The show airs, and it gets a surprising amount of viewers. They have a P. O. box that slowly starts getting fanmail, and the first time someone asks about Captain America's favorite food, Bruce chuckles and moves to put it in the 'read' pile. Steve stops him.
"No, wait, that's a good point. Wouldn't it be more compelling if you actually knew something about Captain America as a person? Right now he's just a fancy narrator, but he's got a whole costume and a personality. Why not roll with it?"
Bruce stares at him, expression halfway between dismissive and intrigued.
"What do you suggest?" he asks slowly, clearly turning the idea over in his mind. Steve hefts the letter.
"We could start here. Apple pie, do you think?"
Bruce laughs, and they film a question and answer segment where Captain America's favorite food is officially stated to be apple pie. Steve ad libs it, since Bruce didn't give him any lines, and mentions his mother baking it for him as a boy. Bruce cocks his head warily, but leaves it in.
Soon more and more people want to know about Captain America. Bruce grumbles that what people should want to know more about is history, but Steve suggests using the Q&A as an opportunity to teach a more personal side of history, and soon the Captain has a whole backstory, which is a little fantastical, but they realized too late that they wrote themselves into a corner and had to fix it somehow.
"But the human body doesn't work like that!" Bruce exclaims. "You can't just freeze someone in ice and then thaw him out later!" Steve shakes his head.
"That doesn't matter. Captain America isn't real; you even have him say that every damn episode. Who cares if he's a little larger than life?"
"This is supposed to be a show designed to educate, not mislead."
"Think of it as mythology. Weren't you thinking about doing an segment on Paul Bunyan and John Henry?"
Bruce scowls, but relents, and Captain America is officially a man out of time. In the end, Steve is almost kind of glad they had him growing up in the depression and losing an apartment in 9-11.
Their wall of fanart is getting overfull, and more and more of it is drawn by kids much older than their target audience. Some of it is drawn by adults.
Tony makes them hire a third person.
"You can't keep doing this by yourself, Bruce," he scolds. "You're going to burn out."
Steve agrees. He literally doesn't understand how Bruce can be producing an entire television show by himself and still be keeping up with his doctorate. He certainly doesn't sleep, but that doesn't even begin to explain it. Bruce argues halfheartedly, but eventually relents, and the search for an assistant editor/camera operator begins.
The show may be popular among their small cult following, but they aren't exactly swimming in applicants. The only people who apply are Clint (Steve gives him a pizza and tells him to shove off) and some political science major who is looking to get extra credit.
"You're hired," Bruce tells her tiredly when she says she knows how to use Windows Movie Maker and films all the home movies for her large and extremely close family. She fist pumps, hissing, "Yess." Steve just hopes this isn't the death of them.
Darcy actually turns out to be a pretty quick study: when Bruce teaches her a technique on the editing software, he only has to show her once, and they often catch her reading thick tomes with titles like "Techniques of Film Editing," and "The Five C's of Cinematography." Bruce stops looking like he wants to murder people all the time and starts showering regularly again, which is a relief to all parties.
Finals hit and Steve tentatively asks for a few days off to study; Bruce, knee-deep in papers to grade and his own dissertation to write, gives him the whole week off. Darcy sends them both emails of motivational cat pictures on days they have tests and Steve makes it through with his art scholarship intact.
Bruce breaks up with Betty.
Steve finds this out by coming in to work the morning after finals to find the studio in shambles. His first, stomach-dropping thought is that they've been robbed, but most of their equipment is clearly still there, just cracked or dented or in more than one piece. Then he sees Bruce sitting with his head bowed in the center of the destruction, his clothes torn and his glasses missing. Steve still doesn't get it, and he crouches down beside Bruce thinking he's been attacked.
"Are you okay?" he asks, hovering, not quite daring to touch him. If Bruce needs help he will give it, but they aren't the kind of friends who are physically affectionate, and this is a barrier he hasn't broken yet. But Bruce just lifts his head slightly and limply raises his fists, which are still clenched and bloody and raw. Steve wonders if that's really bone he can see peeking out through his knuckles. He surveys the destruction again, and sees the deliberate and precise method in the debris strewn about the room, and, occasionally, streaks of blood that he guesses belong to Bruce. He looks back at his face and sees a blankness there that scares him. But Steve is no stranger to rage himself, and he sets his face determinedly and hauls Bruce to his feet.
