Author's note: All the fics in the Constellation Series are adapted from a much longer fic (also posted on ) called Comfort. The main difference is that whilst Comfort is a slash fic, the stories in the Constellation Series are not. Mostly they are one-shots that can be read alone, but I will also be adapting the longer case-fics that make up quite a large chunk of Comfort.
I am (re)posting these fics for two main reasons: 1. Not everyone likes slash and is quite a long fic, so not everyone has the time or inclination to wade through it all!
If you have already read Comfort you'll find a lot of the Constellation Series is basically the same, so feel free to skip it.
"Hey, don't blame me!" Winston bellowed. "You're the one who refused to let Ilsa's IT guys anywhere near the office! If you weren't so damn paranoid she could just pay some guy to come and fix this!"
"Do you have any idea how many times I've gained access to some idiot's office by pretending to be the IT guy? Because seriously, dude, I've lost count!"
Chance leaned in the doorway of Ilsa's office and let familiar sounds of Winston and Guerrero arguing wash over him.
"Well. That's the price of being a paranoid sociopath, Guerrero. You have to be IT support!" Winston said, through gritted teeth.
"And that wouldn't be a problem, Winston, if you kept your fat fingers off the keyboard whilst I'm working! The whole thing is in Spanish now, dude! Fucking Spanish! In case you forgot, I do not speak fucking SPANISH!"
Chance found something reassuring about listening to Winston and Guerrero snipe at each other. It grounded him. Some of the tension he'd been carrying around since their last case finally eased away and he found he could breathe normally again.
"I speak Spanish," Chance said.
Winston looked up and seemed surprised to see that Chance had been watching them argue. Guerrero rolled his eyes in a silent gesture of frustration.
"Yeah, and you also speak fluent psycho-paranoid-freak, so you can deal with him!" Winston said, jabbing a finger at Guerrero, before turning on heel and stomping out to the kitchen, still muttering under his breath.
"What's in Spanish?" Chance asked
Guerrero looked at him for a moment, then turned his attention back to the computer monitor.
"Ilsa wanted me to install some experimental new translation software for her. It's a only a early beta version so it's riddled with glitches and bugs. One of which seems to be that the language settings for the program itself reset to Spanish if you let a fat ex-cop with fingers like bratwurst anywhere near the keyboard!"
Chance couldn't help but smile.
"Any chance you could take a look…?" Guerrero asked, tilting his head towards the screen.
Chance nodded, grateful for the distraction.
It didn't take long to reset the default back to English, and soon they were putting the program through it's paces, checking its translations of some of the more colourful language they'd both picked up over the years. Guerrero refused to be impressed until it correctly translated: "Jy naai jou ma vir sakgeld".
"Dude, if this thing can handle cursing in Afrikaans, I think we're on to a winner!"
Winston checked in on them a while later, and stood in the doorway shaking his head. Watching them trying to out-do each other with more elaborate and exotic insults put him in mind of a couple of school boys looking up swears in the dictionary. He sighed and headed back to the pile of paperwork that Ilsa had returned to him with some polite but insistent notes regarding efficient record keeping.
"Well," he thought to himself, "at least they're not hacking military satellites or making explosives out of toilet cleaner again."
A/N: "Jy naai jou ma vir sakgeld" translates as "you fuck your mother for pocket money".