Jellyfish

For a while, between the ages of seven and nine, Tyson’s nephew James was obsessed with jellyfish. It started with a Spongebob Squarepants episode that mentioned there being many types of jellyfish and James wanted to know if there were different types of real jellyfish.

His interest in jellyfish has waned since, but James can still reliably identify a jellyfish at the aquarium without needing to glance at the sign and the jellyfish exhibit was the one he lingered in the most. With the exception of the gift shop and all the stuffed toys within.

James’ interest in jellyfish is why Tyson has so many sketches of them in his notebooks. Tyson’s a decent sketcher and he makes sure to learn how to draw anything his nephew take an interest in, so this also means that he was dozens of sketches of stuffed toys.

Jellyfish are one of the few animals that James went through an obsession with that he doesn’t also have a stuffed toy to go with. Not a common plush design it would seem. He did end up with several jellyfish themed shirts that he has now outgrown though.

Running

Tyson is a good runner. He’s surprisingly fast when he wants to be and, once he gets tunnel vision, Tyson will run for miles upon miles without pause; until finally collapsing when it occurs to him to question how far he’s travelled, and then gets driven home - tail between his legs - and too tired to fully register that he’s afraid of vehicles.

He’s best over very short distances, say twenty-one feet, or over very long distances. Over the standard 100 meters, Tyson is more likely to lose to someone of equivalent physical fitness. He’ll take an early lead, but by the ⅔ mark, others will have drawn level with Tyson and start to overtake him.

At longer distances, however, Tyson is endurance incarnate. Tyson will run until his legs physically cannot hold him any longer. He will regret doing so every time, but he will still do it. He had to do that to survive. This is why Tyson tends to escape when chased, his Synesthesia gives him the terrain advantage and he can - typically - run for long enough that his pursuers tire and concede.

He frequently goes for jogs in the mornings with his dogs, an old habit from the army that he never truly managed to shake off. Normally he does this in the very early morning, before most people are on the streets to appease his anxiety and to enjoy the brief quiet, to enjoy lovely Lady London.

Though he’ll change up his wardrobe occasional, Tyson typically wears a rotation of these shirts when he goes for his morning jogs. They’re all older shirts that Tyson doesn’t mind getting sweaty. He usually won’t wear them when working out, unless he ran to the gym. He has a different group of shirts for that.

Fitness

Though Tyson would call himself lazy for only maintaining rather than pushing himself to his limits, Tyson gets far more exercise than the average person and keeps himself to the same standards that he saw in the army. He is fit for purpose, nothing more.

He regularly goes on runs with his dogs and works out in his apartment. On top of that, his work for the web and escaping The Colonel are great practical forms of exercise. The amount of good that does is somewhat undermined by constantly under-eating and his erratic sleep cycle, and as such Tyson is always a little underweight; especially given how hard he works his body.

On the rare occasions when he wants to do more exercise he prefers to do so indoors at a private gym, away from the general public less his anxiety flare up too much. He can still get a little stressed on the running machine or in the sauna, but going into the swimming pool to do laps or into one of the one person meditation booths always calms him down.

This usually happens when Tyson has been too busy to complete his normal workout schedule. He needs to maintain his body to be useful to the web in an ‘in the field’ capacity long term, but actually completing his tasks for the web takes president over maintenance.

When he’s not working out, Tyson tends to move minimally, to conserve the maximum amount of energy that he can: slowly stretching one limb at a time and lounging on the settee with his dogs for hours at a time. To do otherwise leaves Tyson feeling constantly tired.

Though he considers it to be his own laziness, always the first to criticise himself, it is actually a mild form of chronic fatigue from how overtaxed his body constantly is; in addition to the fatigue imposed by a combination of his anxiety, OCD, PTSD, & borderline split personality disorder.

Focus and Control

With the notable exception of his interactions with Moran, Tyson has near infinite patience and self-control.

Because of his interactions with Moran, Tyson has near infinite patience and self-control.

