Notes: Thank/blame Whumptober 2022. Prompt #27, "Pushed to the Limit." Magical exhaustion.

He sits on the edge of the borrowed bed, left alone after repeated assurances that he can find his way downstairs on his own. He's supposed to be getting dressed. Strange's clothes – cotton, his fingers tell him, drawstring pants and a t-shirt – lay on the sheets beside him; the costume's on the floor next to his bare foot. He can't seem to make himself move.

He can hear the woman – Christine, she'd said, maybe not for the first time – moving about downstairs, Strange stationary but his heartbeat close to hers. Matt smells eggs, butter. He doesn't want to be here. Can't figure out how to get home.

Stick is silent, his dad gone. He could take these clothes and leave, but he doesn't know where Strange put the projectile and he doesn't want to go without it. Plus just the thought of getting downstairs looms ominous and overwhelming right now; the idea of being out on the street like this in the daytime, trying to function like normal and get himself back to his apartment, feels completely impossible. Not seeing any other option for the moment, he pushes himself to his feet and puts on the sweatpants. His injured foot protests the reintroduction of weight.

The place is so big. Empty. His apartment might fit in the foyer that waits at the bottom of the wide staircase. Despite this, it's not hard to find the kitchen; other than the creaking of pipes and old wood, it's the only place filled with sound. He can smell bread frying. Sugar. He doesn't want to admit that he's exhausted by the time that he gets there.

Matt keeps his chin up as he intrudes in their space, overly conscious of his lack of glasses, his borrowed clothes. He does his best to minimize the limp. Strange is a shapeless mass at the table; the woman moves around by the stove. Only one of them greets him.

He sinks into an empty chair across from the doctor; Strange doesn't lift his head. "So, french toast?" Christine chirps. "How many pieces?"

He doesn't want any, feels like there's a lump in his throat. "Uh, just one. Thank you."

A plate appears in front of him, and Matt's stomach flips. "There's syrup on the table." He knows; it's too sticky sweet. He can already taste it when he licks his lips. "Can I get you anything else? Something to drink?"

He shakes his head, tries to find her a smile. He doesn't know what he's doing here. Wonders for a moment if maybe it's all just a fever dream.

"Stephen?" the woman asks.

"Coffee." It's muffled by the pillow of his arms.

"Food," she counters.

"I'll get it myself." Strange pushes to his feet in a jerky displacement of air, up from the table and over to the counter. Matt hears the clink of porcelain against porcelain and wonders if he's shaking. With his blood pressure at the moment, Matt wouldn't be surprised.

"You need to eat," Christine says, as Strange returns to the table. He throws himself down into the chair, the wooden legs squeaking on the floor.

"I'm fine." It's a snarl. "Leave me alone."

Matt's too tired to guess at the relationship between these two. He pokes at the spongy french toast with his fork. Butter sizzles in the pan. His shoulder's waking up, throbbing in their silence. It isn't until the woman joins them that Strange finally uncoils from his hunched position over his coffee cup. He doesn't seem to be drinking from it. His hair swishes against the collar of that cape when he looks between them.

"Well this is cozy."

There's a heaviness to him, Matt thinks, or maybe it's just the way the fever is warping the kitchen. He makes himself take a bite, determined to get out of here as quickly as possible. This is too weird. The woman's a doctor, right? She can take care of him.

"It'd be cozier if we were all having breakfast," Christine mutters.

"Give it a rest," Strange growls through his teeth.

He takes a breath, apparently decides it's time to redirect his irritation. Matt's got his head down, but he can feel the moment Strange's eyes settle on him. "You. Talk."

"Come on, Stephen," Christine chides. "At least let him finish eating."

"Why? He's clearly a man of many talents. I'm sure he can talk and eat at the same time."

Matt bristles. The air prickles over his bare forearms. "He can speak for himself."

"So speak."

He forces himself to swallow another bite of the food, knowing he needs the energy. Not at all because it serves to make Strange look more stubbornly petulant sitting there with only his coffee. It's mush in his mouth, and Matt tries to keep his expression blank as he works it down his throat. "You like this with everybody? Or just the people who come to you for help?"

