"Yes, ma'am," Bucky said, still grinning. He followed her back towards her apartment.

Liz ended up working on the boots for probably much longer than she should have, finishing his pair while they were talking. She ended up turning on the TV as quiet background noise, not that they needed it.

Bucky pretty much ignored the TV. It was more interesting working with Liz, anyways. A little while into the project, he paused and made a bit of a face when he lifted his metal arm. He rotated the shoulder a bit, and then sighed and worked the releases in the socket. Apparently the limb needed a bit of attention again.

That caught Liz's attention, and she looked over at him.

"What? What's the matter?"

"It's acting up again," Bucky said as he examined some of the connectors. "Nothing to really worry about." Yet. Hopefully, it was something he'd be able to fix on his own before it became something to worry about.

Liz managed to keep herself from examining the arm and the connectors, instead sitting very still.

"Do you mind if I take a look? I might be able to see what's bothering you." But she wouldn't move or take a look unless she got permission.

Bucky considered that for a moment. He wasn't used to trusting anyone with the arm, short of Stark, but he got the unshakable feeling that he could trust Liz with it. So he pushed the arm across the table towards her.

Liz immediately started looking it over, adjusting minor things here and there as she got used to the design of it. A few extra pieces hit the table, and she frowned a little at one particularly inefficient spot.

"Who the hell designed this? A monkey on a week of coffee diet?"

Bucky shrugged about as well as he could with only one shoulder.

"Hell if I know," he said, a bit on the quiet side. "I'm just the guy wearing it."

Liz reached over and poked his side. "No getting morose, that's not allowed," she said. "I'll have this ready for you in just a minute."

"What are you doing to it?" Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow a bit. "Did it talk to you or something?"

"Clearing out a bit of junk, and a bit of what should be routine maintenance," Liz replied, glancing at him. "It didn't talk to me, per se, but the design is... familiar somehow." She shrugged.

"Familiar?" Bucky asked. "You've seen it before?" Because he had no idea where she would have seen the innards of the arm, before. Even he barely understood how the thing worked.

"No, not this one. I would have remembered if I'd seen this before." Liz patted the arm almost absently. "No, I've seen something similar. Not the same, but similar. I just can't remember where."

That was interesting. Bucky had no idea if his arm was the only one, but it was the only one he'd ever encountered, so where ever Liz had seen something similar, it was outside of even the Winter Soldier's experiences.

Liz shook herself a bit and finished with his arm, handing it back.

"There, see how that feels."

Taking the arm back, Bucky carefully clicked it back into place and calibrated all the joints. Then he moved the arm around some. "Better," he said, rotating the shoulder a little. It moved much more smoothly than he was used to.

"Good. I tried not to do too much, I know you'll need to get used to that now," Liz said, getting up and stretching. Her shoulders popped and she grimaced a bit. "But I can take a look at it any time you want."

"I'll take you up on that," Bucky said as he worked the arm a bit. "It feels great."

Liz grinned at that. "Good," she said. "I'm glad it worked out like it was supposed to." Still cheery, she moved into the kitchen to make some coffee.

As Liz went into the kitchen, Bucky's phone buzzed to let him know a text came in. When he saw it was from Tony, he blinked. Stark didn't usually text him.

Check the headlines, Terminator.

The text was accompanied by a link to a news site, so he pulled it up. He promptly started to swear a bit in Russian when the headlines proclaimed 'Mystery Dates: Two Avengers With Secret Love Lives?'

Some of the swearing Liz knew, and some she didn't. She frowned.

"What happened?" Something had to have happened to get that kind of reaction.

"Reporters," Bucky replied, showing her the articles. "Stark just gave me the heads-up."

Liz groaned at that. "Well, damn," she muttered. "I wondered how long we'd get before the media tried to get a story." She frowned.

"If they think I'm just going to let them, they have another thing coming," Bucky growled.