Gems and Metals

Though he collects rocks, passively, Tyson doesn’t care as much for gems or precious metals.

His collecting is more sentimental than about the value of an item, and he tends to prefer simple jewellery over anything with gems anyway. In part that comes from his Synesthesia. There are already so many patterns and colours in his vision that it can become a little overwhelming to add more unnecessarily.

Even when he’s suppressing his Synesthesia, many of his decisions are shaped around that.

When it comes to metal, Tyson refers silver over gold. He doesn’t dislike gold, per say, but he is tired of seeing it as the ‘best version’ of everything. More generally, Tyson finds brass or copper to look more interesting than gold does overall.

Cats

Though Tyson loves cats, they don’t tend to like him as much.

This is almost entirely due to Tyson smelling of his dogs. When he’s had a few days away from his dogs, or when Tyson is meeting a cat that is more comfortable with dogs, he is good at reading cats behaviours and getting them to trust him.

The exception to this is one of the once a blue moon days when Tyson actually opens his pet store. Then, carrying the faint smell of catnip on him, he tends to make quick friends of the stray cats he comes across.

Cats within Tyson’s universe(s):

• Amanda - Snowshoe - Molly Hooper
• Felix - Ragdoll - Tyson’s in Redemption!Verse & Cat!Verse
• Flynn - Maine Coon - Nate Morrison
• Joe - Tortoiseshell - Stray at Dick Gannon’s apartment 
• Mandy - Tabby - Tyson in Kitten!Verse & Cat!Verse
• Quip - Abyssinian - Billy Ramsey
• Toby - Tabby - Molly Hooper

Compass

Though Tyson doesn’t need a compass to navigate, Tyson finds them comforting to have around.

Logistically he will insist that it’s just in case he wakes up in an unknown location that he can use the compass to realign his Synesthesia and help to figure out where he is.

Realistically, Tyson simply finds the presence reassuring. Like a comfort item.

Just stay down.

He is just too stubborn to die and though he struggles to motivate himself, Tyson simply doesn’t stop once he starts. He keeps going until he has nothing left to give.

As much of a strength as that can be, it causes Tyson to take far too many beatings that forced him into needing that iron-will to survive. If Tyson could ever learn not to say die, he wouldn’t be in as many situations where he very well could die.

His talent for picking himself up, though admirable, would be entirely unnecessary if Tyson didn’t keep putting himself in situations that knock him to the floor.

Sensory Overload

When it comes to sensory overload, Tyson is the most susceptible to scent and temperature. Sight will get to him occasionally, but touch and sound are the rarest.

Tyson is incredibly vulnerable to getting overwhelmed by the smell of food. He’s a little sensitive towards strong perfumes or detergents, but those annoy him rather than forcing a reaction as the smell of food can.

He doesn’t cope with sudden hot weather all that well. Tyson will be the first to flop down on a cool tile floor and start spooning a slushy. Heat has always gotten under Tyson’s skin easily, and that has only been exasperated by how many awful memories Tyson had associated with hot places.

Since Tyson had learnt how to ‘control’ his Synesthesia, his vision has far less clutter and he finds himself getting overwhelmed less often.

Much like a cat, Tyson can get overstimulated by being touched. Overwhelmed by so much contact, especially after sex. However, since Tyson doesn’t let people touch him too often, he tends to avoid getting overwhelmed by that.

Extremely loud sounds will affect Tyson as they would anyone else and aren’t really a factor in Tyson experiencing sensory overload.

Death

Tyson doesn’t handle death well.

He copes incredibly well, but Tyson doesn’t internalise death in a healthy way.

He wears it like a second skin. He doesn’t let go of the deaths he’s caused. Tyson makes sure that they stick. That his blame lingers like the smell of smoke. Even deaths that aren’t his fault, like Captain Samson, Tyson shoulders - and internalises - the blame almost immediately.

Before they received news that General Clarkson survived Sebastian’s attack, Tyson had internalised the blame for that as well.

Tyson has spent so long doing that, taking that weight, that he’s almost numb to deaths that aren’t his fault; that even Tyson can’t blame himself for. He actually feels better when the guilt of thoughts like ‘why didn’t I prevent this from happening?’ come around.

Motivation

When Tyson is working, he tends to overwork himself constantly.

He’s good at keeping himself motivated and pushing through a task until the end. Burning the candle at both ends constantly, and then trying to light the middle too. However, once Tyson runs out of stream and putters to a stop, he has no idea to get his wheels turning again.

He just… stumbles upon motivation again.

Part of Tyson’s issue is that once he reaches the point where he’s out of motivation, he begins to panic about not getting anything done and his anxiety makes it impossible for him to get anything done.