Tyson is so used to have control stripped away from him that he jumps through a thousand hoops to make sure that control is where he wants it to be, given to the Moriarty Mirrors rather than taken from him by force with The Colonel; and any slack in the leash, is firmly within his own grip. He, largely with the occasional indulgence, quit smoking because it took control away from him.

The former Lieutenant is constantly holding himself back and keeping himself in line with strict routines, such as introducing himself with ‘Lieutenant Tyson Delaney, at your service.’ to minimise his stutter. He forces himself to take whatever shape he needs to take, because it is what Tyson has to do to survive.

He has always been a patient person, but having to handle The Colonel’s explosive temper and the Moriarty Mirrors’ eccentricities have honed that talent to patented perfection. There are naturally breaks in the facade, something that will get under his skin, but Tyson can wait patiently for hours or days at a time without upset.

Without the routines and discipline that Tyson imposed upon himself daily, it would be all too easy for him to get swept away and swallowed up, completely overwhelmed without a focus point. Left listless Tyson would wallow until his psychosis’ consumed him, every mental disorder building upon the last to drag him over the edge. 

Tyson is kept taut and stretched thin at the same time. When he breaks, Tyson completely shatters, but he’s an old hand at taking all of his broken little pieces and patching them back together: with control, discipline, routine, and endless self-control. Self-sacrifice. Stripping away whatever isn’t necessary to survive.

Polyamorous

Tyson doesn’t get jealous when it comes to relationships. Even more than admitting that he’s bi-romantic and homosexual, it is like pulling blood from a stone to make Tyson admit that he’s polyamorous.

He will freely admit that he loves the Moriarty Mirrors, that he still loves Sebastian Moran despite everything the other man has done to him, and that he has continued to be in love with Kim despite it being years since he last saw her. Tyson loves hard and forever.

In many aspects of his life, Tyson is ‘once bitten, twice shy’, but his incurable curiosity and his heart are steadfast. In his heart of hearts, Tyson is a scholar and he falls in love just a little bit with someone new every day. Which is perhaps foolish, given that those two have always been the leading causes for getting him into trouble and making Tyson as cautious as he now is in most aspects of his life.

Tyson wears his confusingly big heart like a crown. He denies his homosexuality frequently, but Tyson is never ashamed of his lover. He wants to share his love, and his lover, with the world: to show how amazing they are, how much he loves them, and to let others love them too.

In a way, Tyson is a bit of a tomcat. In a harmless way, like a stray. Yeah, he goes to other people for attention too, but that doesn’t mean that he loves you any less and you’re just as likely to open your window when he appears on the fire escape. …That last part is more literal than it has any right to be.

Service Dogs

Tyson trained service dogs for the army in Turkmenistan.

These are some of the dogs that Tyson trained:

• Ace

Tyson has only ever served on the front lines with one of the dogs he trained*, and that was with Ace. He was a German Shepherd with a plush tan & black coat. By the time that Tyson joined the front lines, Ace was already an old boy: reaching towards retirement but not quite there yet.

He only saw Ace for a handful of weeks, during a brief joint stationing before the old team were given leave and the First Bangalore Pioneers were given control of the compound. Ace served primarily as a patrol and attack dog. When he was off duty, Ace loved getting to play with a yellow squeaky chicken plush.

On September 2010, Ace was retired. He joined the program of former military service dogs to be re-homed to veterans, who could handle the requirements of a military dog and the PTSD that they can exhibit. In April 2011, Ace found his new home.

• Boots

Last dog Tyson trained with Hal Malone was a female Springer Spaniel called Boots. She was trained to track scents and primarily she was used as a bomb sniffer dog. Hal was the best man to call on for helping a dog take to water. The problem with Boots was convincing her to get back out of the water.

Boots took to the job like a duck to water, or an overly eager dog after a duck minding its own business in the water. She had a keen scent of smell, as expected of her breed, and had a good attention span for following a single scent for an extended period of time.