Strange coughs out a laugh, and it sounds like it surprises him as much as it does Matt. "Everybody, probably. But especially the people who interrupt my beauty sleep."

"Won't happen again." The room is trembling around him, and the local in his shoulder is definitely wearing off. He fights the urge to cradle the limb, to wrap himself around it and curl up in a ball on the floor. The fingers of his other hand tighten on his fork.

"It's still happening now. Who shot you?"

"I told you. I don't know."

"You told me you didn't see. Not exactly the same thing."

Matt can feel his teeth grinding together, tries to make his jaw relax. "Well in this case it is. I've never come across them before." The fork clinks against the plate when he sets it down. "Where's the thing you pulled out of my shoulder?"

"Over there. Someone didn't want it on the table."

The counter? It's more of a guess than an awareness of the actual direction, but he's about to attempt to get up anyway when Strange pushes himself to his feet. He must still be dizzy; he's barely up before his breath hitches and he topples, both hands coming down to land flat on the table with a bang. The cape thing flutters with his sudden motion.

"Goddammit, Stephen!" Christine's shape smears and merges with Strange's as she forces him back into the chair. "Enough. Eat now. Or at least dump a bunch of sugar in that coffee and actually drink it. I don't know what else is going on, but you're definitely presenting as at least hypoglycemic."

She straightens; Strange doesn't. There's a tiny thump as his forehead connects with the table. "Sounds like one of us went to med school," he mumbles. "Oh, wait…"

"Physician, heal thyself," she counters flatly.

Luke, Matt remembers, though the chapter and verse are lost. Buried under countless legal statutes and the chorus of that song he keeps hearing coming from everybody's car speakers.

He doesn't have time or patience for this. It's obvious that the woman isn't going to abandon Strange, leave him to his own devices; as far as Matt's concerned, that's the situation taken care of. He needs to figure out who shot him, get out of here and find them before they attack anyone else. Standing doesn't feel that much easier for him than it seemed for the doctor, but he stays on his feet. Even the injured one. He's two steps toward the counter when a noise registers above the sounds of the aging house.

"Someone's here."

Christine's heart rate increases, but Strange is unconcerned. He doesn't even lift his head. "Probably Wong," he murmurs into the wood. "He likes to just… show up."

"More than one," Matt grunts, wavering where he stands. He can hear four distinct heart beats now; no, five. Six. What the hell? It's like they're appearing out of the air.

This gets Strange's attention. "What are you talking about? How many more?"

"Six. No, seven. Upstairs." The borrowed sweatpants are too long, and he'd had to try and roll them at the ankles to keep them out from under his feet. Not easy to do with only one functional hand; the cuffs are loose and sloppy. They're going to get in the way in a fight.

"How can you know that? You can really hear what's going on all the way upstairs?"

There's no space for this conversation. "Yes." His right hand flexes at his side, the left still hardly moving. "Where's my baton?"

"Still upstairs with that costume, I'd guess."

He's going to need another weapon. Something to compensate for the useless arm, the fever shimmer distorting his perceptions. He hears footsteps on the staircase. "They're coming. You need to get her out of here."

"Pantry," Strange says, shoving himself to his feet with an audible wheeze. "Take that thing in there with you."

Christine complies without protest, and Matt hears a thin door close behind her. He finds the knife block, makes a choice. The blade feels laughably inadequate when a wash of hot weakness leaves him clinging to the counter a moment later.

Strange doesn't appear to be doing much better, heart thudding erratically and still next to the table like he fears for his balance without it. The carefully approaching footsteps are closer now, coming off the stairs and heading into the hallway. Matt thinks the number might actually be eight. "Maybe you should go with her," he says, unsure of how much support Strange is going to be. He doesn't even really know if he's a fighter at all. Thinks that maybe one time the doctor mentioned Steve Rogers. "You're not –"

"How about we both just worry about ourselves," Strange grumbles. "And trying not to destroy my kitchen."