Then, after spending three days slumped over the coffee table without achieving anything, Tyson will blink and be halfway through the twelve completed task without really internalising having done anything.

Quotes and Poetry

Tyson has a plethora of phrases to fall back on to make it easier for him to communicate, but he also has an endless well of quotes and poems that he can draw from if need be.

Many of those quotes were drilled into Tyson at a young age, and he certainly doesn’t believe in letting skills go to waste. Tyson and Jethro would be sent to bed without dinner if they couldn’t correctly recite the phrases randomly slipped into their lessons by their tutors.

His taste in poetry comes from a much younger Tyson. Where most of Tyson’s other media tastes are generally happy, to drown out the bad, his taste in poetry is much more bitter. Those tend to be easier to express. A mask made from his younger self.

Writing

In his free time that isn’t already monopolised by pushing himself to learn more or fussing over his pets, Tyson likes to write stories.

When he was younger, Tyson used to create stories around the things he needed to memorise for various lessons to help himself visualise them, when the information wasn’t easily transformable into a map format.

He used to create stories around the people he watched with Sebastian whilst doing recon on an area to help him memories everything that happened, and now Tyson applies the same technique to stakeouts for the web. He makes sure to exaggerate to an extreme degree, so that he doesn’t mistake the story for what actually happened.

Tyson also composes stories for his nephew’s entertainment. Theoretically, they are not at all related to the things Jethro doesn’t want his son to know about, but Tyson sprinkles in the hints James is looking for. He knows how dangerous curiosity can be and Tyson knows how to reveal just enough to abate that curiosity.

Other times Tyson will set a randomised world in the Sims to play and construct a story for James around the things that happened.

Reading People

Tyson isn’t good at reading people.

However, he isn’t as bad at reading people as he seemed to be.

When Tyson is acting on his gut instincts to make it out of a situation safely, Tyson will make the right call over ninety percent of the time, but he can never ever explain why or how it was the right decision.

When his back isn’t to the wall, Tyson overthinks and second-guess himself too much; musing on every possible contingency until its too late and he panics out whatever thought was the last one rattling around his head; sometimes he gets it right and sometimes it blows up in his face.

Though Tyson grew up with an isolating childhood that meant he missed several key socialisation skills as a child, he also survived an abusive childhood and, relatively, safely navigates his way through a criminal empire.

The social intricacies don’t go over his head completely, but Tyson ends up feeling as though he’s projecting rather than reading the situation - further compounded by the ways his thoughts and feelings are literally projected onto people by his Synesthesia - and then he talks himself out of the right answer.

He has built up hundreds of phrases to fall back on, so Tyson can usually navigate his way through a conversation with those.

Complicated situations with many factors pouring together with multiple people are actually easier for him, because he can trust his reading of the dynamic and tone much better than his reading on an individual. Tyson survives. That is what he does. He knows how to carve out a niche for himself and thrive there. To do that Tyson has to know where niches exist.

Crying

Tyson doesn’t cry that often.

He’s good at holding that back and stopping at his eyes watering, but once his control breaks and he starts (truly) crying Tyson can’t stop until he’s empty. Even as a child, Tyson had far too much control when it came to keeping himself silent and presentable.

When crying is a result of intense physical pain or sensory overload, Tyson will ‘pretty cry’. Tears will run down his face, but Tyson will grit his teeth and seem otherwise fine. He knows how to push through physical pain and lock down that emotion. Even after getting shot, Tyson won’t cry.

The type of pain that causes Tyson to cry is the overwhelming type where he can’t survive off of Adrenalin. This mostly applies to the hypersensitive dent in his torso, when he isn’t running off the adrenaline from other wounds or fighting Sebastian, when he’s already under Sebastian’s thumb.

When it comes to sensory overload or a panic attack, Tyson doesn’t know why he ends up with tears on his face, but he knows that he doesn’t sob during them. It’s rare he could draw enough breathe for that during those moments.

When dealing with emotional pain, Tyson ugly cries. He has absolutely no poker face for what he’s feeling, but Tyson is good at controlling his emotions. Once that control breaks, Tyson shatters. He will cry until he has no more tears to give and then he’ll be dry sobbing for a while after that.

Misuse of Furniture

Tyson is oddly endeared by the mistreatment of furniture. 

Most things in Tyson’s life either come from rebelling against his father or as a way to survive, this is definitely the former. Growing up a lot of the furniture was antique or set pieces to impress fellow professors or donors. It was more about being seen than used.

That was also the cause of Tyson frequently choosing to sit on the floor when a perfectly good chair is next to him.

