Coughing, Bucky stumbled backwards out of the unexpected cloud of smoke that had just appeared. "What the hell?" he choked.

"No, this is definitely not hell," an equally unexpected voice answered him, one that most definitely did not sound like the squirrelly-acting young man he'd been working on mere seconds ago before the smoke explosion. "But… oh, I'm terribly sorry; how rude of me."

The smoke cloud began rushing inwards on itself as fast as it had expanded outwards. When it cleared, instead of the chair and the young man lying in it, there stood a man dressed in what his friend Steve would call "full top and tails", hand braced on the extremely fancy golden handle of a cane.

Hallucinating… Bucky thought, wildly. I have to be hallucinating… And he had to give his libido props for the hand it had obviously had in it – the man was gorgeous, a head shorter than Bucky himself but neatly compact, obvious muscles filling out the suit very nicely indeed, with eyes of such a warm brown that they almost glowed and a neat little van Dyke moustache framing the most succulent pair of lips Bucky had seen in… Sheesh, he didn't even remember.

If only the man didn't have a literal tail curling around his leg, and horns poking out of his soft and fluffy brown hair, then Bucky would have been quite happy to spend an hour or so in this dream.

"There we are, much better!" the man exclaimed. He clicked his heels together and gave a little bow from the waist. "Tony Stark, demon excellente, at your service. What do you wish to deal for?"

"Demon?" Bucky squeaked. "Deal for…? Um, no, I think you have the wrong… er, person."

Tony Stark straightened up and frowned at him. "I go where I'm summoned," he informed Bucky. "No delays, no stopping for snacks, no getting side-tracked. You obviously cast the summoning spell because, well—" He spread his hands in a voila gesture. "—here I am."

Bucky shook his head. "No, I'm just a tattoo artist," he insisted. "I was just inking that guy—" He went to point at where Tony was standing, only to realise that not only had the squirrelly-acting young man disappeared, but so had his chair. "Damn it!" he snapped. "What the hell did you do to my chair!"

"Chair?" Stark bent his head to examine the ground he stood on, glanced around his feet, then back up at Bucky. "I'm sorry, but if you didn't want to lose any furniture then you shouldn't have placed it within the summoning circle…"

"I didn't make any summoning circle!" Bucky shouted at him, hands balling up into fists. "I'm a tattoo artist, I was tattooing a guy, that's it! In my fucking chair that cost me almost a thousand dollars, so bring it back right now!" God, if he'd lost that chair… He was just one guy, in one room. If he didn't have anywhere for the person being inked to sit, then how was he supposed to ink them? And no inking equalled no funds to replace the stupid, goddamned chair. He reached up to run his fingers through his hair and tugged at the strands. Nat was a hairdresser; maybe she'd have a spare chair she could lend him.

"Ah, excuse me," Stark interrupted his frantic mental planning, "but what is… 'tattooing'?"

Stunned, Bucky stared at him. "You don't know what tattooing is?" he asked. Then again, when was the last time he'd seen a demon depicted with tattoos? "These are tattoos," he said, reaching for the book of examples he kept for those who weren't sure what kind of tattoo they wanted. "They're drawn onto a person's skin and then ink is injected under the skin to colour it in and make it permanent."

Tony examined the book with an expression somewhere between fascinated and horrified. "My, how times have changed," he said, idly, flicking over another page and squinting at the image there. "The last time I was above ground, the only thing humans stuck themselves with needles for was torture."

Bucky grimaced, thankful that times had changed. "Right, well," he said, attempting to take the book back. "As you can see, no summoning going on here. So if you could just be on your way, and maybe return my chair…?"

The demon, however, did not let go of the book, and a brief tug of war ensued before Bucky gave up. "I told you, there's no mistake," Stark said, opening the book again. "Which of these designs were you… 'tattooing' at the time I was summoned?"

"None of them," Bucky snapped. "It was a custom job. The guy came in with his own stencil." He cast a quick glance over the table that was his desk. The stencil should still be there somewhere… "Here," he said, finally discovering that it had somehow managed to fall off. "This is what the guy asked for."

Stark gingerly took the paper from him, still retaining hold of Bucky's book. The demon twisted it this way and that as he studied it, lips moving soundlessly. Bucky found his gaze drawn to those lips, and the vague thought of what he'd like those lips to do passed through his mind.

Those lips quirked upwards, and Bucky abruptly realised the demon was now staring at him, looking amused. He hastily dropped his gaze, giving an awkward cough as his entire face heated up.

"As it happens," Stark said, apparently willing to overlook Bucky's faux pas, "we were both right. Your client gave you the runes for a summoning circle; presumably he thought he could keep a demon on tap, as it were. Unfortunately – for him – it seems he wasn't aware that the summoner has to be the one to draw the circle. Hence—" He made a gesture that Bucky presumed was indicating the situation they'd found themselves in.

"So as I said, I didn't summon you, so you can just—" Bucky waved, aimlessly. "—pop back to Hell or wherever you came from. And about my chair—"

"Sorry," Stark interrupted, cheerfully, "no can do! You drew the summoning runes, so you have to open the circle. Can't leave until you do."

"But…" Bucky felt his mouth working but no sound emerged. He closed it, took a breath, and tried again. "But there's no circle here anymore," he pointed out. "It went to – actually, I've no idea," he admitted. "Can't you just go to it?"

Stark rocked himself back on his heels, hands now clasped – along with Bucky's book – behind his back. And it was only now that Bucky realised that the cane the demon had popped into being with had vanished. He tried to cast a surreptitious glance around the room for it.

"Nope," the demon said, grinning at Bucky as he jumped. "Summoner is in charge of the circle and thus the demon. That's how it works."

"Can I just order you to leave?" Bucky wondered, latching onto the glimmer of hope.

Which was promptly extinguished when the demon grinned even more widely. "Nope," he repeated, deliberately pursuing his lips on the first syllable and then sucking them in to pop out the second. "Not without the circle."

Bucky suddenly found himself feeling rather light-headed. Presumably because all of his blood had abruptly rushed southwards. Good god, he could think of a few orders to give…

No, no, that was a bad thought, a very bad thought—

Stark was still grinning at him, in a way that made it seem like a really good thought.

Which it was not, because how on earth would he end up explaining this to Steve? "Oh, that sketchy client I told you about? Yeah, he accidentally caused me to cast a summoning circle and this demon popped out, and now he's followed me home and so I have to keep him…"

Steve would likely bust a blood vessel laughing at him.

"What if I drew another circle on the floor?" Bucky blurted out. "Would that get you to go away?" Although he'd still have to take Stark home for that, because all he had to use was his tattoo gun and ink, and if he even thought of scratching the floor, then he'd lose his security deposit on the place.

"Sorry, snookums," said Stark, although he didn't look as if he were sorry. "Only one circle at a time; otherwise thousands of people could all summon me at once and all they'd end up with would be a fingernail." He shuddered. "Just think of the effort involved in putting myself back together! And what if someone decided to keep a piece? Just imagine if I didn't have a spleen anymore!"

Bucky blinked at him, startled. "Demons have a use for a spleen?" he asked, distracted by the very thought of just what a spleen could be used for.

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous," scoffed Stark. "Most useless piece of flesh in the body, if you ask me, but it'd sure be a talking point, wouldn't it? 'I summoned a demon and all I got was this bit of flesh'."

"Right." Bucky sighed. It seemed as though he was all out of options, unless he wanted to start living in this studio, which he did not. He sighed again and pulled his phone from his pocket, not even having to wait two rings before it was answered at the other end. "Hey, Steve, how do you feel about letting a demon bunk on our couch…?"