She was killed in action in 2013 by enemy fire during a sweep to clear bombs off of a transport route.

• Dodger

Dodger was a female German Shepherd with a solid black short coat.

Her time in the army was short lived. She passed all the temperament tests and responded well to training, but she was injured when following Tyson through an assault course. She missed the post she was supposed to stand on and tumbled down, breaking a bone in her front right leg.

Dodger eventually recovered enough to run a slow trot, but not to the speed required of an attack dog. She was early enough into her training, not even having begun bite training, to be sent to a standard shelter for adoption and found a new home as a family pet.

• Jack 

Jack was originally a dog that Tyson trained for the army, but when he refused to take orders from anyone other than Tyson he was deemed unfit for service. Tyson agreed to take him in without hesitation and now he guards the family manor under Jasmine’s care.

Most who meet the black Doberman would call him cold, but Jack is a one-man dog: Tyson’s dog. With Tyson and Lily, he is loyal and friendly. He is slightly more reserved with Jasmine - who he is in the care of, most of the time - and Bobby, but still loyal and protective of both. Jack, like Lily, doesn’t seek affection and is more comfortable with having company to lay next to. 

Tyson has a tracker on Jack’s purple collar. It’s not that he distrusts Jasmine or her ability to care for his dog, but it soothes Tyson’s anxiety to be able to check in on Jack from time to time.

• Nuke

Nuke was the last dog that Tyson trained before going to the front lines. She was a German Shepherd with a red sable, short coat.

There was nothing particularly special about Nuke, just one of many attack dogs that Tyson was tasked with training, but she was the last dog who’s training Tyson got to complete during his time in Turkmenistan.

As with all the dogs that Tyson trained, her photo is kept under his bed in the box with everything else from his days in the army: including a stolen file, his uniform, and a lot of photos with Colonel Moran, the other members of the First Bangalore Pioneers, and Captain Watson.

• Razor

On the 17th of May 2001, Razor caused the jagged scar on Tyson’s right wrist during bite training by biting into the arm without a protector on it. He was a German Shepherd from the first class of dogs that Tyson taught with a gold/tan sable, plush coat.

Tyson’s scars are largely smooth, but the dog bite on his right wrist is rough since it didn’t heal properly and Razor didn’t release as soon as he bit down. There wasn’t a doctor on base when Tyson was bitten and they had to wait for her to return from a supply run before it could be seen to properly.

It was difficult not being able to use his dominant hand while his wrist healed, as this was long before Tyson became near ambidextrous due to needing to cover the dent in his torso. He was very lucky that Razor didn’t do more permanent damage, given how the dog jerked Tyson’s arm around before finally relinquishing his hold.

Razor had gotten agitated from heatstroke and lashed out at Tyson, which is the same reason Tyson got the scar on his left shoulder from Lily too. Tyson blamed himself for not noticing that Razor was feeling off and, once Tyson recovered, the German Shepherd completed his training.

• Skipper

Skipper was the male Doberman with a red coat that Tyson was training whilst he was with Kim; trading in-compound chores with other soldiers to take their out-of-compound chores so that he would have an excuse to go and see Kimiko.

As such, Skipper is the dog that Tyson trained the least of all the dogs that were put under his care. Though Tyson traded chores, not training time, he often took the dog around with him when the chores would allow it. That way he could reinforce good behaviours and discourage bad behaviours outside of training time, without overtaxing the dog.

From what he remembers, Skipper was a good dog who struggled at heights, but would still listen to commands. Honestly though, Tyson’s memories of those months largely come down to: Kim! Kim is so pretty, and clever, and witty. I love Kim.

* Tyson has served with plenty of service dogs and handled their care as one of the service dog handlers on the front lines, but those were dogs that had been given their training by other people.

Anger

Tyson can let go of his anger very easily.