Eight from the hall, four more coming down a back passage that Matt's somehow just noticing now. Stick curses him loudly enough that Strange can probably hear it, but it still doesn't feel like enough for a mistake that could cost them their lives. Matt turns one way and Strange the other, and the room dissolves into chaos.

Instinct and training take over, keeping him going without too much thought. Strange seems to be holding his own behind him, even if he occasionally mutters words under his breath that Matt doesn't understand and his heartbeat is clearly discernible from all the others filling the room. The attackers are being funneled into the kitchen, but it still feels like a flood as the kitchen revolves sizzling around him. He ducks a punch, ignores the inexplicable smudges of light in his peripheral vision and the something that appears for a second like a whip made of fire. Ignores his hanging left arm and the cotton that almost trips him when he spins to kick the man in front of him in the face. The hard connection shudders through him, screwing his equilibrium and nearly sending him to the floor with the stranger.

When the only bodies left around him are unconscious ones, Matt finds himself halfway down the hallway slumped against a wall. He doesn't remember coming out here. There's a moment of blissful calm before everything held at bay hits him all at once; hugging his screaming left arm against newly battered ribs, he slides a foot down the wall before he can stop it. He needs to get back to the kitchen, check on Strange and make sure all the hostiles are down. His broken foot joins the general cacophony in his head when he uses it and the wall to push himself up.

There's no sound of motion – he thinks – and all but two of the heartbeats unconscious. He thinks. One rabbit fast and a bit further away, the other still sluggish and wrong. It's good news. Because it's taking him forever to wade through all these sprawled body parts and get back down this narrow hallway. The kitchen opens up around him as he limps through the door, confirming his too-shaky determination of all bodies down. Even Strange? Matt can't find him right away. He localizes the ragged breathing to the other side of the table, starts to make his way in that direction. Steps on an invader's fingers and stumbles, going down on one knee.

"You're still alive," Strange rasps, his voice as strained and frayed as his breathing.

"Try to sound less disappointed," Matt croaks, forcing himself back to standing with what feels like the absolute last of his strength.

He rounds the table, finding Strange either sitting or on his knees on the floor. He doesn't sound good. Matt looms over him, supporting himself on the back of a chair, certain that if he tries to get down to the doctor's level he's not going to be able to get himself back up. A trickle of blood inches its way down the back of his left hand, but everything's too much of a disaster on that side for him to determine the cause. It's not bleeding heavily; that's enough. Below him, Strange groans, swallowing repeatedly.

"That was… a really bad idea," he mumbles. Matt's not sure if anyone other than him would have been able to hear it.

"You injured?" It comes out as a grunt, pain and exhaustion stripping any compassion.

"No," Strange replies, hoarse and unconvincing. There's a quiet pop, almost the absence of sound. "Shit…"

Another blip, and suddenly the guy lying on the floor by Matt's foot is just gone. "What's happening?" he growls, afraid he already knows the answer.

"They're disappearing."

Fucking magic. He's not sure if it's Stick's voice or his own.

Matt grabs for the closest body only to have it vanish inches before he gets there. "What… what do we…?" He's totally out of his depth, the room emptying swiftly around him. "We need to talk to them. One of them." A few staggered steps away from the table, and the guy he swipes for is also gone. His foot zings a complaint up to his knee and it buckles, and he's back on the floor.

"I think I can… I'm…" Strange grates out, every aspect of him labored and trembling. The not-quite-ozone smell that Matt's now realizing has been in here the whole time intensifies.

There's only one extraneous heartbeat left now, a body near the far wall that's presumably in the doctor's line of sight; the unconscious form seems to twitch on the floor, though Matt's unreliable senses confirm that he's still out. Strange sounds like he's gasping nonsense, his arms moving just as senselessly.

Matt hates not knowing what's happening. All he's sure of is that the guy hasn't yet disappeared.

Strange somehow seems to be getting weaker by the second, and Matt has no idea what to do about that either. Is he supposed to help? Interfere? The not-ozone smell swells in an unexpected burst that makes his eyes water, and the decision is made for him when Strange slumps forward with a low moan.

"Worse. That… was definitely worse."

