Though still not great at cooking food when heat is required, Tyson is best at cooking fish. He can usually guess how long they need on the spit before burning, but that’s simply having cooked them more when surviving on his own. A combination of ‘I need to eat this and live’ & ‘I need to eat this, not immediately throw it up again’ were strong teachers.
When it doesn’t require heat, Tyson can actually make rather delicious food. This includes being able to make different types of sushi. However, he usually prefers to simply order sushi and prepare fish for his dogs instead. He gives his dogs a lot of fish to keep their coats glossy, and simply because they like it.
When it comes to most meats, Tyson dislikes smoked meat, but fish is the one exception. Whilst he generally likes most types of jerky, Tyson honestly hates fish jerky and wrinkles his nose at it when he gives some to his dogs. It feels like they are betraying him honestly.
When it comes to seafood, Tyson’s opinion varies a lot depending on the type, but he’s generally content to eat it and he certainly doesn’t have any allergies. He dislikes the texture of squid and octopus, but Tyson doesn’t mind the taste when they’re in something.
On their own, Tyson doesn’t like prawns, but he loves prawn flavour. Prawn toast is one of the few things that Tyson will eat without complaining about not being hungry or eating being a chore. He likes prawn cocktail crisps and he can be kept quiet for a while with an actual prawn cocktail.
He is largely impartial about crab and lobster. He thinks that they’re fine, but if those same flavourings and sauces were on chicken, he would like it even more. Though that may simply be a lingering rebellious streak from his father’s favourite food being crab rangoon.
Similarly Tyson’s mental association to awful family dinners - paraded out as one of the Delaney heirs and being forced to schmooze to gain additional funding for the university - has completely ruined oysters and clams for Tyson. He’ll usually eat anything, no matter of his opinions on it, but Tyson will refuse to eat either.
He likes being asleep too and is a very reluctant waker, but falling asleep is the best part for him. Especially when he’s tired.
Those moments when he’s sat on the settee and can feel sleep tugging him, but doesn’t go to sleep yet and instead sits there to finish whatever he was doing with his limited free time - reading, watching TV, playing a game, fussing over one of the dogs - before finally crawling into bed and letting sleep wash over him. Those are his favourite moments. Those are the moments he feels most at peace. No amount of meditation can feel as good as the moments when he surrenders to sleep and forgets the world completely.
Typically Tyson curls up as small as possible on his settee, to avoid pushing either his laptop or his dogs off of the other end. When he actually makes it to a bed, Tyson curls up and hugs his duvet; almost hiding underneath it. It’s a case of vulnerability. When he shares a bed with someone else, Tyson is very cuddly.
He knows how vulnerable he is when asleep, which is why he makes himself small (less of a target) and allows his dogs to sleep near him; added protection despite having their fur shed on the bed driving him up the wall. He has learnt that silk sheet will keep Bobby off the bed though, as he slides around too much and goes off to his own bed instead.
Taken at face value many would call Tyson lazy for usually sleeping nine hours a day. Those hours weren’t consecutive, however. To accommodate working for the web during the day and night - whilst still finding time for his maps and store, to look after his dogs, and exercise enough to keep himself to the standard he’d been in the army - Tyson tended to sleep in shifts of two to four hours between jobs.
Those shifts tends to run 03:00 - 07:00, 13:00 - 15:00, & 20:30 -23:30. However, that can change around a lot to accommodate the times that the Moriarty Mirrors need him up and about to complete jobs.
He wasn’t a heavy or light sleeper and, whilst often slow to wake, years in the army and web made his survival instincts razor sharp; especially when injured and on edge. The second boots hit the ground, Tyson is wide away. Until that moment, Tyson will stay cuddled up and comfy.
Though Tyson is generally uncomfortable in vehicles, he is the most comfortable when travelling by train. Whilst the train remains in that station, Tyson gets anxious about being around so many people, but the moment the train begins to move, he relaxes.
