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As the human world exchange student, it was ostensibly your job to educate the others on human culture. Did you need to teach them about feasts? No. Obviously, they knew how to eat. Beelzebub was the Avatar of Gluttony, after all. He ate all the time.
But what the brothers didn’t know was the joy of the warm, fuzzy feelings that came with a holiday feast.
You had teamed up with the usual suspects to cook a truly excessive spread. Barbatos had experience planning the Devildom’s royal celebrations. And what Luke lacked in experience from being such a young angel, he made up for in enthusiasm, baking every Celestial Realm recipe he knew under the watchful eye of Simeon.
The brothers themselves each had a part to play, too. You made sure to give them tasks that suited them. Mostly to keep them out of trouble, but also because everyone pitching in was part of what made a holiday feel so special.
So, Lucifer, Solomon, Mammon, and Asmodeus were in charge of preparing and decorating the dining room. Since it was early April, the decorations were spring-like, with live flowers and conjured birds and butterflies flitting about merrily. Even from the other room, you could hear Asmo cooing over how beatific it all was, Solomon offering the occasional suggestion that somehow made everything more elegant, and Mammon loudly insisting he deserved partial credit for “aesthetic direction,” whatever that meant. You knew him well enough that you could practically see Lucifer’s small, proud smile as he observed their work--right up until Mammon tried to pocket a particularly nice ornament and got pinned in place by a single look.
Satan and the twins were in charge of preparing the living room for post-feast socializing; sort of as a way to keep Beel away from the kitchen, partly to keep Belphegor from napping underfoot, and definitely to give Satan’s irritation at the racket a target as he wrangled Beel during his attempts to sneak out. Belphie had, at some point, still managed to drape himself over the couch in a way that suggested he had every intention of staying there indefinitely, while Satan tried very hard not to snap as Beel hovered halfway between rooms, clearly torn between helping and eating.
Which left you, Leviathan, and Diavolo to set the table. It was funny to see the heir apparent of the Devildom laying out silverware, fussing over the precise alignment of each piece and chuckling to himself over the novelty of it all. And Levi--who had originally been ridiculously pleased to be part of your group--was just as good at predicting who would want to sit where, based on what they’d be most upset to miss, as you had anticipated.
When you said as much, Levi and Diavolo both went quiet, and you paused to face them.
“You see, we call the Avatars of Sin brothers because they are a family, but it wasn’t always that way,” Diavolo explained, gazing into the middle distance. “Before they fell from the Celestial Realm, they had hundreds of years to get to know one another.”
“Yeah, it’s like one of those reincarnation isekai shows,” Levi replied, placing his name card on the setting next to yours. “When you have nothing but time, being family isn’t really the same. Like, the twins are actually related, but the rest of us…”
You thought for a moment, mulling over possible responses before gently pressing a hand to Levi’s shoulder. “In the human world, there’s this thing called a polycule. And without getting too far into it, I feel like that’s kind of what you all have here.”
“Aha! Yes, that’s it,” Diavolo cheered in his boisterous way, snapping his fingers and grinning wide. “They love each other in a way that defies tradition.”
“Or makes the tradition their own,” you replied, smiling back. “After all, what’s important is that you all know that at the end of the day, you’re in this together. And we’re with you, too.”
Levi blushed furiously, hiding behind his hands. “It’s not-we aren’t, like, romantic-”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Diavolo said, finishing the stack of plates he had been setting out. “It only means what you want it to mean.”
Before anyone could say something too revealing, a loud crash came from the kitchen, followed by Satan’s bellowing for Beel to “get back here before I make you regret interrupting that moment!”
You grinned. Even though the brothers had never experienced a family-made feast, you knew that this would be the start of a tradition of their own--one that would be just as loud, messy, and unapologetically theirs for centuries to come.