paperwork, pride and coffee (thoth)

Emil actually made a face at that. Cute? It wasn't cute. It was just... frustrating. Frustrating that years of therapy had put only the slightest dent in it. Of course he had improved, because when he'd first been rescued he hadn't said a word for months, and now he could manage bits here and there, but he didn't think he was ever going to be anything even close to talkative. Maybe if he was lucky he'd one day get to the point of managing greetings.

"Just talking." He admitted. Writing? Fine. Typing? Fine. Expressing himself physically? Fine. Talking was where the hell was, and he let out a little sigh as she stuck out her tongue, retrieving his lunch with practiced motions. Today was a sandwich, as it commonly was, although he'd mixed it up with turkey rather than chicken. He fished it out of the bag, smoothing it out and setting the sandwich on top. Maybe if he got a notebook? Only that was awkward for reasons totally unrelated to him talking - writing stuff down and making someone read what he was writing was just awkward. He supposed it was useful in extreme situations, but he couldn't imagine a day to day conversation with someone via notebooks. Thankfully, the woman seemed fairly talkative, which helped carry the conversation in ways he did poorly at.

Lots of people who were shy or had other similar issues were unaware of it. Emil hadn't always struggled with it, so he was very aware of his social issues. He rather desperately wanted to just talk, to just speak his mind and not have to worry. But it was like an arachnophobic looking at a spider - no matter how much they wanted to be not afraid, the brain didn't work like that.

He actually jumped as she snapped back upright, staring at her with wide eyes. She was certainly full of energy, and seemed to show no signs of being turned away by his lack of speech.

That said, her idea was... actually good. Well, he'd go a bit farther - he had no problems with the idea of texting to talk, and after a moment he leaned over, digging into his bag to pull out his phone and sliding it over to her. It wasn't locked, and while it was a fairly recent model, it was obvious he hadn't done very much with it.

He figured she could figure out what to do with it easily enough, talking or not.

If she had gone a digging, she'd have found a pretty pathetic sight. His boss, for work. His parents. His landlord. There was no one else in his life really, and he'd deleted all the irrelevant mainland numbers. He wouldn't be going back. Not to a word that considered him more or less completely crazy.

He wasn't sure how to feel about his phone being good because it was undamaged. It was new, which was the main reason it was so undamaged. That said, he was normally pretty careful with things, so he doubted it would get much worse than it was. It might get a bit more digitally cluttered as he threw whatever game he felt like on there, but he prefered sleek and simple when it came to aesthetics.

He didn't bother passing the phone back - instead, he pulled up the contact that had just been added and sent a text.

Emil's face twisted in apparent confusion, unsure of what to make of it. She wanted to... to be cute? He really wasn't sure what to make of that. He wasn't shy, and technically he could manage socially, but he still wasn't quite up to par. It came with being so silent - most people wouldn't ever get used to it, and so he went without social interaction a lot of the time.

Or at least without face to face social interaction. He actually was very social - it was just almost entirely online. He had constant friendly chats with people. He would post and talk on message boards. He just didn't do face to face or verbal interactions, so when people would voice chat, he'd claim to have no microphone (which was technically true, but also a total dodge) and type to people while listening in.

He was so hopeful it was going to go that way, and then she had to go and derail it. His face fell, actually scowling a little bit. It wasn't just easy. It wasn't as easy as just saying 'anything over five words'. In fact, the only reason he even replied at all was because he'd forced himself to learn one simple phrase over the course of a year's worth of therapy.

"I'm not good at talking." Was that five words? Yes, yes it was - so it counted. Or maybe it was above five words if you counted I'm as I am. It didn't matter either way - he wasn't choosing not to talk, he just... wasn't talking. Wasn't really capable. His voice sounded strange to him, and came out a bit raspy from disuse. He rarely went above two words.

It was such a relief when she pulled out her phone. Having someone trying to make him talk was paralyzing. People were so used to people not talking because of shyness that often it was hard to explain that it wasn't an issue of being shy at all. He wasn't really against it, he just couldn't.

He let his phone rest in his hand for a moment, staring at the text before typing out a swift response.

There was absolutely no reason she couldn't talk. She was probably more comfortable talking and just checking her phone for responses rather than having a silent text conversation when they were face to face. It wasn't all that different than if he was mute, only texting was far more convenient than writing things down in a notebook. He'd even tried that once, but texting just seemed... well, faster.

But more than anything, he tended to just avoid the situation entirely. Body language got him through most situations, and it was really only girls like her that put a kink in his plans.