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The first time it happens, Steve doesn"t think too much of it. After all, it"s not like there"s usually that much property to damage outside the city.

Loki eyed the box in Steve"s hands as if it might bite. Steve figured that maybe Loki had been bitten by boxes before and didn"t comment on it as he made his way inside.

"It"s a board game," Steve explained, toeing his shoes off before entering the rest of the way. "I thought you might like it—based off a tv show that the team likes. We control armies and try to take control of Westeros."

Loki"s eyes flashed in sudden interest. Steve was betting he would lose pretty quickly, but he was okay with that; he wasn"t really in a mood to watch a movie that night. The board game gave Loki a reason to not have to talk (because, in the two months since the Building Incident, Steve had had it pretty much confirmed that Loki really didn"t know how to just talk without reason, not anymore).

Steve won the first round that night. He figured Loki let him at the time.

The second time, the whole group gathers around the unconscious Enchantress and Skurge. The call to assemble had happened about fifteen minutes ago; the city streets show a little damage, but there are no buildings or cars harmed. No civilians injured. No one is actually sure what happened—all the footage is mysteriously blank when they look later in the debriefing.

Loki, Steve realized, is terrible at competitive board games.

It took a little while to figure out, of course—with the Battle of Westeros there were enough moving parts that it took time to get a resolution. Loki even could win on occasionally, but usually Steve did. Steve honestly thought Loki was throwing the games right up until they started playing smaller scale games.

Where he proceeded to beat Loki in less than an hour.

Multiple times.

Steve started to throw matches a bit after that.

Loki"s largest problem was too much complexity. He could be startlingly brilliant at times, often coming up with angles of attack that never occurred to Steve, but most often they were too time dependent (and without the chaos of battle, easier to spot). Steve was fairly certain it was a mix of boredom and being used to fighting on an immortal timescale.

Steve, on the other hand, had spent five and a half years directing people in rapid fire situations. He"d been fighting on Occam"s Razor principles for too long to shake it one night every few weeks.

The third time is when Steve really starts to suspect something is up.

See, they receive the call to go out because Juggernaut is terrorizing the city.

Except he can"t actually go through any walls. Or buildings. Or cars. Or poles. Or anything large and supporting anything else. It"s almost hilarious seeing him bounce off of things if not for how worrying it is.

No one is really sure what"s going on, but it does make it a little easier to bring Juggernaut in.

For the most part, Steve always made sure to give himself some sort of (unvoiced) handicap. That way he didn"t beat Loki in ten or fifteen minutes and Loki couldn"t get irritated that Steve was being nice.

"…and if he isn"t around anyone," Loki said, nudging some of his troops forward, "then he can"t be warned. He"s mostly deaf, you know, and that makes him much more wary. But simply appearing behind him wouldn"t make too much noise."

Most the time.

"I suspect that Iron Man would be as difficult to handle as Barton," Loki went on, leaning back. Steve could tell he wasn"t being malicious—Loki being malicious was not half so talkative, and Loki"s posture was entirely relaxed. He wasn"t even really paying attention to what Steve was doing, gesturing with one hand as he spoke. "Perhaps easier, as it would take very little to break that reactor in his chest while in combat. Very showy. Tactically unsound to go about with it so exposed."

Steve examined the board and tried to ignore Loki. He didn"t enjoy interrupting Loki once he got talking, mostly because it usually took so long and Steve generally liked whatever Loki rambled about. Most of the time it was about things that Steve didn"t really know much about—magic and music two favourite topics—but apparently Loki had been thinking again. He took a sip of beer as he studied the board.

"Though, supposing that he was, for some reason, alerted to the threat, he would likely bunker down in his tower. His anti-magic field is laughable, but it would cause just enough resistance, I think, to alert him to my visiting, effectively putting him at more difficult than Barton and Romanov, but not them together." Loki paused in his ramblings to take a drink of his wine. "Together they would have a sli—"

"I"ve won," Steve interrupted after he made his move, leaning back and polishing off the rest of his beer. It had only taken twenty minutes—the first ten of which let him know, yes, actually, Loki really was oblivious enough to talk to Steve about what he thought of the Avengers and the best ways to off them one at a time, and the last ten he"d spent making sure to distract Loki with a spare commander while he worked on achieving his objective.

Loki blinked and looked at the board, then at Steve"s objective, then at the board again. Steve could pinpoint almost the exact moment that Loki realized that the conversation topic had not actually been a good choice.

Loki didn"t look abashed because he never did. Steve would have been surprised if he had.

Instead, a somewhat awkward silence (well, awkward for Steve; he suspected it was just silence for Loki) stretched out between them for a few minutes before Loki stood and vanished into the kitchen. Steve went ahead and reset the board pieces and reshuffled everything.

Loki returned with cake and they started again in silence; when Loki finally started to talk again, it was about a painting that he"d seen at the Metropolitan.

Steve let him win that one.

The fourth time Steve thinks he catches a glimpse of what"s happening.

"That should have exploded. Kabloom. Big. Bang," Clint says, voice the calm not-panic it gets when he"s actually panicking.

Steve actually stops to look at the car that was just thrown into a building. It"s resting entirely unharmed on the sidewalk now. The building doesn"t even have a scratch.

"Are you sure?" he asks, because neither of them look like anything happened.

"Exploded. What. The. Fuck."

A few minutes later, Clint uses one of his explosive arrows and exactly nothing happens to the street in the blast radius. Steve thinks he sees a momentary ripple of green, but it"s gone so fast that he"s not sure if his head isn"t still screwy from a knock he took.

