Alec Goes to Winslow is a fanfiction of Worm by Tumach.
While lazing about one day, Alec gets caught by a Truant Officer and sent to Winslow High School. He arrives just in time to witness the Locker Incident.
Alec continues going to school, and ends up becoming Taylor's main defender against the Trio.
It can be found here
on Space Battles and here on Archive of Our Own.
This fanfic contains examples of the following:
- Adaptational Nice Guy: After saving Taylor, Alec ends up being tasked with collecting her homework. He also protects her from bullying, out of spite for the Trio.
- A Dog Ate My Homework: The Trio attempt to rope Alec into collecting Taylor's homework assignments and then discarding them instead of delivering them to her in hospital. But they make the mistake of issuing a Shame If Something Happened threat about his social status if he helps Taylor, so he does just that out of spite.
- Alpha Bitch: Emma Barnes, with Sophia and Madison as her Girl Posse.
- At Least I Admit It: Alec is aware that being Heartbreaker's son wasn't healthy, and couldn't be bothered lying about that."Well, I suppose you might not be quite suicidal, you aren't showing the obvious signs like, say, stabbing yourself, but then at the rate things are going, you might not need to." Alec shrugged. "I could be wrong, I'm more familiar with more extreme cases of that kind of thing."
Taylor was still staring at him, more incredulous than confused now. "And that doesn't bother you at all? What's wrong with you?"
"Do you want a list?" - Book Dumb: Alec never went to school before, and it shows. He did learn some basics from a few teachers his father enslaved, but he has no idea what's going on in most of his classes, and considers maths to be just arcane sigils.Maybe trigonometry was really a codeword for Introductory Demon Summoning?
Actually, Alec thought, that would be pretty cool. Flipping through the textbook he had been handed, looking for pentagrams or other mystic symbols. Maybe there would be a drawing of what the imps one would presumably summon in such a class would look like. To his faint disappointment, what he found was some wavy lines and triangles. Lots of triangles. - Brilliant, but Lazy: Alec, who is actually quite smart and good at reading other people, but is very much both Book Dumb and exceptionally lazy. It's best exemplified when he picks French (his native language) as his "foreign language" course.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Alec doesn't understand Trigonometry, and compares it to arcane rituals.
- Everyone Has Standards: Alec finds the Trio's bullying abhorrent, and seeing them bullying her first hand spurs him to smash a fire sprinkler.
- Interestingly, this briefly gets deconstructed a few chapters later when Alec and Taylor are discussing ways to get back at the Trio; Taylor mentions Madison's blatant crush on Alec (which he has been comically oblivious to) and when she muses about Alec potentially using her crush to turn her against the rest of the Trio, Alec immediately balks at this idea (much to both her and his own surprise) since he finds it way too reminiscent of how his abusive father Heartbreaker would control others via their emotions. However, when Alec then awkwardly suggests that he was instead contemplating just tormenting Madison about her crush via teasing, a disgusted Taylor points out to him that there's no real difference between that and their original idea except that Alec would find the teasing one mildly amusing.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Lisa quickly realizes Alec is one of Heartbreaker's kids after Alec mentions he is Canadian and she contemplates his People Puppets powers.
- Fire Alarm Distraction: Alec deliberately smashes a fire sprinkler to get the Trio off of Taylor's back. Not only does it give him an opening to retrieve her bag, he also manages to douse them all.
- For Want Of A Nail: The entire fanfic is predicated around what seems to be the only truant officer in all of Brockton Bay spotting Alec having a nice time at a coffee shop and forcing him to attend public school.
- Foul Cafeteria Food: Par for the course at Winslow. It's actually what persuades Alec that Winslow is worse than his home life; Heartbreaker at least ensured his family had decent food, whereas he can't even identify what Winslow is serving.
- It Amused Me: Aisha is willing to help with Taylor's clothes shopping because she finds the whole "Alec was caught by the only truant officer in the city and is now helping to troll a bunch of bullies" situation to be hilarious.
- It's Personal: Taylor is one of the first people that Alec could really call a friend. Witnessing the Trio bullying her to the point where she breaks down crying and runs out of Winslow spurs him into smashing a fire sprinkler and dousing them in stinky water.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Alec's In-Universe opinion on the Trio. He's seen worse, and he decides to stand up to the Trio out of petty spite since they tried to threaten him.