His voice is watery and unmistakably sick, and Matt thinks about trying to close the distance between them. But they have more pressing problems. He begins to push himself up with his one working hand, almost gets his leg under him when his ribs shout and he crumbles back to the floor. Not giving himself time to consider, he shoves himself onto his knees and starts a painful uneven crawl over to the other side of the room.

"What'd you do?" he chokes out, an effort to pitch his voice louder than Strange's breathing and the drag of his own mutinuous limbs across the linoleum. "... still here."

"Yeah," Strange pants behind him. "S'what I did."

Matt can tell by the way everything's smothered that the other man hasn't moved from his collapsed bent position. "How?"

"Later," he coughs. He's swallowing convulsively again.

They're both a mess. Matt reaches the unconscious body, propping himself up against the wall while he explores with his fingers to figure out what his other senses aren't telling him. Simple unadorned shoes, pants, long-sleeved shirt. He shifts his hand from the guy's arm to his torso, brushing over something there that sends an electric shock through his fingertips. Matt pulls his hand back with a hiss, flexing the tingling digits.

"Restraints?" he guesses, despite having no theory as to what could have done that. He stretches his hand out again, thinks he feels something almost like rope before the pain makes him pull away. It's stronger this time.

"No, I thought we'd… use… use the honor sys–"

A violent surge of motion and Strange is on his feet; he stumbles to the counter and begins to retch. It sounds miserable, unproductive. Matt winces, wiping at the sweat trailing down the side of his face.

"Christ I hate this day," the doctor moans after a long minute, his shredded voice bouncing off the porcelain sides of the sink.

Matt resists the urge to touch the mysterious bindings again; it's like wanting to poke at a bruise. "You okay?" he asks, because it seems like he should.

"Fucking fantastic," Strange spits. He's a melting curve of a shadow hanging over the sink. "You… you are never getting invited over again."

"Works for me," Matt mumbles, from his crumpled position against the base of the kitchen wall.

"Stephen?" The pantry door squeaks as it opens. Footsteps rush across the room toward Strange. "Oh my god, are you two okay?"

"Where's… where's the…?"

She knows what he means without the full sentence. The question of their history teases Matt again, but it's pushed away by a nauseatingly wet pulse from his shoulder. "I left it in there," she says. "What the hell happened in here? It looks like –"

He tries to get a picture of the room, but exhaustion and the simmering fever are darkening everything at the edges. There's a broken chair in pieces on the floor, at least. It's all he really gets before the building headache warns to give it up or suffer consequences.

"Well it barely looks better than you," she finishes, when neither of them interject.

"Mmph," is Strange's only response.

"Come on, why don't you sit down," Christine coaxes.

"Not… no." The fabric of their clothing rustles together as if the coaxing has turned physical. "... said no…" Strange whines faintly.

"Your nose is bleeding," the woman observes unhappily.

Strange's answer to this is a choke, followed by more empty retching.

"You have to talk to me, Stephen," she begs, when the uncomfortable noise eventually stops. "Please tell me what's going on."

"S'just… s'too much," the doctor slurs. "After… S'okay. It'll go away."

"And as your doctor I'm just supposed to take your word for that?" Her frustration arcs brightly in the dimming room. The man beside Matt twitches, lapses back into motionlessness. He sweeps his fingers over the bindings again, needing to be sure they're still there.

Definitely stronger now. Matt blows on his stinging fingertips.

"... sign an AMA f'you want," Strange grinds out. His heart skips a step in its sluggish beat, and he coughs. Groans.

"You're an ass," Christine says.

Matt makes an attempt to use the wall to sit up properly, the process drenching him in a cold sweat. It doesn't bode well for getting to his feet. But one of them needs to interrogate this guy, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be Strange. Which is fine. The way Matt would rather have it. Still, he's not going to be able to do anything from down here.

The water in the sink comes on. The contained whirlpool of pressurized water filling a glass. Swish, spit. Matt realizes his eyes have closed; he wrests them back open, tries to summon the energy to stand. There's a sudden crack of thick glass against porcelain, the faint splintering of a hairline fracture. No shattering glass. He doesn't hear a leak.

