Barnes just sat there. He was used to being poked and prodded, and knew better than to move. Moving during an examination had been a very bad idea, in the past.

Tony did some work on the socket and made sure everything was still working in there, muttering to himself the whole time.

"Alright, I don't see anything that should be catching. Try it again and if it still doesn't work I'm rebuilding the damn thing."

Barnes slid the arm back into place again and rotated the joint. His neutral expression flickered briefly and he shook his head.

"Something's still not right," he said. "It's not catching, but something is still wrong."

Tony huffed. "I need something more than "wrong" to go off of," he said. "I couldn't get my hands on the original schematics, I expect they're on paper, useless things. So I need more than just "wrong", I need something more useful. Jarvis, run a couple of diagnostics on that."

"You're asking for information I don't have," Barnes pointed out. "I don't know how it's put together, I just know how it's supposed to work." He popped the arm off again and laid it out. "It feels like something live is contacting the socket. I don't know what, or where."

"Something live. Right, rotate your shoulder for me, don't reattach that thing." Tony kept the light on the socket, watching intently. This at least he could do.

Barnes did so, rotating what he could without the arm attached. There wasn't much, since the socket was attached practically at his collarbone, but he managed.

"Aha, I knew there was something. Fucking Soviets. Sorry." Tony dove into the work, moving things around enough to get to the exposed wire in the socket and pushing it back into place. And while he was in there he did a bit of tinkering, making it a little lighter and less cluttered because there was so much junk in there he wanted to cry.

"What is it?" Barnes asked as Tony worked. Obviously it wasn't a problem with the arm, like he'd thought it was, so it was a good thing he'd brought the thing to Stark.

"There's so much extra junk in here some of it cut a wire open. I'm getting rid of the junk, you don't need that, no one likes extra junk." Tony fiddled a bit more and then nodded, rolling his chair back a bit. "That should be better."

Barnes put the arm back on and calibrated the joints. He paused for a moment, blinking.

"Feels different," he said, rotating the shoulder.

"It should. It will probably be easier to stretch to your full range, shouldn't stop up. It won't make much of a difference weight-wise, but if I redesigned the arm..." He trailed off, already thinking up a dozen different possibilities.

Barnes shrugged and got up. He knew he couldn't stop the genius from redesigning the arm, so he wasn't even going to try.

Tony grinned. "Let me know if you need any more repairs," he said. "Free of charge, even."

Barnes looked a him for a moment, and then nodded.

"Thanks," he said. Then he headed out of the workshop and back upstairs.

Tony immediately started looking at the scans and diagnostics Jarvis had gotten, starting to look through it all and design his own version.

Dori smiled a bit when she saw him. "How'd it go?"

Barnes took a moment to just breathe and relax and get back into Bucky's headspace.

"Better than I thought," he said. "He fixed what was wrong, too."

"Good. I told you he's not so bad." Doreen grinned. "Oh, and I fed one of the lollies to Clint. He likes them."

Bucky snickered a bit.

"Did he really?" he asked, grinning.

"Yup. He said he's never going to doubt me, professed undying loyalty as long as I continue giving him sweets, and bounded off to cause mayhem." Dori grinned.

Bucky snorted.

"Sounds about right," he said. He sat down at the table again, absently rotating his shoulder some. It still felt odd.

Dori patted his other shoulder and set a plate of snickerdoodles in front of him.

"At least I can provide comfort food."

That made Bucky blink.

"When did you find the time to make these?" he asked. "I couldn't have been gone longer than half an hour."

"The dough has been chilling in the fridge since early this morning waiting for attention," Doreen said with a shrug. "I popped them in the oven just after you left." Which meant that she'd been up longer than she was willing to admit, but that was just a detail.

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

"Insomnia?" he asked. He knew all about that sort of thing. Three nights out of five, he was staying awake to fight off the nightmares, and he'd already discovered the stash of reinforced punching bags that were kept in the gym. The punching bag supply seemed to have increased accordingly.