Tyson is more comfortable in a cramped, crowded underground train carriage than out on the open London streets with a small crowd on the pavement with him. For him, the London underground exists in another world that takes him where he needs to be and the people around him don’t matter anymore.
The London Underground is a safe place for Tyson. It’s home. Seasonally colder or warmer than the ground above, a safe cradle to retreat into and escape everything above. The lifeblood of the city he loves so much. The underground tunnels his Synesthesia allows him to follow around London from above.
Tyson could easily fall asleep on the London Underground and feel safe, not waking up in a panic or tensed for a crash at any moment. He doesn’t just lower his guard on the underground, Tyson’s armour dropped entirely. The weight stripped and lifted from his shoulders.
Within the London Underground, on the train or the tunnels leading to the stations, Tyson is weightless. Invulnerable. Without consequence. He’s not afraid of being attacked there, but he’s also more confident when enemies of the web are foolish enough to attack there. He is in his element.
The London Overground, the various train lines all over the United Kingdom, and the New York Subway are also comforting to Tyson, but not to the same extent. Waterloo, Victoria, & King’s Cross Station are all comforting signs that he’s back home; Lovely Lady London welcoming him home. More so than Heathrow or Gatwick airport.
Tyson’s nephew, James, used to love Scooby-Doo and all the mysteries. When Tyson would babysit him, there would be a dozen Scooby-Doo DVDs tucked in his rucksack to watch on the journey down and whilst cuddled up, barely awake in his uncle’s arms on an evening.
Though those DVDs were steadily rotated through, there were three that showed up far more than the others: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo!, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, & Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost.
As mentioned here, Tyson doesn’t believe that ghosts exist, but he believes that they could exist and doesn’t discredit the idea. Sometimes fortunately and sometimes very unfortunately for him, his main!universe isn’t quite the real world: with the Moriarty Mirrors, Draco, advanced nanobots, and more existing.
Bobby can see ghosts and is able to seek them out. He will go out of his way to find ghosts, even taking Tyson miles off course. Though Tyson has his dogs trained to an incredible level, the former Lieutenant largely allows his dogs to do as they wish unless given a direct instruction. That training means he can trust them enough to allow such a loose metaphorical leash.
Unless Tyson is trying to get somewhere specific, when Bobby starts leading him and Lily off to the left on their morning walk, Tyson shrugs and follows the course Bobby would like the walk. He doesn’t understand what exactly is catching his Dalmatian’s interest, but he enjoys the opportunity to take a new route and see different areas of London when it happens.
Tyson has a soft spot for horror films, and especially the old classic horror films.
Generally Tyson avoids negative films, as the mood rarely takes him to watch something and when it does, Tyson is usually looking to cheer himself up after a bad day. Trying to escape watching a tortured employee by watching Jigsaw make people torture themselves isn’t going to work.
However, the old Hammer Horror films never fail to cheer Tyson up as he watched so many of them with Jethro; copies that his older brother had smuggled into the manor without their father finding out. He doesn’t enjoy the films, so much as the familiarity of the style.
He’s in a similar place with the Steven King films. He doesn’t think that they’re good and honestly, Tyson isn’t a big fan of King’s writing anyway, but he finds them enjoyable for how frequently they repeat tropes whilst remained unique enough for each to be worth watching.
Those films touch close enough to those bad feelings for Tyson to get his catharsis, without dragging up the memories he’s trying to avoid. There is a pattern to how they work and they feel familiar, safe. Within his control for how far it goes. He can press pause at any time.
For Tyson, or more specifically for his OCD, there is good dirt and there is bad dirt. Times when it’s allowed and when it’s intolerable. His OCD is more based on conforming to a structure than cleanness, but that doesn’t mean it won’t affect him.
Mud on the ground is fine. He can touch it without a worry. Mud on his boots is fine. His boots are there to walk in the mud so he doesn’t. That mud getting onto the carpet is not fine. It’s the exact opposite and something he must fix that immediately.