"Fuck," Strange wheezes drowsily.

"It's okay," the woman soothes, "it's not even broken. Do you feel like sitting now?"

"Can't."

Matt shifts to try and get his feet in a better position to push himself up. If he stands on the outside edge of the broken one, he thinks it'll take his weight. "Because you still feel sick?" she asks.

"Because… because there are things… to do."

"Things that'll probably be easier if you're still conscious. Seriously, Stephen, you're looking dangerously presyncopal. And you've already passed out on me once today."

"Doesn't matter."

"I'd say it does."

With a tearing effort and the help of the wall, Matt heaves himself upright. The world around him vanishes for a few breaths, comes rushing back with tsunami speed. The internal and external input is momentarily overwhelming; he struggles to parse through it, to take only what he needs to color in the room.

God, even his ears hurt.

"... get it. They got in, past the wards. I need… need to…"

Strange has moved during Matt's lost chunk of time. He's at the table, apparently holding himself up on the back of a chair; a guess, based on proximity and how overall awful he still sounds. It feels like a lot of things are guesses right now. Including how much longer Matt's got before his own body decides to give in. He's not ready to give up the support of the wall yet, but he clears his throat to remind them he's here.

"I can talk to this guy," he tells Strange. His voice isn't great either, but he's pleased to find that he at least sounds better than the other man. "Where do you want to put him?"

"We can do it here. S'not going anywhere," Strange mumbles. Matt doesn't miss the we. Or the quiet I don't think addendum.

It's a distinction too important not to clarify. "You don't think?" he presses.

"Guess we'll find out if… he disappears," Strange says, far too cavelier Matt thinks for their current situation.

Christine must be a little unhinged. Matt doesn't understand why else she would put up with this man.

"Can you wake him up?" Matt asks, gesturing to the body with his head. He's not looking forward to hauling that dead weight to the table.

"M'not an alarm clock."

"Is that a no?"

"Mmm…"

His headache clambers and jumps over the surface of his frustration. "Is that a no?"

"Have to wait, m'afraid."

Matt nudges the shape next to him with a bare foot, but the hostile doesn't stir. His fragmented attention starts making a list of all the things he'd rather do right now than have to bend down and pick the guy up. It's a list that includes almost everything. Even sticking around here for lunch.

"Do we have time for me to repair those stitches again?" Christine asks, and Matt abruptly understands that maybe not all of the wetness soaking into the borrowed t-shirt is sweat. He squirms, pokes the guy with his toes again.

"Sure. Go 'head." Strange's voice is fading like his heart rate. "I'm, uh… I've got to check…"

"Stephen? Stephen!"

The slither of his limp body sliding slowly to the floor, a flurry of motion as the other doctor drops down beside him. Matt lifts his head wearily, disappointed but not surprised.

He's definitely surprised a minute later, though, when Strange's body begins to levitate. That's the impression Matt's uncertain senses are offering anyway. He's not on the floor but he's not standing, isn't even conscious as far as Matt can tell. Still a shapeless lump if the fire in his eyes can be trusted. But the man's heartbeat, his breathing are lifting off the linoleum, that motionless lump somehow moving. Matt searches again for any signs that Christine might be carrying him, but he's already noted the space between them.

"What…?" He can feel his mouth hanging open, closes it with a snap. Obviously he's just missing something. Not a huge assumption, considering the state he's in right now.

The lump raises further, leveling out near Matt's shoulders, the gap between it and the floor now undeniable no matter how precarious his awareness. He blinks, and it moves off into the hall.

Including himself, there are only three people in the kitchen now. He's as sure of this as he can be about anything. "What?" he hears himself repeat stupidly.

There's little joy in Christine's laugh. "Yeah, sometimes it does that. I've learned it's best not to try and get between them."

What? If there's anyone in the entire house besides the four of them, Matt can't tell. And she can't be referring to the guy taking a nap at his feet. Deciding there'll be time to figure it out if he's still conscious himself after this next bit, he bends with a groan to grab a handful of the man's shirt.

"Don't suppose you know where we can find some rope?" he asks her.

There's been way too much magic for one day.