"Come on, soldier," he says, something his mother used to say to him when things were horrible and she was trying to be cheerful, "Let's get you some breakfast."
Bruce docilely follows him to the Denny's around the corner, where he orders black coffee and, with prompting, pancakes. Steve has already eaten, but he orders a fruit cup and some sausage that he's hoping he'll be able to persuade Bruce to steal. Halfway through eating Bruce starts to shake, and he puts his head in his hands and tells Steve what happened.
"I realized her father was right. She deserves better than me. I could never forgive myself if I lost it and she got in the way. I don't... I'm not there when I... when I lose it like that. I can barely remember what I did later. She deserves someone who isn't a danger to himself and others. And now I've ruined the show, too."
Steve rolls one of his sausages back and forth on his plate, thinking. After a minute he says softly, "I don't know about Betty. I think she can make her own decisions about who she dates. But I do know that as for the show? We can rebuild."
Bruce raises his head above his hands to give him a frankly incredulous look. Steve sets down his fork and leans forward, determined.
"We can," he says, certain at least that they have to attempt it. "All the files were backed up, right?"
"...Yeah," Bruce acknowledges reluctantly.
"Then we still have five or so episodes basically ready to air. We can take a season break if we have to. We can do this, Bruce."
Bruce stares out the window, but he doesn't have the blank despair of a few minutes ago. He turns back, sighing.
"I don't know, Steve. I think I need to just go home and sleep."
"Good idea," Steve tells him, because he's going to need some time to wrangle Tony and Darcy to help clean up and assess the damage, and he'd rather Bruce steer clear of the mess he made for now. He waits with him at the bus stop and then jogs back to the storage unit and makes some phone calls.
Tony drills Steve for information when he gets there and freaks out when he sees the blood, but eventually he gets a determined look on his face and goes back to the limo to have a conversation with his butler about trust funds. Darcy cracks wise about anger management classes, but piles broken equipment in the corner and sweeps up debris unbegrudgingly. Steve sorts through everything and decides what's beyond repair and what can be salvaged, and by the time Tony comes back they have the place looking a lot better.
"We can do this, guys," he says, "but you're going to have to take pay cuts."
"I'm in this for my resume," Darcy says dismissively. "Don't worry about me."
"That's fine," Steve says, "but don't tell Bruce."
Tony nods, and then looks down at his feet, worrying his lower lip.
"What," Steve demands. Tony shuffles in place, and then gathers his courage and looks up again.
"I called Betty," he says. "She says Bruce finally told her about his dad."
Steve knows absolutely nothing about Bruce's father, but it doesn't take much imagination to get why telling Betty about him had driven him to this.
"What about his dad?" Darcy asks, looking between the two of them expectantly. Tony and Steve share a look, and Steve leads Darcy gently back to sweeping the floor while Tony picks up a computer case and starts taking it apart to see if he can fix it.
They rebuild. Tony buys new equipment and fixes the rest. Steve negotiates for no pay for a full two months and makes Tony swear not to tell Bruce, not even to let it slip accidentally, I mean it, Tony. He feels a little guilty standing there at his full height, arms crossed impressively across his chest, Tony wide-eyed in his shadow, but Bruce is so fragile right now and Tony can't keep his mouth shut about anything. By the time school starts they are filming again, Darcy working overtime to give Bruce a break. She claims not to mind the extra workload, but Steve knows she's just as overwhelmed as him with classes and work and not enough money to smooth things along. He eats ramen and hotdogs almost exclusively, and she eats peanut butter jelly sandwiches as she hunches tiredly in front of the monitor, cursing transitions and visual effects. Natasha treats Steve to dinner at IHOP on an almost weekly basis "to keep in touch while you're so busy," she says, but he knows it's her way of pitching in and he's grateful for it. Pancakes and sausages and scrambled eggs are heavenly after a breakfast of cold ramen and half a hot dog.
After about a month Bruce returns to working full time, looking exhausted and hungover despite being a teetotaler, but he smiles at Steve on the first day, and only stands in the middle of the room staring at all the new or repaired equipment for a minute before getting down to work.