Disclaimer: Eyeshield 21 is awesome, and not mine. Ditto for the Huh-huh Bros.

Fandom: Eyeshield 21

Characters: Juumonji, Kuroko, Toganou, and mentions of most of the rest of the team

Warnings: Hiruma drops the F-bomb once, because he's Hiruma. No pairings (unless you want there to be, in which case, rock on)

Other: For the couple of chapters where you can see the bros getting accepted into the team and starting to take football seriously. I love the way Juumonji has to do everything first, and then the other two sort of catch up five or ten chapters later. :)

When he quit smoking, the other two didn't notice.

At least, they didn't notice at first. All in all, it took about four days for a quizzical Kuroki to look up at him, cigarette in his hand, and say: "Hey, dude, you don't look… right. Is something different with you?"

Juumonji just shrugged and felt his hand itch for a smoke. The phrase 'hey, can I have one of those, I pitched mine and I don't know why' fought with the slightly louder 'shouldn't we go get some more practice? There's a match coming up' as he opened his mouth, and in the end nothing came out at all. He jammed his hands in his pockets and shook his head, not trusting himself to try for an actual out-loud answer.

"Oh." Kuroki looked at him for another long second, then shrugged and turned back to the road, taking another drag of smoke. "Okay."

Toganou, always sharper at noticing the small, weird details, looked up at Juumonji just in time to see him take out a ripped-out page of Monthly American Football something-or-other and scowl down at it like the paper had mortally offended him. If that seemed strange to him, he didn't say anything. He just shrugged and looked down at his own magazine, wondering why Aizen didn't just kill the guy and get it over with. And why Juumonji was the only one of the three who didn't look… thug-like. Oh well. Maybe he was sick.

(Immediately afterwards, Juumonji shoves the paper back into his pocket with a curse and stands up straight, stretching. "I need to go for a run," he says, and takes the deepest breath he's taken in more than four years. "Tired of sitting still. You coming?")

(They're out of breath by the time he even starts to sweat, and he's still running when they go home.)

It took another two days after that for them to really detect the violent difference in the way Juumonji was training and the grim, focused expression on his face. The tipping point was when he stopped leaving practice early and started staying late instead.

That, and Anezaki Mamori had actually pulled him aside during practice to talk to him in private. She didn't even look angry, and he hadn't threatened Kobayakawa at all.

By the time she patted him on the shoulder kindly and sent him back the other two had quit working completely, and they stared at him as he fell back in line, slightly pinker than when he'd left. (Acknowledgement is something of a weak point for him now that his dad is bothering him every time they see each other, but he'd never say that out loud. Anezaki just seems to know these things on the strength of her own instinct.) Kurita had been ecstatic at his sudden 'enthusiasm' during the rest of the training, and Hiruma watched him from the corner of his eyes between passes and smiled his worrying, sharp-toothed smile.

When they asked what she'd been talking to him about, he didn't say 'she saw I quit smoking and wanted to tell me she thought that was a wonderful idea.' Instead he stammered out something about 'we haven't bothered Kobayakawa in a while, she's glad we're not taking advantage of him or something'. He didn't have an answer for 'but she already told us that' or "why just you, then?" but thankfully the question never actually came.

(He almost snaps a few days later and buys himself a pack, but in the second he picks up the box and tears it open a voice behind him says "Hey, Fucking-Bro, put it down before I kill you. We need you strong, not poisoning yourself.")

(No one's there when he turns around, but he didn't need to see anyway. The next day someone anonymous drops a package of gum onto Hiruma's desk.)

They finally figured it out when Musashi told them, but by that time it was like they knew it all along. So they quit as well, and if Juumonji was, maybe, a little bit quicker on the uptake than they were, no one was overly surprised.

(He's their big brother, after all. He always goes first.)

(He wouldn't have it any other way.)

D'aaaaww. Brotherly love. XD I like this one, because there's not enough non-pairing love for the Bros out there, and it's hard to enjoy a good story if there are pairings in there that you don't like. Feedback is, as ever, a wonderful thing.

-FSA