If Tyson is wearing his everyday clothes and gets coated in mud, Tyson has to go shower. Those clothes have to be washed. As soon as possible. Sooner. Now. It would become an incessant buzzing in the back of his head. He could delay caving to that need to finish whatever he was doing, but he would have to do it and Tyson would be left feeling rattled afterwards.
If Tyson was wearing the clothes he saves for taking his dogs on hikes and got completely covered in mud, not just over his clothes but also on his face and in his hair, Tyson would sigh, scrub off whatever he could feel on his face, then carry on with his day. No problems.
When wearing those clothes, he is supposed to get messy. It’s fine. The bit in his hair would irk once he realised, but it wouldn’t agitate his OCD in the same way. That was how Tyson got through P.E. at school, his P.E. kit was supposed to get muddy. It was okay. It would be okay. There was nothing to panic about. Nothing had gone wrong.
In this same vein, Tyson has specific clothes to wear when tinkering on his motorbike or other machines. He can get covered in grease and oil, even wiping it off his hands onto his shirt like a regular grease monkey without batting an eye. He’ll want a wash once he’s out of those clothes, but for the duration that Tyson is wearing them, he may as well be wearing armour.
Though he’s whine about feeling cold until all city boys are safely tucked away inside where they belong, Tyson actually prefers winter over summer. He finds it much easier to warm up than cool down, though the hypersensitive dent in his torso and dog bite scar on his left shoulder tend to ache when the weather turns.
He likes the way London looks when its covered in snow, the way the number of hot drinks vendors seem to double, and he especially likes the excuse to stay in his jacket all day; using it for warmth as much as a layer of protection for the dent in his torso as much as a pressure stim that soothes his anxiety.
He loves getting to throw snowballs around for his dogs to catch, especially Jack, and the feeling of brushing snowflakes out of their coats with his finger frozen tips. Tyson always uses winter as an excuse to have handmade hot chocolate and warm soup with fresh bread.
All in all, winter suits Tyson better than he thinks it does.
Tyson keeps all of the letters he gets, other than bills and junk/advertising mail. Tyson has mail from him army days, from his owners, from his brother, and from his friends.
Tyson thinks that letters are special, that it matters that someone took the time to write or type it out. He keeps the letters in a box under his bed, where he keeps most of the things in his apartment.
Tyson takes his time writing letters, making sure that it is neater than his usual slanted, scruffy writing and often using specific stationary for specific people. He takes his time with letters.
There are dozens of letters kept in that shoe box, but to cherry-pick some notable ones:
Tyson has dozens of letters from his brother Jethro that were sent during his army days, but another notable one is the copy of a doctors letter that Jethro forwarded to him in his monthly care packages that confirmed Jethro had been completely cleared of cancer.
From those care packages, Tyson also has a few letters that his nephew slipped inside before it was sealed up. Some of those were pictures he wanted his uncle to see and others were copies of book reports that he was proud of.
He has a well-thumbed letter penned by a blindingly drunk Sebastian, and presumably posted in the same state else it would never have reached him, begging Tyson to come back. Tyson knows that every promise he makes on that page it empty, that Sebastian will never change, but equally Tyson can never stop loving him regardless.
He has a letter from General Clarkson that came with a Glock 17 9mm pistol to offer Tyson protection from Sebastian, as a form of apology from General Clarkson for the years Tyson was presumed guilty. That apology did nothing to improve Tyson’s own guilt about what happened.
Tyson has a copy of the letter his father wrote in Tyson’s defence when he was presumed guilty for the shooting of General Clarkson, during the period of time when General Clarkson was in a coma and unable to disprove this. Tyson’s copy remains completely sealed. He kept the letter, but he has never felt brave enough to read it.
There are many letters that his father wrote to him but never sent in his office in the family manor, but Tyson can’t bring himself to enter that office now that his father passed away. Jasmine - with Tyson’s permission - has read through most of them. She thinks it would help him to read what his father though but never said, but understands that he needs to be ready first.