He likes the way Lily perches on top of the armchair and Bobby hops onto the coffee table. Tyson could easily train them not to, but he enjoys that behaviour and knows that they will listen when he orders them off, for whatever reason; usually to prevent a glass from getting knocked over or allow his maps room to dry.

Tyson can frequently be found perched on countertops or standing on his bed: which he uses as a seat, desk space, dog space, and exercises space far more than sleeping on it. Around family or the people he treats as family, Tyson will frequently be found sat cross-legged on a table or squatting on a bar stool.

He has several treasured photos of The Colonel sprawled upside-down in chairs or with his legs hanging over the edge of the armrest. Tyson also has a photo of the Moriarty Mirrors, one sat with his legs danging off the table whilst the other sits sprawled across three chairs.

Shopping

Given his anxiety, it’s not all that surprising that Tyson prefers to do his shopping online and have his groceries delivered as much as possible.

There are obvious exceptions such as collecting his meat from Jeremy’s butcher shop and collecting other pet supplies from his own pet store.

When he needs to enter an actual store, Tyson cannot simply browse without having to excuse himself to hyperventilate outback. He needs to give himself a clear mission to keep himself focused. This also leads to him not going shopping in person until it is absolutely essential to reinforce that sense of urgency to get the job done.

Generally, Tyson will create a map rather than a list of what he needs to buy. Technically there is a mental list of the items Tyson needs to get from each area, but when his anxiety is bad, Tyson can focus on the concept of a map better than recalling a simple list through his panic.

Retrieving things for his pets is always easier for Tyson to do than shopping for himself, then it matters more than himself; who ranks at negative twelve on Tyson’s priority order. This also applies to verses where Tyson is shopping for Sebastian or James as well as himself.

He can walk through a store without batting an eye externally when babysitting his nephew. His anxiety remains, clawing in the back of his mind, but when Tyson has to focus on his nephew’s needs, his own become irrelevant. More irrelevant than usual.

Fishing

If it wasn’t a necessity to keep himself fed without carrying extra weight in rations, Tyson wouldn’t ever bother fishing.

He enjoys the opportunity to meditate that it provides and - depending on the water source - water can help relax him, but Tyson would prefer to simply meditate than fish to meditate; he does understand the appeal though.

Tyson hates to waste time whilst working, so fishing allows him to take a moment for himself - to clear his mind and think over the job - whilst doing something productive.

The other side of this is that Tyson doesn’t care about eating, viewing it as a chore rather than pleasure, so he doesn’t even find it rewarding to provide his own food to cook. It’s a necessity. A need rather than a want.

He likes the idea of fishing in a romanticised way, conceptually, rather than actually wanting to go out and do it.

Messy

In spite of his OCD, and possibly because of his Synesthesia, Tyson likes seeing people looking messy.

With Tyson’s OCD, and general dislike of ripped clothes on other people, this seems rather odd. However, with Tyson’s OCD, there is such a thing as good dirt.

He can’t explain why, and paint/glitter/dust/et cetera on his own skin would drive Tyson up the wall, but he adores seeing other people that way. He thinks it makes other people look incredibly pretty.

The moment when Tyson realised he loved Kimiko was seeing her covered in sawdust, and he realised that he loved Sebastian when he was covered in dust from patrolling and gun oil coated his hands.

Finding

His dissatisfaction with radar aside, Tyson is great at finding things.

He has a good head for organisation and pattern recognition, even when working with someone else’s system, making him the ideal person to throw into an achieve to track down a file; this earnt him a fair few favours with the law students at his university and with lawyers working for the web.

Tyson honestly enjoys the organised chaos of an archive room. It’s one of the few parts of being undercover in Scotland Yard that Tyson enjoys: rummaging through old cardboard boxes and leaving them tidier than he found them, the scent and feel of old paper.

When he’s sick of being the ‘second-hand pet’, yet needs to stay on site to complete his work, Tyson will retreat into the archives and bury himself in a quiet corner. This also gives him an opportunity to hear things that wouldn’t ordinarily be said around him, as archives primary purpose the world around is a discreet meeting place.

Dog bite scars

Tyson has two serious scars from dogs: one on his right wrist from Razor, one of the service dogs that he trained for the army, and one on his left shoulder from Lily, his pet Dalmatian-Dhole.

Give that the former was received whilst Tyson was in a well-stocked army compound and the latter whilst travelling on his own through the desert as a wanted man, most would expect the scar from Lily to appear worse and hurt more. Whilst the scar on his shoulder is hypersensitive, the scar from Razor is far messier.

Tyson was able to give the bite from Lily his immediate attention and the wound was a clean bite. She released him almost immediately after her teeth bit into Tyson. Nerve damage caused the wound to become hypersensitive, but the actual bite mark healed smoothly.

