His cape sweeping behind him, Boreas the Wind-Wielder strode unarmed into the elementary school (Insectoid Lad Elementary? Rick has an elementary school?), flashing his hero smile at anyone he encountered. Most kids were in class at that particular moment, but the few roaming the halls stopped and stared, or screamed and ran over. He signed a few autographs for a few young fans, which he loved doing anyway. Boreas loved kids, especially between ages 5 and 12, and in particular the ones whose parents bought them Boreas the Wind-Wielder merchandise. A man had to make a living somehow, and charity wasn't covering it, even if Nick's two moms gave him $600 a year. That wasn't a living wage! Fortunately they weren't the only regular donors.

He continued flashing the hero smile until he was flashing it at the receptionist in the office.

"Good morning, citizen!" he boomed in his hero speaking voice, which was much harder to conserve for longer periods of time than his hero smile (as his natural tenor hurt his throat much less than a fake baritone). "I'm here to see Miss Thoreau. Taryn Thoreau."

He waited for his answer while beaming heroically.

Meanwhile, in his secret heart of hearts, he actually wasn't feeling up to anything much but taking a nap. 10:00 AM was part of the "sleep" sector of his sleep schedule as it was calibrated at that moment. Oh well. It was worth it for Taryn.

The small woman behind the desk was ancient. She looked like she had been in this spot since the '30s and they had just built the school and the office around her. She adjusted her glasses and looked down at her neatly organized notes in front of her.

"Ah, yes. She mentioned you. Here, put this on." She handed him a big name tag. "Her room is four-oh-two. Do you need me to print you a map?"

"I'm certain I'll find it!" he said with brimming confidence. He was actually not certain, not at all, but Boreas the fucking Wind-Wielder does not wait for someone to print him a fucking map, thankyouverymuch. Besides, he told himself, it wasn't a big school. "Just point me the right direction, if you don't mind, ma'am." He affixed the big name tag to his chest and patted it and herosmiled.

Men never wanted the map. The old lady sighed and make a tut-tut noise. "It's on the 400 hall. Out of here, take a left, then a right, go up the stairs, then go left." She looked back down at her notes and Boreas no longer existed to her.

That woman is not nearly impressed enough to have been taking to Boreas the Wind-Wielder, Cameron harumphed in his head as he thanked the lady and made purposeful, heroic strides out and to the left and then the right and then up the stairs and then the right and then on until he got to a dead-end and shit fuck, it was left but that class of fifth graders saw him, so he had to wave and tell them to stay in school before he could correct his path.

He always felt like a hypocrite telling kids to stay in school, since he had never gone back after almost being killed during his third semester of college.

Eventually he was in front of the room Taryn taught in, and was tapping on the door.

Taryn's eyes lit up when she saw Boreas at the door. He had said he was going to show up, and he hadn't been lying, but some small part of Taryn had been afraid he would sleep through it. She smiled and looked at her class.

"Kids, we have a very special visitor today." There was a murmur of excitement and Taryn walked over to open the door and let her boyfriend in.

"Say hello to Boreas the Wind-Wielder, children."

"Hello Mr. Boreas." The class answered in somewhat unity before they all began to swarm towards Boreas.

"Hey, kids!" Boreas said, grinning. "So glad to meet you!" Before the kindergarteners overwhelmed him, he managed to look over at Taryn and grin at her, too, and mouth you look hot because he liked her in purple. He winked at her as little tugging hands and loud questions began to absorb his attention.

He tried his level best to answer every coherent query he could, but it was an uphill battle. His grin stayed on the whole time. Cameron really liked kids.

Taryn smiled as she watched the kids swarm around Boreas. She leaned against the dry erase board and counted off the time in her head. When a few minutes had passed, she let out an almost deafening whistle. The kids broke away from Boreas and returned to their tables.

"Hey, kids. You know what would be a lot of fun? What if Boreas sang us a song before nap time?" The kids answered back enthusiastically. Taryn glanced over at Boreas, grinning.

Oh, great. I have nothing prepared that's appropriate for children.

"Why don't you all get comfy on the floor there? I'll wait for you."

He glanced over at Taryn and raised an eyebrow, grinning and not backing down.

Ah! Guitar there in the corner. Acoustic wasn't necessarily his forte, but he'd spent enough time with an electric in his hands that he could fake it, even if his expressed preference was for bass. He jogged over and picked it up, slinging the strap over his upper body.

On an open chord it sounded...well, kind of awful. So he had to take a few moments to tune it. That was okay, right? That was what you did with guitars. He only took 20 seconds. It wasn't perfect, but...okay, wait, the G string was still out. That had to be fixed. Another five seconds. G string is an important string. So were tiny thong panties.

"Okay!"

Didn't want to get the kids too excited, right? They were about to take a nap. That ruled out...well, most of his repertoire. Even "Dream On" by Aerosmith. He didn't know what happened when you wailed Steven Tyler high parts around kids.

The song he had stuck in his head was "1234 1234" by Catch-22, but that would be awful. He had just the thing, though!

"I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am..."

Strum strum strum strum strum strum strum strum! He wished he had a drummer behind him. Where was a drummer when you needed one?

"Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you?
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary one note spelled l-i-t-e
My story's infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette it doesn't rest

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul..."

Skip the rest of the song. Pick out the last chord in an arpeggio. Win. Grin at Taryn.

Taryn's face was all smiles as she watched her boyfriend serenade the class. When he was finished, she clapped her hands together.

"Okay, nap time!" The kids grumbled, but they all got up to go lay down on their mats. When everyone had laid down, Taryn flipped off the lights, leaving the room illuminated by only a single lamp in the corner.