He can give a man emotional whiplash, bouncing between two emotions without any transition, but Tyson finds that anger is easier than others. He doesn’t get hit with a blinding rage, but more like little sparks of anger breaking through his calm, quickly defused with a plan to deal with whatever is upsetting him. For Tyson, anger is more of a catalyst for other emotions than a driving force.

As an exception to almost every rule, Moran can provoke Tyson to anger better than anyone else, but his anger is still quickly dispersed. What Sebastian Moran is best at is getting Tyson to show that anger for the brief moment it’s there, rather than suppressing it. He’s turned baiting Tyson into a sport.

When something truly upsets him, Tyson can be bristling with anger for the duration of that encounter, but the moment he’s away from whatever is upsetting him or it has been dealt with, Tyson immediately settles down. The Soldier holds onto their anger more, but as a focal point, a facade through which he can maintain control.

Given his encounters with The Colonel’s temper, Tyson handles the anger of other people better than might be expected. Largely this is due to the big explosive personalities Tyson has to deal with when working for the web and the way tempers flared in such a high-stress situation during his time in the army.

Anger puts Tyson on edge, he’s always preparing for an attack or escape even in the calmest of moments, but he isn’t the type to immediately parrot another’s anger; unlike his brother, Jethro. Tyson’s morals and to an extent his behaviour reflect those around him, not necessarily his emotions.

Often it’s his job to keep a level head. Tyson may be afraid and skittish when he doesn’t have a mission to focus himself, but he knows how to get a job done. Tyson knows how to keep control over himself.

Though Tyson isn’t great at reading people in general, anger is one of the few emotions that Tyson can reliably read when he isn’t running off of pure instinct. He spent so long on watch for Sebastian’s alcohol-fuelled rages, that Tyson is usually the first person in the room to notice someone edging towards anger.

Fever

Tyson never gets ‘ill’, he gets fevers.

If he catches any form of sickness it becomes a fever almost without fail, if it is anything more than a cold or a headache.

His fever normally breaks after two days.

The severity varies depending on what he actually came down with. Sometimes he’ll just be running unhealthily hot, but power through it. Other times, he’ll be unable to lift his head from his pillow without feeling lightheaded.

The few times when Tyson can remember avoiding a fever when getting sick was when he has food poisoning and chicken pox. The first fever Tyson is aware of having was getting hypothermia after going swimming with Jethro in Autumn.

This happens for several reasons. Tyson chronically under-eats, despite pushing to keep himself to the same physical standard that he’d been in the army and the extra food his body needs to heal from his various injuries working for the web. His apartment, due to poor insulation in the walls and a temperamental boiler, is often cold as ice.

In addition to that, Tyson’s sleep schedule is messed up in a dozen different ways. He lets the Moriarty Mirrors use him as a Guinea pig in their experiments, including those around chemicals and nanobots, and occasionally dabbles in drug-painkillers: sometimes illegal ones, and more illegal ones from the Moriarty Mirrors experiments.

All of those things add up to weaken Tyson’s immune system, because he’s wearing himself thin without reprieve. As such, when he gets infected - which is relatively easy to due in a close quarters, high population city with people constantly entering from around the world like London - Tyson’s body can’t put up that much of a fight.

Natural genetic luck, and staying on top of his shots, means that Tyson has a pretty strong immunity towards getting infected in the first place, but once he becomes ill, his body goes into completely shut down and purge mode. This also means that after his fever passes, Tyson generally doesn’t have a long tail on recovering as his body burns off the sickness.

Money

Tyson has a complicated relationship with money.

Though he is incredibly loose with his money, he will never underestimate the value that money has. Tyson only spends what he needs to, with the allowance of ‘need’ being rather malleable when it comes to things that would benefit others. He tips well and rarely looks at the cost of something when buying it.

