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By the age of six, Peter Parker could speak more languages than most could in a lifetime.
Growing up with May and Ben, Peter had learned Italian and Spanish. They had started teaching it to him early, even before he went to live with them— speaking to him in both languages whenever he came over, getting him picture books in Italian and Spanish along with English, things like that. According to May, his parents had helped too. Neither of them had been fluent in either language, but they knew enough to get by, and they had decided to help him in any way possible.
After they had passed, and he was living with May and Ben, they continued his education. As a result, he could fluently speak all three by the age of six and was well on his way to learning another.
Once he had started school, he was placed with a small group of students who were learning French because they already spoke English and Spanish. Now, Peter didn’t know it yet, but he had a natural affinity for learning new languages, and was rapidly passing his peers in the class. So rapidly, in fact, that his teacher had to give him extra materials and, after only a few years of elementary school, he was almost fluent, mostly because of his stubborn determination.
In second grade, there had been an exchange student from China in his class.
His teacher had put her next to Peter, and he had excitedly turned to her, eager to make a new friend. “Hi! I’m Peter! What’s your name?”
She had looked at him with a slightly confused expression and asked him to repeat it slower, carefully enunciating her words.
Peter had quickly complied, trying to slow his excited brain.
By the end of the class, he had learned that she spoke Mandarin, and had agreed to teach him in exchange for help with her English.
At the end of the year, Peter was able to add Mandarin to his list of languages.
When he met Ned, Peter had been enchanted by the Filipino language and culture. It was a mix of so many different languages, and it sounded beautiful. Ned had readily agreed to teach him, and a new friendship was formed.
Peter had gradually learned it from Ned, but after a few years he could easily converse with his parents in their language when he visited, much to Ned’s amazement.
It was around that time that Peter realized— he loved learning new languages. May had also come to this conclusion, and had started looking into different language learning classes and apps.
In fifth grade, he had a Deaf classmate who had communicated primarily through ASL. Peter had once again found himself sucked into the excitement and thrill that came with a new language, and had asked him to teach Peter through a series of written requests and silent begging. His classmate had agreed, and started teaching Peter.
ASL was such a different way of communicating than Peter was used to, but he was fascinated by it. In addition to his classmate helping him, Peter had begged May to sign him up for other lessons. May had quickly folded under the full force of Peter’s puppy dog eyes, and so by the end of the year he was easily able to hold conversations solely with his hands.
Over the next few years, he had also added Russian and German to his repertoire— what could he say, the Duolingo bird was scary.
In seventh grade, he had gone through a huge spy phase, and was somehow completely fluent in morse code by June. It had gotten to the point where he would unconsciously spell out his thoughts when he was tapping his pencil.
May, at that point, had also signed him up for various extracurricular language classes, and through those he had met a few people who spoke languages he didn’t yet know— one from Brazil, one from Japan, one from Iraq. He once again asked them to teach him their languages, and added Portuguese, Japanese, and Arabic to his repertoire.
He taught himself coding in eighth grade alongside Ned, and to help he also learned binary. Don’t ask him how he did it, he didn’t really know either.
Ned had quickly surpassed him in coding, but Peter didn’t mind. He much preferred the engineering and physics side of things.
After the bite and becoming Spider-man, Peter had realized just how much his language skills helped him when he was out on patrol. He could communicate with so many more people, helping them more than he could have without their languages.
But there were still some people he couldn’t understand, the most common of which were Cantonese and Korean, followed by Greek, Polish and Hindi. He quickly learned those as well, relying on Karen, his AI, to help him. With her quizzing him on patrol as well as spending a little of his free time every day on the cursed bird app, he quickly added those to his repertoire.
He also made a list of the other languages he encountered— living in Queens, there were quite a few— and taught himself the basics of those as well.
Throughout all of this, he kept working on all of his other languages through a variety of penpals, books, podcasts, music, in-person gatherings, and switching between them with Karen to keep them fresh in his mind. As a result, he could fluently speak eighteen languages, with another twelve just well enough to help people when he was on patrol.
Ned was the only person who knew the full extent of his language skills— well, maybe MJ too, she seemed to always know everything. It wasn’t like he just went around telling everyone that he could speak more languages than there were syllables in a haiku.