"My repulsors didn"t even break a window," Stark complains in the debriefing. Steve knows it"s not because Stark wants the property damage so much as he hates when physics don"t work the way they are meant to.

"Nothing. Exploded," Clint adds.

"It"s like we were fighting in one of those padded kiddy rooms," Bruce says, thoughtful.

Steve doesn"t say anything. It"s odd, but they encounter a lot of odd things. And it"s not like he can be sure anyway.

"You know," Steve said one night, taking a sip of his beer, "property damage is pretty rough."

Loki didn"t even glance up from the board.

"I mean," Steve continued, "it"s like when I decide to mostly beat you then stop so you spend the next few turns trying to recover, only I don"t have to let you. And you might not recover if you"re unlucky."

"You rarely do that," Loki pointed out, nudging his whee men around the board (Loki"s phrase, not Steve"s, and Steve nearly lost it the first time Loki said "whee men" in reference to the pieces).

"But I could."

"Like how you supposedly can win games in moments?"

"Sure."

Loki looked up at him, clearly debating if Steve was being serious or mocking or, worst of all, preachy. Steve met his gaze evenly with a smile, like he always did every time he tried to talk a little "be nicer" into Loki. Because something Steve was doing was working—Loki didn"t kill or injure people (meaning civilians; soldiers were still fair game) anymore when he attacked. It sucked that Loki was behaving differently because it bothered Steve and not because Loki saw what was wrong with it, but Steve really wasn"t going to be choosy where it involved other people"s lives.

Loki finally snorted and looked back at the board.

"It is your turn, Rogers." (And Steve couldn"t tell anyone the moment when he went from being "Captain" to "Rogers.")

The fifth time results in Loki"s capture.

Exactly no one misses that most of Brooklyn would be in flames right now if Loki hadn"t intervened in the fight with Doom. Loki hadn"t even really aided them in the fighting, but he"d clearly made sure that the fires didn"t spread and, other than one building that went down before he got there, there was no property damage.

"This is weird," Parker says, watching the video feed from Loki"s cell. The god is sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to all the activity just outside.

"I told you my brother has been changing for the better!"

"He"s probably up to something," Clint mutters.

"What, we have a third genius now? He"s always up to something," Stark snarks. "Spangle butt, where are you headed?"

"To talk to him," Steve says over his shoulder.

The guards outside of Loki"s cell seem pretty happy to see Steve. Steve doesn"t really blame them—mortality rates for guarding Loki are pretty high. (He"s still working on a good way to convince Loki not to kill them so often; it"s harder to rationalize since they"re soldiers and to Loki soldier is warrior, and warriors should be glad to die on the battlefield. Or against an enemy. Space vikings are strange.)

"Hey," Steve says once he is finally allowed in.

Loki blinks at him, brows furrowing ever-so-slightly.

"Captain," Loki acknowledges with his customary villain smirk, voice dripping venom. Steve doesn"t let it bother him; it"s all show, even if the rest of SHIELD doesn"t know that.

"Thanks."

Loki"s eyebrows shoot up.

"What, pray tell, for?"

"For helping out there. Only lost one building, and the rest are all fine. So thanks."

Loki just keeps staring at Steve and Steve realizes that no one probably ever tells Loki thanks for anything. Steve adds it to his list of unpleasant things that don"t justify but certainly explain some of Loki"s behaviour.

"It seemed," Loki finally says, voice momentarily serious, "only sporting. I"d hate to inconvenience them for a few turns only to crush them right as they could get back in the game."

Steve gives a nod like he has no idea what Loki is talking about, though he smiles a bit where the cameras can"t see.

Loki"s returning smirk lets Steve know the god appreciates the duplicity.

By the time Steve is back at the bridge, Loki is long gone from his cell and Stark is swearing a blue-streak about how much he hates magic and hates Loki and seriously how does he keep doing that.

Steve shows up that evening with a new board game.

"What is this?" Loki asks, paging through the rulebook. He still looks a bit worn out from his magical feat earlier and like Steve woke him from a nap, hair mussed and in loose fitting tee and sweatpants (Steve does not allow himself to bat an eye at Loki in My Little Pony sweatpants as much as he wants to).

"It"s a coop game. We both try to save this village from ghosts that are showing up."

Loki looks simultaneously baffled and like Steve has just tracked mud all over his plush white carpeting.

"It"s fun," Steve says. Loki looks far from convinced.

"I highly doubt that." Loki examines Steve seriously. "This is not going to convince me to work with you. Nor that saving people is worthwhile."

"Just one game," Steve pushes, setting the game up. "No ulterior motives. I just think you"ll like it, is all. Change of pace."

Loki looks up from the rule book to study him. Steve smiles back.

"I can"t beat you if I"m trying to beat the game."

Loki sighs, dropping the rulebook back onto the table to pick up the green shaman player piece, twiddling it between his fingers (he always picks green when given the choice; otherwise it"s black. Steve has never commented on it, and he doesn"t plan to. Loki usually gives Steve the blue pieces, despite Steve maybe wanting to use a different colour sometimes).

"One game."

When Steve gets up to get them more drinks afterward (after losing to the ghosts; honest, Steve has never actually won a game of Ghost Stories), he expects that Loki is putting things away from what he can hear. When he comes back out, though it has been reset up (which Loki never does, always leaving it to Steve to reassemble if there is to be a second round), Loki"s eyes flashing with a certain interest usually reserved for the battlefield

Steve just grins.

"Not fun at all, is it?" he can"t resist prodding, keeping his voice entirely guileless.

Loki sniffs, but there"s a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Not in the slightest."