Tyson has a handful of letters from the Moriarty Mirrors, usually containing challenges for him to complete and sealed with wax. Other letters contain contingency plans, what to do if they have to disappear suddenly and stay off the radar for a while, and ways to keep the web running until they can return.
He has various recommendation letters from various professors at Cambridge and from his commanding officers in the army. Tyson hardly needs those and he’s reluctant to use them for web purposes, but he likes to keep them around in case of an emergency. If he never has to uproot and start from near scratch.
And here are two letters that people wanted to send to him, but that Tyson will never ever receive, because they were destroyed after being written. *
* Mildly incorrect sentences/grammar are on purpose for Kim’s letter, she could speak English fluently, but would occasional use both options were only one need apply (how to get / find you) and at the time when she would have been writing this letter as a way to vent what she couldn’t say to Tyson, it would have been years since she was using English even semi-regularly.
To no one’s great surprise when The Colonel gets sick, he’s an awful patient to deal with and to even less surprise, Tyson will always sit by his side regardless with the patience of a saint; a stupid, stupid saint who never learns his lesson.
During one of the times that Tyson came across a sick Sebastian trying to attack him and, rather than doing the sensible thing and simply running for the hills, decided to stay and nurse him back to health, Tyson ended up making his brother’s chicken soup for him.
Chicken noodle soup with matzo balls, a staple of any Jewish families recipe book. Jethro’s version isn’t anything especially unique, but it’s the only version Tyson would ever make. With ginger, chives, celery, and honey; and more red onion and leek than strictly necessary.
Tyson was honestly expecting Sebastian to throw the soup at him or immediately attack him after he was finished with it, but instead, Sebastian took the soup, sighed, and told Tyson to go. Naturally, he couldn’t resist making a threat about reclaiming him later, but he let Tyson go regardless.
Overall, Tyson isn’t a big social media kind of guy.
He would have absolutely no interest in Twitter or Facebook. However, he does sporadically use Instagram, Pintrest, Tumblr, Twitch, & YouTube: sites that are less about writing about oneself/talking with people, and more watching videos or looking at pictures.
Tyson’s username would most commonly be some variation of Pup_Delaney.
Instagram is the one that Tyson uses the most, as it’s the easiest one to use as proof for cover stories for his activities in the web. His posts can be separated into six different categories, from left to right and top to bottom:
Covering for injuries
Lying about his current location/the location of others
Posts directed specifically at his brother, Jethro (Yithrô)
Posts made by other memories of his family/friends
Posts to prove that he’s in a specific location at a certain time
Pictures that Tyson actually wants to post
Covering for injuries
Most of the time, Tyson can hide away to lick his wounds in peace. However, sometimes it can be beneficial to throw off the trail before it reaches him.
This usually applies to any cuts and bruises easily visible on his face. He already has police suspicion for a variety of reasons, and only sporting a wound without a readily provable excuse simply makes life harder for himself.
Whenever he’s in New York, Dick Gannon is his go-to excuse as the other man being too drunk to remember the indecent is very believable and Dick is quick on the uptake; the moment he has Tyson’s name, he’ll go along with the lie.
Lying about his current location/the location of others
For that particular series of photos, Tyson was sprawled across the lap of a hired mercenary who was definitely busy hanging out with Tyson and friends (all members of the web) for brunch, and definitely not assassinating her target; whilst Tyson ran security camera surveillance/wiping them afterwards for her whilst coordinating the photo posts from seven phones.
Posts directed specifically at his brother, Jethro (Yithrô)
Sometimes those posts will be letting him know what James (his son and Tyson’s nephew) is up to whilst in Tyson’s care, sometimes it will be letting him know that his monthly care package has arrived (because he does not trust his little brother to look after himself), and sometimes it will be Tyson poking Jethro about constantly running late.
Even when his younger brother, as a technically wanted man and semi-known criminal, is waiting for him at his office in a police station. Thank you so much, Yithrô!
Posts made by other members of his family/friends
Most commonly this could be Jasmine, Charlie, Rosie, or Jethro when they’re dragging Tyson out for his birthday or when taking him on a family outing. He tends to wipe his phone of anything incriminating when they’re around, so it’s safe to hand over.
At other times, Tyson will hand his (carefully cleared) phone over to Billy because the reporter misplaced her own phone, but it’s critically important that pigeon with a heart pattern on its feathers gets photoed. Or this could be Tyson letting Lex have his phone to keep the other man quite for a while, this is where the handful of shirtless pictures of Tyson come from.
Posts to prove that he’s in a specific location at a certain time
These are largely to the theme of selfies of Tyson or pictures of his dogs with easily recognisable landmarks or clearly readable street/shop signs in the background.
Those ones always make Tyson uncomfortable as it makes it easier for The Colonel to track him. However, it’s occasionally necessary to make sure his alibis hold. ‘Nothing suspicious here officer, I’m staying in London rather than fleeing, look elsewhere for your theif/killer/et cetera.’
Pictures that Tyson actually wants to post
Tyson doesn’t enjoy taking photographs, but he has to keep himself in the habit of taking pictures to make sure he grabs the right shot when Tyson needs it for work.
When he actually likes one of the pictures he taken, rare though it may be, and after he’s checked it meticulously for anything incriminating in the background, Tyson will post it.
This is usually a picture of his dogs or family, but an occasional picture of Dick playing guitar, a pretty shot of London, or a stolen shot of John passing on the street will get posted.
Though Tyson is hard on himself for his supposed ‘laziness’, Tyson is very lenient with others going at whatever pace they feel most comfortable with. Rome wasn’t built in a day and pushing too hard can cause everything to come crashing down.
Even as he chastises himself for being lazy, for not giving it his all at every moment in every aspect of his life, Tyson is very aware that he’s pushing himself too hard. He knows that he’s burning the candle at both ends, and trying to ignite the middle too, but he simply can’t help himself. Tyson was brought up to think he was worthless if he didn’t give everything he had.
The way his father treated him, and his own experiences with training - nurturing - service dogs, is why Tyson wants people to go at their own sustainable pace: to not burn so brightly, so beautifully, but ultimately get snuffed out. After all, our dear Icarus can’t sacrifice himself to a fallen sun now, can he?
Tyson knows that forcing a matter doesn’t always produce good work, that not everyone works best with their backs against a wall. He understands needing to take a break, to do better work on another day. He understands simply not having the mental energy for a task, and Tyson definitely understands wanting to do something but having a mental disability prevent it.
When it becomes to anyone other than himself, Tyson will never accuse someone of being lazy; outside of good-natured teasing with his friends, or animals. A lazy mutt is universally a lazy mutt, and adorable.
He was never a child that went through a period of obsession with horses, but Tyson’s always thought that horses were generally neat and appreciated when they appeared in stories.
Having spent so many years training service dogs for the army, Tyson has great respect for those who rear horses: in whatever branch of care or sport they may handle that animal in. Horses are incredibly versatile and Tyson appreciates the effort that goes into making it seem so effortless.
Coming from an incredibly rich old-fashioned upper-class family, Tyson - naturally - knows how to ride horses. It was one of the many unnecessary holdovers in his educations like fencing, ballroom dancing, Latin, and countless others. Though he was too afraid to do jumps, Tyson would comfortably ride at full pace.
Tyson purchased this at a large craft and collectables fair that Jethro & Rosie dragged him to during their wedding prep. What they were looking for, Tyson honestly can’t remember. Largely they left with food, so it couldn’t have been too important overall.
There was no reason for Tyson to buy the stone other than the fact that it was pretty, but now he associates it with his brother and his sister-in-law. A simpler time before the stress of Jethro’s cancer and when Tyson was an honest, hardworking soldier.