- Moral Sociopathy: Alec in a nutshell. While he's basically The Sociopath due to his hellishly abusive upbringing having more or less taught him to have no emotions (he literally tells Taylor at one point that he can't actually feel emotions and the best he can do is at least act like he can), he's smart enough to realize that his situation isn't right (both on an ethical and basic human psychological/physiological level), and so tries to operate in a way where he can be seen as "normal". Complicating matters is that Alec is clearly (both willfully and not) an Unreliable Narrator, being both genuinely startled when Taylor breaks down crying from Emma's teasing and sincerely outraged over the idea of emotionally manipulating Madison.
- Mugging the Monster: The Trio trying to bully a Master who grew up in an abusive household, and he decides to hit back out of spite. While he's mildly impressed by the level of malice that they display, it still doesn't measure up to Heartbreaker.
- The Nicknamer: Alec never bothers to learn anyone's names, unless it's really important (like Taylor, or the Trio). He can't even remember Mr. Gladly's last name. So unless he learns someone's names, he gives nicknames like "Officer Asshole" (the truant officer) or "Redhead" (Emma).
- No OSHA Compliance: Winslow's fire sprinklers apparently haven't been inspected in years. The water inside them is turbid and stinky when Alec smashes one open to douse the bullies.
- No-Sell: Alec is apathetic and petty enough to No-Sell the Trio's bullying, and even turn the tables on them at least once.
- Not What It Looks Like: Alec comes to visit Taylor at her home after the fire sprinkler incident. Since he was doused along with the Trio, she gets him to change out of his wet clothes to avoid hypothermia, but he doesn't have dry clothes until Lisa arrives, so he's just on the couch in briefs and a blanket. And then Danny gets a call from the school about the incident and comes home early.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The truant officer's reaction to stumbling across the Locker Incident.
- Lisa when she finds out Alec got sent to school... and listed her as his mom.
- The Undersiders when they realize Alec is one of Heartbreaker's kids.
- Alec gets his own, more subdued one shortly after the above when he realizes that Lisa is genuinely terrified of their Mysterious Benefactor (a.k.a. Coil).
- Lisa then gets another one moments later, when she deduces from Alec's statements that he'd walked in on the aftermath of Taylor's Trigger Event.
- Everyone in the hallway when Alec smashes a fire alarm and sets off a sprinkler.
- Running Gag: Alec utterly refusing to call Mr. Gladly by his requested nickname of "Mr. G", and instead only referring to him via his internal narration as "Mr. [Literally Every Letter in the Alphabet Not Including 'G']".
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Taylor gets a lot more looks at Winslow after her trip to the mall with Alec and Aisha modernizes her wardrobe, with Aisha specifically picking out more clothes to emphasize Taylor's long, attractive legs to spite the Trio.
- Shotgun Wedding: Joked about when Danny sees Alec warming up after his clothes were soaked by opening the fire sprinkler on the Trio.
- Shame If Something Happened: Emma, Sophia, and Madison threaten to bully Alec if he sides with Taylor using this type of threat. Alec sides with Taylor purely to spite them.
- Shout-Out:
- Alec describes being picked up by the Truant Officer as "a wild Truant Officer appearing".
- Chapter 18 opens with Greg, Julia, and Taylor all discussing the Dread Pirate Roberts (who appears to have been an actual historical person in Earth Bet).
- Skipping School: Alec being mistaken for this kicks off the plot of the fic.
- Stand-In Parents: Lisa gets shanghaied into acting as Alec's mom. Rachel likewise acts as Alec's dad in an Omake.
- Stuffed into a Locker: The infamous "Locker Incident" from canon is one of the first things Alec encounters in Winslow High School.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Taylor's canon trigger event happens off-screen mere minutes before Alec arrives in Winslow. He doesn't realize she might have Triggered until Lisa points it out to him.
- Troll: Alec's entire code and ethos. He outright tells Taylor at one point that he's not helping her out of the goodness of his heart (which he doesn't really have), but more from a mix of childish spite and mild amusement.
- Unreliable Narrator: For all that Alec claims to be an utter sociopath who can't feel any emotion period, it's clear to the reader that this isn't entirely true (as seen in his pseudo-friendship with Taylor), and even Alec himself is unaware of this.
- Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: Social variant. In Winslow, Sophia, Emma, and Madison are the Unstoppable Force. Alec, not caring about the social hierarchy, is the Immovable Object.
- You Are Grounded!: Alec gets grounded by Lisa (his "mom") for not doing his homework.
