Obviously...these shorter chapters are from Cecil's POV, in case that wasn't clear before. :) Danke.
Typically, I don't just get on with new people. The whole idea behind social anxiety is that those of us who have it have trouble dealing with strange people and strange places and strange situations. We prefer our comfort zones (because hey, they're called comfort zones for a reason). Generally, it takes us longer to warm up to people, even though we might seem polite and friendly from the start. As a selective mute, I don't like revealing my voice to people, and so I don't. Not even Greta heard me speak in the years that I spent in her house, and I really liked Greta.
In the beginning, I had always thought that I didn't like to talk to people just because I was shy and there was always pressure to speak and I found that to be very uncomfortable. There was also the fact that I did not wish to discuss my parent's death like so many of the therapists wanted me to. Later, I realised that my hesitation to speak did not come from undue social pressures—to a point. I just never wanted to talk because I never wanted to be seen as stupid.
I was a very smart child, and if I had been with a whole family or proper foster parents or adoptive parents, I might have been able to show someone that from the start. Most people weren't interested in intelligence unless you could spout it off verbally, and verbal wasn't really my thing. But because I didn't speak, I had the greater opportunity to observe the people around me. I could learn all kinds of things just from watching them. Later, I would discover that this is how Sherlock Holmes worked his magic; observation. I certainly didn't have the same level of ability he did, but if I wanted to know something about someone, I had to watch it in their body language and hear it in their voices. It's actually amazing how much you can learn when you choose to listen.
I was smart. And if it's one thing a smart person (no matter how old or young they are) dislikes, it's being told that you aren't smart or having someone interpret that you aren't smart. I've watched a lot of people over the course of my life, and a great majority of them spent their time babbling out all kinds of stupid things. I'd watch them and listen to the litany of idiocy spewing forth from between their lips and I'd wonder how they could think that way. At some point, I realised that this is why I preferred to keep my mouth shut. I didn't like talking to strangers, but I also didn't want anyone to interpret the things I said to be stupid, the way I did to so many. Judge not, lest ye be judged and all that… but hey, I had a lot more IQ points than a lot of people I came across.
All of that being said, I have no idea why I felt so comfortable around Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. I think Sherlock had sensed a sort of strange connection between the two of us from the very beginning; that's why he was drawn to me in the first place. I was an anomaly…an outlier on the bell curve and that was interesting to him. Likewise, I found that Sherlock was different than any other adult I had ever encountered before. In a completely inexplicable way, I found myself drawn to him and yearning for his affection and his comfort. I'd never felt emotions like that for any other adult save my parents before their accident. And John… well, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't immediately take a shine to the doctor in some way. John was charismatic and kind… I felt instantly close to him, like a child takes to his father. John would be a good father…was a good father…is a good father.
Needless to say, when John told me that another stranger was coming up to their flat (I'd never encountered so many strangers in such close proximity all at once before), I had panicked internally. But then Martha Hudson walked into 221 B and once again, I found myself completely enthralled with a stranger. It was a heady experience, if not a little discomforting at first. Mrs Hudson came in with four bowls of soup and John made four cups of tea and for the first time since my parent's death, I found myself in a family once more. Or at least…it felt like family.
And the soup was absolutely delicious.
Once more, I don't know much about selective mutism, and I'm neither psychologist nor counselor or anything of the sort. Everything I mention about the mutism or the social anxiety or related things is a product of my own personal dealings with social anxiety. Everyone handles those social pressures in different ways, and Cecil is...kind of a reflection of how I deal and how many of us deal.