Author's Note: Day 3 of GinSherry week and the prompt choices were jealousy, selfie, rain, hug.

Monday: pining, proposal/wedding, sharing clothes, AU
Tuesday: green, date, sleeping, APTX
Wednesday: jealousy, selfie, rain, hug
Thursday: family, beach, first meeting, confession
Friday: intimate, dream/nightmare, reunion, call/text
Saturday: dancing, heartache, kimono, kiss
Sunday: festival, hurt/comfort, banter, sick day, cosplay, cooking

Prompt Chosen: Jealousy
Summary: Gin doesn't like competition.


Prompt: Jealousy

"Sherry, can you come over here and look at this? The cells aren't responding how they're supposed to."

Sherry looked up from her own work station with a slight frown at the scrawny teen just a year younger than herself. "How? What are they doing, Generic?"

"Could you just come and see for yourself?" he pleaded, sounding desperate. Only one of his eyes was visible since the other one was hidden by his long black bangs being combed to one side, though she had no idea how he was able to do his work.

She sighed to herself and stood up to investigate. He slid his chair, but not enough to give her easy access to the microscope, so she ended up having to lean around his shoulder to peer into it.

As soon as she oriented on the cells in question on the slides, she understood at once what the problem was. "This is the wrong kind of tissue," she said.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Generic said, and he sounded rather distracted.

"This is skeletal muscle tissue, not cardiac. They look similar sometimes due to the cross-striations they both have, but-"

A sharp rat on the door frame interrupted her, and when she saw who it was, she scowled.

"Am I interrupting something?" Gin asked, his tone unusually frosty. Most of the time, he sounded bored and aloof.

Well, it wasn't her problem if he was in a bad mood, so she drew herself upright and faced him head-on. "As a matter of fact, you are. It's not Friday and you never bring the inventory lists, so why are you here?" she retorted.

"My reasons for being anywhere are none of your concern," Gin said.

Sherry smirked. "Oh, I see. Important tasks for the Organization's executives include harassing a couple of hard-working scientists trying to do their jobs?"

Gin glared, and Generic grabbed her arm. "Sherry, what are you doing? He'll kill you!" he hissed fearfully.

"No, he won't. I'm too important for the Organization to kill me off over something so minor," she said with more confidence than she actually felt.

She knew it was true, but it was hard to remember that sometimes when she was staring down one of the Organization's highest-ranking people who happened to be a skilled assassin and, unfortunately, a very attractive man. A dangerous one she did not wish to tangle with, to be sure, but attractive nonetheless.

"Hmph. You're only important as long as you're working, and you two didn't seem to be doing very much of that when I walked in," Gin said.

Sherry placed her hands on her hips and tilted her chin up. "Well, presuming you have ears hidden underneath all that hair, if you'd stuck around long enough to actually listen to our conversation, you'd have heard us discussing a problem we were having with one of the slides and figuring out the solution. I'd ask you if teamwork was now illegal, but we work for a crime syndicate that doesn't follow the laws anyway."

Generic snickered but quickly gulped it down when Gin shot a vicious glare at him. The suffocating silence lasted what felt like several minutes before Gin said in a more neutral tone, "I came to deliver a message from that person. They found last week's project report insightful and want you to take the work you've been doing for this project in a different direction starting in two weeks."

Sherry crossed her arms and frowned. "That's vague and sudden; when am I supposed to know what kind of project I'll be doing?"

Gin withdrew his left hand from his coat pocket and held up an envelope between two fingers. "The details are in here."

Sherry huffed and began to turn back around to the microscope. "Fine, you can leave it at my workstation, and I'll read it when I have some free time."

"Or you could come over here and take it from me," Gin suggested.

For the love of-! She whirled back around and snapped, "I'm busy working! You can walk a few meters to my desk!"

That man. had the audacity to smirk at her. "You're not working right now and you're just as capable of walking a few meters to me and back."

How old was he, thirteen? He was being so petty, it was infuriating! "I was before you waltzed in and forced yourself into the conversation with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop."

"Well, since I've already interrupted you, there's no point in wasting your time further by standing there arguing with me over you taking the envelope," Gin said, still grinning, the prick.

"On the contrary, since you've interrupted my work, that means you're the one wasting my time and should pay me back for the inconvenience by completing the delivery of the envelope as you were instructed by that person," Sherry countered.

"Um, Sherry, I-I could collect the envelope from Gin if you want… to… work…" Generic quietly offered and trailed off at the baleful stare Gin was now giving him.

"That would be against my orders since that person decreed that only Sherry was to receive this envelope directly with no intermediaries," Gin said, the business-like tone such a drastic shift from a moment ago that Sherry felt whiplash.

However…

"There's no need to be so harsh with him," Sherry said coolly. "I'm the one being difficult about it, so cut the snark."

Generic's intervention seemed to have helped break the stalemate though because Gin did eventually enter the lab but did not head for her desk. Instead, he approached them directly and bowed from the waist as he presented the sealed envelope to her with a flourish.

"A compromise. Instead of delivering the envelope to your desk, I deliver it to you personally, Sherry," Gin said, a hint of the warmer tone back in his voice as he smirked up at her from beneath the brim of his fedora.

Her stomach fluttered, but she shoved the feeling aside and let no trace of it show on her face. "It's acceptable," she said as she took it from him.

Gin stood, tipped his hat to her, completely ignored Generic, and strode out of the lab without so much as a backward glance. She resumed her work after he left, and on her lunch break, she found time to read the proposal for the new project to be titled Apoptoxin-4869. The very next day, Generic received new orders from that person to work on a project involving a drug that could modify memories, and just like that, he was no longer working in her lab and she never ran into him again.