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Really, Hawks should be over this by now.
He’s a grown-ass adult and pro hero. He's in his damn twenties.
Sex shouldn't be making him feel like this. He's had sex ed in training, twice he thinks although he doesn’t quite remember. He's listened to others talk about it, hell, he even reads and fucking watches porn on occasion.
Yet the sounds coming from his apartment neighbor’s bedroom, the creaking of the bed and the muffled moans, instill a deep sense of fear in him, almost primal.
He's not even supposed to be awake right now; it's two in the morning and he's usually asleep by midnight if he doesn’t have patrol at night, one at the latest. To make it even worse, he knows his neighbor is consciously making an effort to be quiet and considerate given the time, the sounds muffled by more than just the thin wall separating them.
Yet he can't can't quite get rid of the nausea swirling in his gut.
As quietly as possible, he leaves his warm-but-suddenly-feeling-suffocatingly-hot bed to cross to the other side of the room where he keeps his noise-canceling headphones and quickly shoves them over his ears.
But it's not enough. He can still hear it.
He puts on a random ten-hour thunderstorm sounds video and turns it up all the way.
By all means, he should not be hearing any sounds from outside right now, but it's still not enough. He can still hear it. He swears he can still hear it, even though it must be his mind playing tricks on him.
He looks at the time on his phone again and it's after three in the morning now. He knows they must have finished by now, but he doesn't dare touch the headphones.
The feeling of fear and nausea returns with a vengeance, accompanied by his racing heartbeat and quick, shallow, breaths. Moments like these are the only times the breath training hammered into his brain at a young age by the commission has ever failed him. He’s not supposed to be like this, not supposed to feel emotions.
The worst part of this all is that he has no idea why he feels this way. It's not like anything happened to him that would provoke this extreme of a reaction, right?
He can't remember anything at all. Now, he knows that sometimes people forget about traumatic events that have happened to them, especially if they were a child. The brain has funny ways of protecting itself. He’s been taught this when learning how to deal with traumatized citizens.
But he doesn't even have the slightest memory of anything, so does that really apply to him? Sure, his childhood feels slightly vague, that comes with the territory of whatever mess his upbringing was. And there's some memories missing, but that's normal, right? People don't remember their entire childhoods, so why would that suddenly mean something in his case?
(Vaguely, he remembers hearing about the commission employing memory deletion methods. A quirk, maybe? Or drugs? But would they use that on him, their prized possession? ‘Yes, yes they would’ a small voice whispered in the back of his head.)
And he's not entirely repulsed by touch either. Sure, he doesn't like it at all, can't remember the last time anyone ever touched him, but some people are just like that. He never grew up in an affectionate household (hah, as if!). Hugs and physical contact were reserved for fancy social events he was forced to attend, or missions that required him to get close to someone. The only reason his skin feels like it's crawling when he does get touched by someone is probably just because he doesn't do it often and because people’s hands inevitably always wander to his sensitive wings, right?
With another glance at the time–it's nearing four–he removes his headphones with trembling hands.
And...silence.
As he expected, it brings a bit of relief, just enough to take a proper, deep breath in an attempt to calm down. Yet despite the calming breath, his chest still feels tight, his heart still flutters, the nausea is all-encompassing, and he can't decide whether he want to kick off his blanket because he's feeling all too hot, or curl up underneath it, hiding away from the shame swirling inside him.
The shame...that was the one thing he could never explain away like all the other things. Not just shame surrounding the topic of sex, that was normal for some people (But is it really? He's not a teenager anymore, there's no stigma surrounding sex at in his social circles, he and most other people his age are exposed to sex and sexuality on a daily basis, and he almost thinks, no he knows that, he's expected to be having sex. He’s supposed to be the god-damn sex symbol of pro heroes. He has a good poker face, yet the mere thought of him engaging in anything related to sex makes him want to simultaneously puke and sink into the ground in shame.)
No, that's not the problem. It's the unmistakable and persistent feeling of shame surrounding...everything. Just him existing and doing completely normal things that literally every other human being on this planet does is enough for that shame to fester in the back of his mind basically twenty-four seven.
And he's not stupid. He's looked this stuff up. Extensively. Spend nights browsing the internet, reading dozens, maybe even hundreds, of forum posts about this exact topic. And still, the one thing, the one symptom he has never been able to dismiss is that deeply ingrained feeling of shame.
Feeling himself spiral into a deep pit of undesirable emotions, and not wanting to puke all over himself tonight, he takes a few deep, albeit shaky, breaths.
That doesn't really work, but it also doesn't not work. He can't really feel himself calming down, but he also doesn't continue down his spiral. As with most things in his life, he teeters on the edge. Just enough to make it through another day without prompting any concern from others, but not enough to ever truly feel okay. He is, after all, supposed to be Pro Hero Hawks, with a carefree and charming persona. Masking how he actually feels is literally part of his job.
Looking at the time again, he realizes it's nearing five in the morning, and with a sigh, he resigns himself to a sleepless night, to waiting until the sun rises above the horizon and he can reasonably get up and get ready for his morning patrol.
He knows the day that will await him once he gets up. The nausea will stay with him throughout the day and he'll be lucky to choke down a few bites of food. But it will get better, or, well, back to his normal. He knows that from experience. It's all just a vicious cycle waiting to be triggered once again in the future. Maybe next week. Maybe in a few months.
But there's nothing wrong with that, with him, there can’t be, it’s not allowed. Until he actually remembers what happened, no, if something happened, he can't be sure of anything.