Razor did not release Tyson quickly. He jerked Tyson arm around roughly - as he was supposted to. They were working on bite training at the time, but Razor grabbed the wrong (unpadded) arm - and it was a miracle that the German Shepherd didn’t inflict more damage before finally releasing him, then Tyson was forced to wait around for the doctor to return before his wound could get proper attention.

Tyson had basic first aid knowledge, but not enough experience to handle such a bad wound properly. He was also disadvantaged by having his dominant hand attacked, as it wasn’t until after Razor lashed out that Tyson started along the path towards becoming (near) ambidextrous.

In neither of those instances does Tyson blame the dogs, he made a mistake - the same mistake both times, failing to notice the signs of heatstroke - and then the dogs lashed out. It was his mistake, not the dogs’ fault. A good dog trainer can go their entire carrier without ever getting bitten.

Radar

Though Tyson is incredibly talented with maps, one of his least favourite assignments was having to coordinate with the radar to track enemy movements whilst in flight.

It was rare that Tyson was taken on those missions, and it was easier than trying to coordinate from second-hand information from someone else reading the radar, but that did nothing to diminish Tyson’s hatred of those assignments.

He can’t explain how difficult it was to combine the way radar displays area information with the way traditional maps displays area information. The latter is the structure of Tyson’s entire life, the way he literally viewed the world through his Synesthesia and has shaped his entire thought process.

The former is an entirely different being. He can work out how to transfer that information if given time, but it’s apples to oranges. As though suddenly working with an entirely new language. He feels lost and off-kilter.

For Tyson, the worst part if that he can’t explain why it’s so difficult to understand or what makes it so different from his usual type of mapping.

Ankles

As a child, a calcium deficiency let to Tyson having fragile ankles and his first broken bone was his right ankle.

It would surprise no one to discover that it was the fault of Tyson’s father that the seven-year-old was injured, but he didn’t intentionally hurt him. Most of his abuses were directed at Jethro until the elder heir ran away from home at eighteen, leaving a fourteen-year-old Tyson to shoulder the weight of the family legacy.

Tyson had run away from yet another tutor, taking refuge in the attic with his textbook. He always completed the assigned work, but Tyson kept running away and hiding from the tutors that he didn’t like. He didn’t mean to exactly, but his anxiety would build and build until he jackrabbited away.

He always kept a copy of the key on his person, with Jethro having the only other key into the attic, so Tyson knew his father couldn’t get to him up there, but John knew that his children hid up there from time to time. He never realised how frequently they escaped into the attic.

John called Tyson down to join him for dinner to discuss finding a new tutor for his English lessons. As Tyson paused to discreetly lock up the attic access, John got impatient and assumed that Tyson wasn’t going to come down. He banged on the ladder to get his son’s attention, and Tyson came tumbling down.

That was one of the few times that Tyson could say his father was earnestly apologetic and concerned about his son as he was taken to the ER. Tyson had tears in his eyes from the moment he hit the ground, but he barely let out a whimper. Even as the doctor was poking at his ankle.

He was too afraid of disappointing his father. Of angering him further. Even with Jethro sat next to him on the hospital bed asking if he was okay, Tyson was silent. He just shook his head. Tyson got a button for being so brave.

Once his father finally left him alone that night, having given him more attention and love than Tyson had received in months, Tyson broke down into tears. He barely even realised when Jethro snuck into his room to comfort him. He knew it was an accident, but he was so afraid of upsetting his father again.

Richard Delaney

UNIVERAL TRUTHS

• Birthname: Reuben Boaz Delaney (רְאוּבֵן בֹּעַז דילייני)
• Blood Type: A Negative
• Date of Birth: May 1st 1949 - Taurus - Ox (Earth)
• DnD Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
• Dominant Hand: Left
• Ethnicity: Jew, Ashkenazi / White, British
• Myers Briggs Type: ESTP-T | The Entrepreneur
• Orientation: Heterosexual
• Religion: Jewish
• Signature:

FAVOURITE

• Favourite Animal: Octopus
• Favourite Author: Edgar Allen Poe
• Favourite Colour: Black
• Favourite Film: Thunderball
• Favourite Food: Game Pie
• Favourite Plant: Bluebells
• Favourite Poem: On The Ning Nang Nong - Spike Milligan

VERSE DEPENDANT

• Avatar Element: Water
• His Dark Material’s Dæmon: Foxhound
• Hogwarts House: Slytherin (Muggle within Hogwarts AU)
• Hybrid!Verse Pairing: European Red Deer
• Mass Effect Species: Human
• Pokémon Team: Slowking, Togetic, Ninjask, Dusknoir, Mandibuzz, & Mimiku

Colour Tyson’s Synesthesia Projects Onto Them: