Chapter Text
Little Georgie Gallagher – Oh to Be a Quinn I
Life hadn’t dealt a very nice hand to little Georgie Gallagher, not at all. He was left outside a church at night when he was two, then taken into the foster care system. One might think that a baby boy with bright blue eyes, black-as-night curls, and a dance of light freckles across his cheeks would’ve found his forever home long ago.
But not for little Georgie Gallagher. No matter how nice the family was, how promising things were about to turn out, something would go wrong. When he was six, his foster father, the priest who’d found him outside the church in the first place, passed away. Hit by a drunk while walking home from a nighttime sermon.
When he was nine, it seemed like he would settle in with the O’Shea family, having been fostered by them for almost three years. Mr. O’Shea had been a stern but fair foster father, but when his home burned down, taking his livelihood with it, all three of the O’Shea foster children had to go back into the system.
Little Georgie would then bounce around from home to home, before settling into a boys home when he was thirteen. Though, at the time, you would have thought he was a seven-year-old boy. The other boys in the home thought he’d needed constant reminders of that. Despite being a teenager, he had barely grown, had no hair below his eyebrows, and his willy stayed tiny. He stood at a height with his piers’ elbows.
That had made school akin to hell. Not only was he one of the local ‘trouble making’ foster boys, but he was also tiny, unathletic, friendless, and not very bright, according to the faculty. That meant his days consisted of trying to avoid the other boys in the home, which was challenging when you shared a room and bathroom with three of them, and failing to avoid his tormentors at school.
This was how he survived life for two years. He didn’t ‘live’, he just survived, got by, and tried to make himself invisible. It didn’t work. He was so small that he couldn’t help but stick out. He was made to sit in front in every class, and given how a natural scowl had developed on his face, he was accused of being petulant and moody quite a lot.
That had led to visits to the principal’s office, and on his third visit, he’d been given six whacks of the wooden spoon on his briefs. The deputy-principal, whose job it’d been, had at least done only the bare minimum of what’d been required of him. By rights, given Georgie’s status as a teen, he could’ve been made to take his briefs down and be given the paddle. But deputy head Harrington said he knew that he didn’t deserve a proper smacking and left him off easy.
What had been even less fun was being made to take his briefs down in the schoolyard to show his tormenters the two pink splotches on his cheeks. One of them said he had a mind to turn the cheeks red, but an awkward silence from the others and a “That’s a bit lousy now, man,” from another one nixed that idea, thankfully.
That didn’t stop Georgie from getting an over-the-knee hairbrush spanking that night after dinner by one of the matrons of the boys home for getting a disciplinary at school. That’d hurt one-hundred times worse than the mild spooning from the deputy head. Being made to stand in the corner with nothing below his waist had been the height of humiliating. Especially when his roommates invited other boys to ‘play some games’, when really it was just so they could see his bare bottom.
That’d been little Georgie Gallagher’s life for two years. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t nice, and he’d only grown an inch in that time, looking barely eight years old by his fifteenth birthday.
That was when, out of the blue, he’d been called in for a fostering interview. It was very strange, almost no boys his age got called in for fostering interviews, every hopeful foster parent wanted someone young and impressionable, someone they could turn into mini versions of themselves, or so the other boys said. The O’Shea family hadn’t been like that, though.
But Georgie went to the interview and had been surprised to see that it was two men on the other side of the table. They’d introduced themselves as Lorcan and Ciarán Quinn. Lorcan was the littler of the pair, with curly, dense red hair, very bushy eyebrows, the greenest eyes Georgie had ever seen, and very fair skin.
Ciarán, despite having the more Gaelic name of the two, looked far less Irish than his husband. He was broad shouldered, had a caramel tan, brown hair combed back, and a light goatee. He had brown eyes with dark bags under them, but wore a perpetual small smile, one that brightened just a little bit when his husband spoke.
And Lorcan did do more of the talking, asking Georgie about himself, not that he had much to say. His answers for questions about his hobbies and interests were mostly silence, ums and ahs, and maybe a shrug. They hadn’t asked about his past, which was a relief. The other boys had told him that foster interviews as a teen were more like a CIA interrogation. If this was indicative of that, then the CIA was much softer than he’d been led to believe.
Nevertheless, by the third question about himself and giving a non-answer, Georgie knew that he’d blown it. He’d had his chance to impress and had given the men nothing. He had the personality of a wet slice of bread, and maybe not even that.
That was until Ciarán held his hand up by his mouth, blocking his ginger husband out, leaned across the table and whispered to him. “You’re doing great, chin up, lad.” Then he’d winked, and Georgie let out his first giggle in a long time.
That’d gotten a smile from both of the men. After that, Georgie hadn’t been able to stop talking, talking about things he hadn’t realised counted as interests or hobbies. He still didn’t mention his past, the mood had been brightened and there was no need to darken it with such a topic.
Georgie had been sad when the meeting had to end, then anxious that he’d never see them again, then angry at the betrayal he’d imagined.
“But I wanna go with you now,” he’d demanded, holding onto the hem of Ciarán’s baggy flannel shirt and digging his heels in the floor. He certainly didn’t sound fifteen, and had his file not said otherwise, one may very well have assumed him to be eight years of age. Maybe even younger.
“Kiddo, I know it might not seem very fair,” Lorcan had said, kneeling down to Georgie’s level. “But these things can take a little bit of time, sweety.” Georgie’s lower lip trembled, and tears had started to flood his eyes.
Then Ciarán got down to his level too, put a hand on his mop of dark curls, and pressed their foreheads together. “We’ll see each other again very soon, lad, you have my word on that.” In his creamy, dulcet country tone, it was impossible not to believe him.
So, with a group hug and a few tears, Georgie managed to wave the Quinns goodbye at the door, a nagging rot in his chest telling him that they were never coming back.
He’d wallowed for those seven days, and he’d been a misery to be around. He almost got in trouble in school again, to be sent to deputy head Harrington for a spooning, but the man had simply rolled his eyes at the excuse and told his Irish teacher to take him back to class and to not interrupt him with such nonsense again.
That had put a smile on his face.
It was only for five minutes, but still.
On that seventh day, however, one of the matrons had come to his room early in the morning and told him to pack his belongings. Georgie’s first dreadful thought was that he was being forced to move to another home, or somehow worse. He was almost in tears, his suitcase dragging by his side until he made it to the front door.
Standing there were the Quinns, littler Lorcan, the smiley ginger, and country Ciarán, with his Mediterranean looks and farmer’s accent. It was then that the tears had permission to fall.
Lorcan and Ciarán were by his side, the latter taking his suitcase, the former pulling him into a hug. One would have thought this was an adoption, not a fostering. Nevertheless, it was an improvement in life, out of the boys home, into an actual home. Even if he only had a little bit of space to call his own, it would be his.
And Lorcan and Ciarán were so nice, not in the fake way he’d seen adults be before, but in a sincere way that shined through their eyes. They were in love, in-sync, and Georgie couldn’t help but be drawn in by them.
Then they led him to their car, ready to take him away to his new life.