It was summed up well in this thread with moriartyproperty:

Tyson, on the other hand, only spent what he needed to. Coming from a prominent Jewish family, Tyson had been taught the dangers of drawing attention to his wealth since childhood. Other than what he required for work - to avoid leaving paper-trails from his own accounts - Tyson didn’t use Moriarty’s money. Technically, he wasn’t even paid. Tyson had an allowance of money he could use when needed, but generally it went untouched. Even his work expenses were minimal. He lived well within his means; rarely spending more than he made running his pet store, making maps, and guest-lecturing at universities. 

Tyson own personal savings are extensive and if needs be, Tyson has access to the family fortune, but - unless he’s giving a gift to someone, or donating money: to charity or to someone in need - it’s rare for him to use it. In addition to that, Tyson has money stashed in various places for emergencies in storage boxes around London.

The value and dangers of money was drilled into him from a young age and Tyson spent time without money, busking and making every penny count during his escape with The Colonel/back home to Britain, but ultimately Tyson knows that anything he spends won’t make a dent in his bank account.

He doesn’t bother haggling unless it’s a deal for the web and he operates the pet store at the base rate you’d expect in London, simply to make it look like the legitimate business it needs to be as a cover for his activities in the web. His biggest expense is probably the meat he buys for his dogs, the takeout he orders for himself, or buying a new tailored suit once one gets damaged on the job.

Additional pre-existing money based headcanons:

• What is in Tyson’s wallet?
• Tyson & Jethro have a shared savings account from childhood.
• The Piano Man
• When calling a coin flip, Tyson will pick heads nine times out of ten.
• The women in Khushab.
• Tyson has a coin collection, taken from his father
• Tyson can do that trick where you roll the coin between your fingers.
• His money guilt around giving gifts.
• Tyson has a tendency to forget his wallet, despite his anxiety and OCD, because he spends so much time worrying about forgetting things that he starts running late and, thus, abandons items on his coffee table when he took them out of his bag/pockets to make sure that he had them.

Solo verses Groups

By and large, Tyson is more confident 1-on-1 compared to in groups. However, once the crowd becomes large enough Tyson is even more confident.

Though Tyson may still stutter in a one-on-one conversation until he’s comfortable enough with that person to avoid stuttering, he is still more confident dealing with one person than a (small) group that he doesn’t know.

Tyson needs to know that he can escape any given situation to feel safe, knowing his odds to outrun or beat the other person in a fight goes a long way to soothing Tyson’s anxiety. Even if he knows with certainty that he can outfight each person individually, multiple opponents shifts the odds against him.

However, Tyson spent his entire childhood being groomed to teach large groups of people. The crowds on London’s streets put him on edge, because he’s dealing with many small groups of people all at once. It’s not a continuous surrounding that he can familiarise himself with.

When he has the (near) complete attention of one large group, Tyson is honestly in his element. He can take the stage to guest lecture at any university without stuttering even once, without needing to know anyone in the crowd. Naturally, he is most comfortable when talking about mathematics somewhere familiar, such as Cambridge, but his ability to speak and command attention remains the same.

Largely Tyson’s work with the web is done on his own or with one other person, someone he trusts or one employee of the Moriarty Mirrors.

It’s rare for Tyson to be required to lead a group, but in those cases, Tyson does better than most would expect of the second-hand pet. It’s similar to stepping back into his life in the army. He may not be comfortable, but that doesn’t matter. He has a task and people who are depending on him.

It doesn’t matter if Tyson can’t do something.

He will.

Vision

Beyond the images his Synesthesia causes, Tyson has 20/20 vision and has full colour vision too.

How long that will last is questionable. Tyson isn’t exactly kind with his eyes. He spends a lot of time in low lighting for the web and sleeps erratic hours that cause his eyes to get dry. A lot of his free time is spent reading in low lighting or staring at a computer screen for hours at a time in, once again, low lighting.

He rubs at his eyes far more than he should. In part, this is because his eyes get sore and dry from staying up for 24+ hours on stakeouts, but Tyson also rubs his eyes as a way to focus himself when suppressing his Synesthesia. And then simply out of habit from rubbing them so often.

