I'm Not The Man I Want To Be

[tellshannon815]

Title: I'm Not The Man I Want To Be
Characters: Hurley. Mentions of David Reyes, Carmen, Diego, Johnny, Charlie.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own Hurley. He owns me.
Warnings: Spoilers only through S4, but mainly for Hurley-centric episodes.
Summary: For fosfomifira, who requested "taking a break". Hurley reflects on the times when he's needed to take a break and escape from real life.



When Hurley was growing up, he used to use his dad’s old Camaro as a place to hide, from his mother getting at his about the candy bars, from his older brother Diego getting at him, and from his own feelings about the way his family has been torn apart.

Carmen spent a lot of time crying in the weeks after David left. Either that or looking at her stupid statue of Jesus and praying that he’d come back, even as it became more and more obvious that he wouldn’t. And his stupid big brother turned to his fists. Practically every day Diego would come home with a fat lip and bruises, or someone’s parents would ring Carmen to complain about him.

But Hurley used the Camaro as somewhere to get away from everything that was happening inside the house, to relax and eat his candy bars without fear of what Carmen will say, to take the breaks he needed from his life as he knew it.



He had his own favourite corner of the field at school when he was fifteen, somewhere he could escape from the dismissive, sneering looks of the popular cheerleaders, and the comments about his weight by the jocks. Even Johnny sometimes joined in, although he always said he was sorry afterwards.

He’d always tried to act like he didn’t care, becoming the funny guy as kind of a defence mechanism, used both the jokes and just generally being friendly and happy-go-lucky to make himself liked.

But he was free there to just be himself, not to worry about what everyone thought of him.



That last day with Johnny, before everyone found out about his lottery win and his life changed forever, had been Hurley’s way of taking a break from the thoughts of how things will be in the future. He’d known that far from being someone who didn’t like the limelight, he’d become someone whose face was well known locally. And he knew that even as he and Johnny enjoyed their day of freedom from Mr. Cluck’s, from Randy, that it wasn’t going to last.

Johnny had promised that things wouldn’t change between them. He may even have meant it at the time. But Hurley knew it couldn’t possibly be true.

The way he’d been acting that day, asking out Starla, who he’d barely been able to imagine would ever be interested in someone like him, and the “Cluck You” with the gnomes on Nations’s lawn, which he’d often dreamed of doing every time Nations chewed him out over something, gave him the chance to be the person he’d always wanted to be.

But then it all came out about his win, and he had to admit he wasn’t that person after all.



It had freaked him out when it first happened.

But now, Hurley finds that the best times he spends at Santa Rosa are the times he spends with Charlie. It’s just like things always were between them on the island, uncomplicated, fun. And it’s not always about telling Hurley he has to go back, or telling Jack he’s not supposed to be raising Aaron.

Most of the time, they’re just talking about dumb stuff, like they could do for hours on the island. And sometimes Hurley can forget that he’s Hugo Reyes, lottery winner, global celebrity as one of the Oceanic Six, liar.

When Hurley’s with Charlie, he can finally be who he wants to be.