Then, she wrapped her arms around Boreas's neck.

"Thanks for coming."

"Except for a little bit of sacrificed sleep, not a problem at all," Boreas murmured, putting his hands lightly on her hips. "I told you I'd love to see you here in your element." He grinned. "You're so much hotter than my kindergarten teacher was, you know. Granted, you are one of the most attractive women I've ever met, so it stands to reason."

She laughed a little, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle the sound.

"I think you need to meet more ladies, then. I'm not very pretty."

Boreas blinked at her in shock, and then pulled her closer, looking down at her. "Taryn. Listen close, 'kay? I am an attractive man. I am a very attractive man. Attractive woman have looked at me with approval even before I was a superhero. But when you were interested, I knew I had to do everything in my power to snag you. Next to you, I am pretty much insignificant. You are gorgeous. I would rather be seen with you than with any other woman in the world. Let me say that again, and even define my terms: I would rather be seen with you, by the media or our friends or random passersby, than with any other female creature I am aware of on this Earth."

"That's sweet." She said lightly, but then she shook her head. "But it's silly."

"But it's true. Or at least I believe it's true - and since you think I'm intelligent and have good taste, you have no reason not to believe that I'm right about it."

He realized that he was now tracing the curves of Taryn's hips with his fingers and let her go. "I shouldn't get cozy with you at your school. I'm sorry."

She kissed him lightly and shrugged her shoulders. "You're a lot of things, Boreas. Silly is one of the foremost."

Boreas folded his arms. "Harumph!" he said, remembering to keep it quiet around the sleeping kids. "I am not silly. You're silly."

Sick burn, Boreas. Especially when you don't even weasel-word your way out of lying.

"I have sandwiches, you know. I picked up six Italian subs - one and maybe a half for me, and like four and a half or so for you." He removed his cape so he could unstrap his quiver and uncap it, revealing not arrows but sandwiches in white wax paper. "Oh! And! I have an independent test of your lie detector that Rom Hackley sent me before I saw him the other day. Fun with numbers."

"I am not silly. I am Truth incarnate." She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a look. But then she was over it and there were sandwiches.

"Thank you. I don't want to eat until lunch, though. I need the calories right before recess."

He refastened the quiver and cape in their proper arrangement and saluted. "Sure you want me sticking around that long? I don't know how much of your teacher mojo me and my chiseled abs will be diverting away from the kids. I don't want to turn this into Boreas Day for them if that wasn't your plan from the get-go. Besides, I attract attention. The longer I stay here, the more likely they're going to call an impromptu assembly honoring my contributions to the city in front of the whole school." He started ranging around, looking at things in the room, not getting too far from Taryn so she could continue to hear his low voice. "And then I'll have to make a speech, and I'll have to tell them that I'm here because of the absolute hottest woman in the room, and won't everyone turn and look at Miss Taryn Thoreau and try not to be jealous of me for having her or her for being her." He jumped up so he was sitting on the edge of her desk, facing her, and grinned.

"We will deal with that when we come to it." Taryn said plainly, though in the back of her head she was actually kind of excited about the prospect.

Boreas, the quintessential fidgeter, began to lightly bump his heels in a slow but deliberate rhythm against the desk he was sitting on. "How long d'you keep them down for?" he asked, surveying the sleeping kindergarteners on their mats.

She shrugged. "I used to time it, but now I just wait until they get restless."

Boreas nodded. "I know all about restlessness. Be glad you don't have a child version of me in your class. I didn't understand why anyone would want to take naps...at least until I was about sixteen, I guess. I probably got more than the recommended percentage of my delta sleep from two-hour naps during college. You know...the little of college I actually did."

She shrugged. "I took naps as a kid. It's what you were supposed to do."

Boreas said "harumph" again, as if tasting the sound of it, and then shook his head.

"Different for me, on account of the ADHD. My childhood had me convincing anyone that would listen that I was a robot. D'you have a kid like that? Is it that one?" He pointed at a child at random.

Taryn shrugged. "All of my kids are tiring in their own way. But I love them."

Boreas placed a hand on the desk next to him and leaned on it, then turned that into a one-handed handstand and starting walking the edges of the desk on his hands.

"What do you do while they're napping? D'you wanna make out on the roof of the school?"

She frowned at him. "No. That would be so unprofessional." She put her hands on her hips.

"That was a test of your dedication to the craft of teaching." Then, not a lie: "I didn't actually think you'd do it, obviously."

He did a front handspring off the desk and then a loop-the-loop and a corkscrew in midair, which was cheating and he knew it. He came to rest standing in front of Taryn.

"Hi!"

Taryn looked at him with her hands on her hips.

"Is that all out of your system now?"

"We'll see, won't we?" Boreas said, grinning. "Anyway, one of your kids was all like 'Can you fly?' and I was like 'Sure I can!' They may want me to demonstrate. Your ceiling's not that high, though."

He took his phone out, poked and dragged on the screen a few times, and showed Taryn Rom's text message. "I'm curious what your crap alarm spits out."

The text message was simply the following:
1+1=10
1+1=10
1+1=10

She looked at it. "The middle one looks true." She shrugged her shoulders. "Why's it matter?"

"Huh." Boreas looked at it. "Binary, which makes sense, and then I dunno what the third is. Rom and I were talking about truth-conditions and philosophy of language" (they also played Pokemon) "and I mentioned your ability, and he wanted to test its logical functionality. But I already knew how languages with it, since you can detect lies I tell in Latin, right?" He shrugged.

"That one's restless." He pointed at a kid who looked kind of restless. He really wanted them to wake up and start being interesting again. And interested in him, too. He was pretty cool.