Steve was a little alarmed when Tony staggered into the den the next Friday looking even more sleep-deprived than usual. "Are you okay?" he asked hesitantly. "You're not getting sick, are you?"

Tony waved a hand dismissively. "I was up late studying for our little game." His eyes narrowed. "I want to win this time."

Natasha smiled and put her feet up on the armrest. "So, did you learn anything?"

"Yeah. There's a hell of a lot of stories about vampires these days."

Natasha sighed. "I'm not quizzing you on any vampire books."

"So, you're telling me I read the entire Twilight series for nothing?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Natasha said cheerfully.

"Fuck. What about Fifty Shades of Gray?"

"Forget you ever read it," Natasha advised. "It's a terrible book."

"But it's popular right now. Don't you want us to know what's popular?"

"You know it exists," Natasha said. "That's good enough."

Clint cleared this throat and reached for the deck of trivia cards. "Let's put all that stuff behind us and focus on our little game, okay?"

Tony immediately leaned forward and rubbed his hands together gleefully. "I am so fucking ready for this. Bring it on."

Clint flipped over the first card. "Uh, this book and the movie of the same name feature a romance between a zombie named R and a human girl named Julia, and is supposedly kind of like Romeo and Juliet or something." He rolled his eyes. "Seriously, Nat. Twilight is bad but you support this kind of crap?"

"Maybe you should write the questions next time," she said scornfully.

"Zombie movies, zombie movies. Let's see." Tony held up one hand and started ticking movies off on his fingers. "28 Days Later, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead."

"Shaun of the Dead," Bruce added.

"Oh yeah. That's a good one."

"Then there's I am Legend, Zombieland those Resident Evil movies and then, uh..."

"Romeo Must Die?" Thor offered.

Clint grimaced. "Not a zombie movie, dude."

Thor shrugged. "You did say it was based off of your tale of Romeo and Juliet."

"You and I are going to have a serious talk about Jet Li later," Clint said with a shake of his head. "Come on, guys, zombie romance novel made into a movie. It's probably PG-13, if that. Nothing good and gory."

"I don't think any of us has read that book," Steve said. "No matter how many hints you give us, we're just not going to be able to think of the title if we've never heard of it."

"Yeah, alright. We'll come back to that one later." Clint stuck it at the bottom of the deck and picked up another card. He frowned and exchanged a glance with Natasha. "I thought we were doing modern literature?"

"2003 wasn't that long ago," Natasha said serenely.

Clint shrugged. "If you say so. Which book, published in 2003 by Robert Langdon, was the focus of-"

"The Da Vinci Code," Bruce said suddenly.

Tony and Bruce were suddenly in their element, blurting out answers before the questions were even finished. Steve managed to answer one question about Harry Potter before the others, but he was completely lost as everyone went on about the Kite Runner, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and some books by Stephen King.

At the end of the day, Clint tallied up the points and determined that Bruce had beaten Tony by only a small margin.

"Look at that," Tony said. "Team Modern Day is kicking ass, too."