Verdite - Top Middle
Tyson got this piece of Verdite by chance from an old crank machine the day he began working for the Moriarty Mirrors, for both of them rather than only Sunshine. It was one of those (capsule) vending machines filled with tumbled stones and a sticker explaining each spiritual purpose each type of stone had.
Verdite is apparently used to access wisdom and information, from past lives. As with most thing of that nature, Tyson finds that interesting, but he doesn’t believe it. He didn’t really care what he got back from his pound coin, Tyson only wanted a stone to mark the occasion.
Ammonite Fossil in Slate - Top Left
Tyson acquired this one on a trip to a beach with his Uncle Richard as a child. It’s the oldest stone in Tyson’s collection, in so far as when Tyson acquired it.
They were visiting Monmouth Beach in Lyme Regis, otherwise known as the Ammonite Graveyard. You can’t take a single step without finding an ammonite there, especially by the cliff of loose breakable rock where shards can easily be knocked out.
Tyson decided to keep that one as it was the most complete ammonite he had managed to find, that wasn’t merely an imprint or outline in the rock.
Sandstone - Middle Left
Tyson picked up this piece of sandstone in Turkmenistan, during his last day there spent training service dogs. He was doing a patrol of the far compound in the morning, standard safety procedure that gave the dogs a walk before training began.
He was pausing for one of the dogs to relieve themselves when the stone caught his eye on the path. It was utterly unremarkable from any other stone around them and that was how Tyson felt in that moment. It was a big day, his last day as a soldier before he went to the front lines, before he would be told to kill, but it felt… like any other moment.
Slate - Middle Center
Tyson found this oddly round, golf ball sized stone during a stupidly long wait with Moran. The worst part about being a sniper’s spotter, aside from entering an abusive relationship with one, was having to sit through the long stakeouts before they could take the perfect shot.
The Colonel was scuffing at the ground with his boots, trying to keep feeling in his feet after being laid on the ground for so long, and he kicked up the little rock. Tyson caught it mid-roll and began rubbing off the dirt, because he has nothing better to do, and once clean he decided to keep it.
Limestone - Middle Right
Tyson grabbed this stone on the border or Afghanistan after abandoning the army at knifepoint with The Colonel. His Synesthesia allowed him to know that they were about to leave Afghanistan and it felt important to Tyson to have something, this was the point of no return. That had actually been a while back with the shooting of General Clarkson, but it felt important.
When Sebastian asked what the hell he was doing, Tyson told him that the rock had a pretty sharp edge; it could be used to cut through thinner branches for firewood and kindling without needing to blunt their knives, before they could buy something to sharpen them. Sebastian seemed to accept this excuse and the rock made itself useful.
Rough Red Jasper - Bottom Left
Tyson joined Jethro, Rosie, and James for a family trip up to Scotland. Whilst there they visited a pebble beach with a lot of agate and jasper.
James decided to start collecting any interesting stones and shells in a bucket, before getting bored and going to explore some tide pools with his father. From those collected rocks, Tyson decided to keep four pieces of Jasper: one to symbolise each of them.
This one only exists within the universe of threads with gamblingtigersniper.
This is the crystal he found on the pavement, when out with the dogs, on the day he first heard Sebastian say that he loved him and got to return the words, in his pet store.
He took the light scuffed stone as a keepsake, not only for the memories of that day but for his relationship with Sebastian in general: a sign that he finally had what he had thought to be unobtainable for so long; Sebastian.
Side note for all universes: Tyson has found a fair few stones that way, simple picking them up of the pavement. When people are using stones as for stimming, fidgeting, or stress relief, that also means that people then tend to drop and lose them.
Geode - Bottom Right
Tyson picked this up at a little corner charity shop when in Cambridge for his father’s funeral, after receiving news of Jethro’s cancer. It felt like an ending and a beginning, of a lot of hardship and stress for his brother. It was something Tyson wanted to mark, but not with something overly pretty.
Now that ugly palm-sized brown geode is proof that Jethro beat cancer and thrived, and Tyson couldn’t possibly be prouder of his big brother.
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.
