant recovers from her surprise, he himself takes her headset into his paw, resting it on his chest. "And by the way? This one would like to do the same."

Yes, indeed, realizes Miss Fax as a quiet, living warm beat hits her dynamic, thnk thnk, thnk thnk, thnk thnk. And prints out a picture of a beating heart, signed "lovely".

October 2022