[OC talk] This thread with Rinwell is giving me an opportunity to talk about something I never get to go into with Darin

Namely, that Darin always has a small supply of metal ball bearings with him at all times.

And at first glance, it's meant to come off as a utility thing, like Darin always being prepared. He uses them to check for traps or cause distractions and whatnot

but the reason he's always had them is because he has always been an anxious person. A lot of people misread his energy as being just loud and boisterous

but Darin, deep down, is always anxious. He's anxious about his abilities, people finding out about them and subsequently hating him

and a lot of times that anxiety manifests in a need to fidget.

Even when he's not using them, a lot of his anxious energy manifests in a bunch of different ways. Like it's hard for him to sit still. It's one of the reasons he finds so much comfort working in the forge because he's always moving

it's like if Darin is alone with himself for too long and doesn't have a project or something he can think about to fixate on, his anxiety starts to spike

OMG Darin has a fidget spinner

BASICALLY YES

Darin is always so worried about how he's perceived deep down, and also always worried about his demonic nature slipping, that he's pretty much got crippling anxiety all the time that he just tries to manage

... quietly offers him my fidget toys

(also ngl as soon as I saw ball bearings, my mind went to the bag of 1,000 ball bearings from D&D)

actually you know, this tracks pretty well? when I was little some of my favorite fidget toys were those little metal blacksmith puzzles

because even when you know the solution it's just... calming to move metal pieces around

I kinda base them on these

just much smaller

but the same principle

ooh, baoding balls