She made sure to give him a pretzel and a free coffee while he waited, she was touched that this random stranger had jumped in front of a nerf bullet for her, it was the sort of thing she'd be telling her classmates about when the Christmas vacation was over. The security were nice enough, if stern, and were content to let him go into the room alone when the door had been opened.

Bucky still felt odd. His head was pounding as a result of the adrenaline that had flooded his system, and he was shaking head to foot hard enough that his teeth were even chattering. But he no longer thought he was in Afghanistan, and the quiet of the security room had stopped him from making more of a spectacle of himself.

As soon as the door opened, Bucky wound his arm around Steve tightly and pulled him in close, trembling. "I think someone shot at me, Steve," he muttered, voice tight. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"

Jesus, people heard about mall shootings and things like that on the news, but never expected it to happen to them. He was just lucky that apparently he hadn't been injured, but what if other people had been? What if Steve had been?