Hallucinations

Through extreme pain, the effects of strong painkillers, his own recreational use of drugs, Jim’s experiments, fever, and exposure to extreme heat, Tyson has ended up hallucinating many times.

That in and of itself doesn’t mean much, but the way it interacts with his Synesthesia becomes tricky. His form of Synesthesia projects over everything he sees, including his memories.

Whatever is a part of Tyson’s reality can become covered in maps, provided he can construct a mental map or blueprint of it. A single sheet of paper, unless depicting a sketch or photo of something his Synesthesia would normally colour, won’t be of any interest.

When it comes to hallucinations, his Synesthesia gets very confused. The effect varies depending on what is causing him to hallucinate and how strongly it is affecting him. Sometimes his vision becomes unbearably colourful and messy, layering over his actual vision as well as the images his mind has created.

Overtimes, his hallucinations will be the only things coloured as he locks the real world away complete, and sometimes his hallucinations will lack additional images from his Synesthesia, whilst the real world still appears in the background with those images.

The only eventuality that never happens is that his Synesthesia colours nothing with maps. Tyson can suppress his Synesthesia, push it away into the back of his mind and focus on the real vision his eyes provide, but he can’t make it go away. It’s the equivalent of training yourself to tune out roadworks or banging as white noise. It’s still there, just distant and not given conscious acknowledgement.

Dreams are varied, though more consistent. If it’s a memory, the colours and maps remain as they were; with some allowance for changes in his emotional response if the memory is adapted whilst he dreams. If it isn’t a memory, then only things that Tyson does remember will get coloured.

For example, if he dreamt that he was walking through a fake building with Jethro, then the building would appear in its ‘natural’ state, whilst his brother would get his normal colour palette.

Scent

Tyson’s apartment generally smells like sweetpea, and dog. Mostly dog.

He washes Lily and Bobby regularly with a eucalyptus-scented shampoo, but in such a tiny - cozy - apartment it’s hard to remove the smell completely. Honestly though, Tyson likes that smell. It’s earthy and homely, and familiar.

Tyson himself generally smells like:
Vanilla, (-milk and honey) apple, earth, parchment (+almond)

Despite his intense dislikes of cars that borders on a phobia, Tyson rather likes the smell of diesel and petrol. Smoke is familiar from his time in the army and smoking, though not necessarily liked. More of a neutral acceptance. The scent of gunpowder and oil go into a similar place.

---

The scents he tends to associate with other people are: *

• Moriarty Mirrors : Apples, Smoke, Blood, & (Burnt gases from) Electricity
• Sebastian Moran: Blood, Gun Oil, Whiskey, & Ralph Lauren Polo Aftershave - Black  †
• John Watson : Antiseptic, Tea, Home, & Clean Cotton

• Jethro Andrew Delaney : Leather, Pears Soap, & Cotton-candy 
• Jasmine Dartmoor : Star Anise, Shortbread, & Poison Perfume
• James Delaney : Plush Fabrics, Talcum Powder, & Pencil Shavings
• Rosie Delaney : Printer Ink, Mud, Rubber, & Bacon
• John Delaney : Old Books, Scones, Old Spice, and Dolce & Gabbana
• Richard Delaney : Feathers, Diesel, & Burning Wood
• Anne Samantha Williams : Paint, Daisies, & Dust  ‡
• Grandmother - Ellen Delaney : Jasmine Tea & Pomegranate Perfume

• Lex : Candy, Leather, and kinda of like a Chip Shop honestly: salty and kinda like vinegar, but in a good, delicious way
• Dick Gannon : Cheap Takeout and, even cheaper, Booze
• Kim : Sawdust, Grass, Coconut, & Citrus

* Several side characters are skipped here as he doesn’t have a specific scent he’d associate with them instinctively.
† Only applicable to Tyson’s main Sebastian Moran/The Colonel.
‡ Tyson doesn’t remember what she smelt like specifically, but he associates those scents with her as her art room smelt that way.