The two little grubs that had been floating around on the ceiling turned to look at their caretaker with a caught look in their eye. Slowly they floated down towards Eridan until he was able to pluck them out of the air one right after another. He curled the two up against him, pulling his cape up to wrap around them. The other trolls in the room all looked at him with looks of surprise. Eridan looked at them with a 'welp' expression on his face before he began talking slowly.

"I should probably explain."

With his surprise turning to mild anger, Sollux narrowed his eyes and answered.

"You think?"

It took a second for Eridan to collect his thoughts, but once that second was gone he started again, his voice slow and with an almost guilty or embarrassed tone to it.

"I took these twwo in after I killed their lucus by mistake. I wwas a feww a swweeps younger back then an' I wwasn't as good at namin' things an' I couldn't think of a name for 'um. It wwas about the same time as I meet in person Sol and kneww he wwas a psionic so somehwow I got it into my head that it'd be funny to name 'em after him. The one wwith more blue sparks is Sollux and the one wwith more red ones is Captor."

As they heard their names, the little grubs perked up, looking at Eridan with expectant eyes, waiting for some other words to make sense of. The violet blood glanced down at the two of them and made a soft cooing sound that seems to pacify them.

Karkat, who by this point had recovered, looked from Sollux to Eridan for a moment and burst out laughing. By the time Sollux had enough of himself back to be indignant. Kayana had joined him with some softer giggles and Karkat was doubled over with his laughter.

The grubs had opposite reactions to the laughter, Captor hovered himself up and moved over to investigate the noise, while the younger Sollux panicked and scrambled his way out of Eridan's arms and away from the noise. Which happened to be towards the elder Sollux. Who he happened to run into. Right smack in the face.

Before Eridan could move to rescue the little grub, Sollux had grabbed the little one out of the air and was holding it in front of his face to inspect it. For a moment or two, he considered crushing the thing, but it's horns caught his attention. Much like him, the little grub had a set of two horns on either side of their head, but with little zigzags, that looked exactly like….

For a few horrified seconds, Sollux thought that this must have been the result of some drunken mistake, despite the fact he wasn't old enough to contribute genetic material, and he'd never been drunk anywhere near Eridan. His eyes went wide in a comical fashion and he looked over at the seadweller in confusion.

Having had a similar reaction when he had noticed the horns, Eridan strood over and snatched the little grub out of Sollux's hands before reassuring him in an exaggerated voice.

"Don't wworry Sol, it's just a dumb coincidence. There's nevver been a time wwhere I wwas drunk enough to think that wwould be a good idea."

Sollux still seemed unsure, anyone would be given the resemblance, but he let the subject be.

All five trolls spent the day hanging around Eridan's hive, with Kayana learning about the care and keeping of grubs, Karkat getting a serious lecture from Eridan after he learned of the other's mutation and gills and Sollux getting a headache over the two little yellow-blooded grubs who had taken a liking to him.

A/N:

I'm ending the story here because I really don't have anywhere to take it plus I want to start new ones.