The Avenger's city:
Everyone agreed that New York was the Avenger's city. Sure Iron Man spent plenty of time in Malibu. Hawkeye and the Black Widow would vanish for stretches at a time. Thor committed in from Asguard. The Hulk would wonder off and then be dragged back, most often by Iron Man. And even Captain America had done his trip across the states to get reconnected to his country. But beyond all that, New York was the home of the Avengers, and New Yorkers were damn proud of that.
The claiming thing started about three months in.
The Captain had returned from his road trip without much fanfare. Even if his face was plastered everywhere, he had found that most people didn't recognize him, or at least didn't call him out on who he was, if he hid his hair under a ball cap and didn't use the publicity smile he had learned all those years ago. Plus this was New York. Cap had stopped in LA on his trip and everyone had known who he was and made a big deal about it. Not in New York.
So he had settled back into his apartment in Brooklyn. Tony had offered him rooms in that tower of his but it didn't feel right to take him up the offer. He wasn't some big shot rich guy with designer furniture and a penthouse with a 360 view; he was just a kid from Brooklyn and he liked it that way.
His routine was a simple one. Running in the morning with a stop for coffee on the way back to his apartment, a quick shower was followed by reading the paper and a day of re-familiarizing himself with the city and catching himself up on everything he had missed, if SHIELD didn't have something they wanted his help with.
Then the three month anniversary of the attack had come around and the reporter had tracked him down. He had mostly managed to avoid her kind up until then but she had been determined and when it came down to it he had suffered through worse. The "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn" line was one of his standards by then but she had latched onto it. By the following week Captain America was The Man From Brooklyn. By the week following that the graffiti around his apartment had taken on a distinctly red white and blue tone, and the coffee shop he frequented after his runs had a new star spangled special.
New York may have the Avengers, but Brooklyn had claimed Captain America.
Two weeks later someone had found a clip of Bruce Banner saying that he broke Harlem. The youtube video went viral and Harlem was suddenly greener then a Saint Patrick's Day parade and the rest of the Bronx quickly followed.
Steve suspected Clint.
Bruce was extremely apologetic of course, but again this was New York. Having the strongest monster on the planet as your mascot was worth the possible destruction.
After the fourth time Bruce had been asked about it at a formal function Tony had taken pity on him and very publicly claimed Lower Manhattan.
It had been a charity event which was the only reason Bruce had even agreed to come in the first place. He had been standing by the bar extremely awkwardly nursing something that Tony was certain didn't even have an alcohol content when the reporter pounced on him. Come to think of it Tony knew that reporter; it was the same Vanity Fair woman who had pounced on him a few times. She clearly had a superpower for getting into places where the press wasn't allowed. Then she had asked the question that had made Bruce cringe and Tony had stepped in.
"I want Manhattan. If Hulk gets the Bronx and Cap has Brooklyn then I get Manhattan."
The woman recovered quickly given that his words had nothing to do with the previous section of the conversation, but then she did have prior experience with Tony. "Care to elaborate on that?"
"Well I live there, my tower is there, and let's face it I was here first I obviously get to claim the best real estate."
"What about Captain America? People have called him the First Avenger."
"Yeah well he got first claim and he chose Brooklyn so his loss. Besides Stark Industries East Coast HQ has always been in the business district even before I became Iron Man, So yeah, I get Manhattan."
Manhattan quickly became lower Manhattan as Natasha subtly laid claim to the garment district, the diamond district and the theater district. When asked she claimed ignorance but the money spent in select shops and the carefully spontaneous appearances along Broadway, Times Square and throughout midtown quickly swayed the area to her way of thinking.
Thor claimed Staten Island somewhat accidentally by crashing there when he first returned after delivering Loki to Asguard. He seemed happy enough; leading unscheduled hunt's through the parks there after the first disaster in central park. He even claimed one of the ferry's as his vessel riding it around the bay while singing Viking songs at the top of his lungs to the amusement of the locals and joy of the tourists.
Clint was the last to be claimed but only because there was some argument over where he belonged. Jersey tried to claim him but in true New York style everyone ignored them. For a while the general consensus was that the park was his, and he did hang out there quite often. It started with Thor's strange asguardian holiday and the hunt that apparently went with it, but even after Thor had been kicked out he liked to hide in trees and occasionally stop muggers with Nerf guns.
Then one day Coney Island was attacked by a giant squid thing and Clint was front and center to fight it off. Clint stuck around until everything had been cleaned up, and that was that. When Coney Island rebuilt it was purple.
Everyone had their place and their people and friendly rivalries broke out between people over whether Gravesend was close enough to Coney Island or if it belonged to the captain and whether Long Island City could be claimed by Natasha. When they were attacked they pulled together, and in the mean time it was all in good fun because New York was the Avenger's City and they were proud of it.
I realize I'm stepping out of my normal fandom but it just kind of showed up on the page so here it is.