Characters: Come on out, all you sexy people. Multi-threads, threadjacking, usual party set-up. Setting: Sunken Meadow State Park, Long Island. All day! Content: Nick Fury Summary: It's the annual Stark Enterprises Family Day! Bring the kids or the weird new girlfriend or just gatecrash and take advantage of the free food.
Locked in on one side by awesome, glacier cut bluffs and another by the rough ocean waves, Sunken Meadow felt quite private and contained for such a sprawling and diverse conservation. The beach itself was narrow and not particularly welcoming, not the dark water, but just beyond it the lush grass sprouted enthusiastically and continued along the gentle sine wave of land that led up into the dense habitats in a spongy, clean, astroturf kind of way. It was perfect for bare toes and sunbathing and picnic blankets, if the assortment of managed fun wasn't enticing enough; horseshoes on the sandy beach, races of all varieties (relay, three-legged and sack drawing the biggest crowds), the particularly competitive tug-of-war and the particularly messy egg toss, et cetera. If that all felt too oppressively like team building exercises, the maps at the treeline displayed winding paths to follow to explore the bird sanctuary and the cultivated habitats of a stunning variety of flora and fauna, with no reason to worry about finding ones way back; the kits fluttering and darting over the beach were brightly coloured beacons.
And if, like Tony, you found all of this was too intolerably social, there was the glass fronted recreation centre; a sprawling bungalow with what felt like acres of soft, fragrant wooden deckspace, and the interior lushly converted for the occasion to an adults only open bar and buffet with intimate tables overflowing with flowers and party favours. From the west side the playground for the children was clearly visible, and on the deck a craft station had been set up for facepainting and some kind of embarrassing accessory assemblage, ostensibly hats but rarely producing anything that looked much like a hat. Occasionally, someone would wander by in their proud, new creation and display it for Tony to approve of, which he did with a nod or thumbs up to get them to go away and embarrass themselves at lawn bowling or something so he could go back to leaning on the deck railing and staring at the ocean for as long as he could get away with. Eventually, Pepper would appear and tell him to go participate and engage and be normal and he would have to muster up his professional smile, but for now listening to everyone have fun was more than enough for him. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with these people outside of the labs or offices. Some of them he knew better in dark closets and he would rather keep it that way. Maybe he could look into getting one of Nick's LMDs to model for himself so he wasn't obligated to make an appearance anymore and potentially threaten his Prada with kid snot and egg yolks.