Besides, it was entertaining to know what people were saying when they thought he couldn’t understand them.
But it did make language classes so insanely boring.
Peter let out another sigh from his seat at the back of the class, resisting the urge to grab his StarkPad and work on a few projects for his internship. If it were any other class, he would have, but Maestra Short had already told him to put it away that class with a stern, “Peter. Guarda los electrónicos,” and he didn’t want to push his luck.
But he was so close to solving this one equation that he had been working on all night…
His sleep deprived brain gave up on self control, and he grabbed his StarkPad and pulled up the equation.
If the velocity increases and friction decreases, the suit becomes too unstable, but if he calibrated the thickness of the plating right it should even out. He looked at it again, double-checking his calculations— they were all correct, so why wasn’t it lining up?
Oh, for Odin’s sake.
He dropped a negative.
A fucking negative.
He dropped his head onto the table with a groan, remembering too late that he was still in the middle of class.
A class that was now staring at him in silence.
Great.
Maestra Short made her way over to him, hand on her hips. She let out a sigh when she caught sight of his StarkPad.
“Peter, why aren’t you paying attention? Put that away,” she demanded in that patronizing tone all of his teachers used when he wasn’t paying attention because for Thor’s sake, it was so boring. He was taking online MlT classes and building Avengers gear in his free time. He knew how to do a fucking logorithm.
Oh, screw it.
He started speaking in Spanish— not the imitation he did whenever he was in class, but real, fluent Spanish. “I’m not paying attention because I already know everything. I have been able to speak Spanish fluently since I was six. The only reason I’m in this class is because I also speak all of the other languages offered here. Hell, I can speak more languages than there are stripes on the American flag. I am currently running on three hours of sleep in the last week, six red bulls, and the sheer force of will. I would much rather be calculating schematics for the Iron Man suit than staring at the clock for an hour waiting for this class to end. I know this is probably insanely rude, but I can’t bring myself to care right now.” He abruptly stood up, switching back to English and grabbing his bag. “I’m going to go do something useful with my time.”
He walked out of the door, heading to the main office. He started speedwalking, as if trying to outrun the realization that he had just snapped at his teacher and walked out of the classroom.
Shit.
What was Mr. Stark going to think? Actually, he would probably be proud. What would Pepper think?
He winced.
Yeah, he had probably just started a PR nightmare.
Whoops.
He made it to the office, asking if they could call his second emergency contact— Mr. Stark— before promptly collapsing into one of the chairs, the rest of his energy disappearing.
He really needed a nap. Or a full night’s sleep. Scratch that, what if he just passed out for a week. Maybe he could avoid the teasing from Mr. Stark and the probably endless questions from his classmates. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.
Unfortunately, his plans were interrupted as Mr. Stark rushed through the door.
“Hey, da— To— Mr. Stark,” Peter mumbled.
He whipped around, losing some of the tension in his posture as he caught sight of the clearly exhausted Peter. “Hey, Bambino. You doing alright?”
He let out a low groan. “Tired.”
Mr. Stark nodded. “I can see that. When’s the last time you slept?”
“Uhh… last night.” Well, he did drift off for a few minutes while he was on patrol.
Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow. “Mhm. Karen?”
She answered from the phone in Peter’s pocket. “Peter has slept three hours in the last five days.”
“Traitor,” he mumbled.
Mr. Stark sighed, pulling Peter to his feet. He turned to the receptionist, ignoring their shell-shocked expression. “I’m going to take Peter home. Thank you for contacting me.”
They just nodded numbly.
He led Peter to the waiting car, sliding into the back with him and nodding at Happy, who started driving to the tower.
“When we get back to the tower, you’re going to sleep for the next twelve hours, and then you’re going to tell me all about how you walked out of your Spanish class.”
How did he know about that already? Whatever. Peter couldn’t really bring himself to care right now.
He leaned against Mr. Stark, his mind foggy.
As he was drifting off, his brain gave one last ditch effort to embarrass him further. “Thanks, dad,” he mumbled, his words slurring together.
He was asleep before he could see his mentor's face, the love clear in his expression.
Happy grinned as he snapped a quick photo and sent it to Pepper to add to the Avengers’ collective blackmail folder.
Took them long enough.