Virgin Sins | Harry Styles

Sargent Malik

Nina doesn't remember being forced into the passenger seat of a police truck. She doesn't recall digging her nails so forcefully into the palms of her hands.

Not until a deep crimson starts to dry in it's place.

Endless tears fall down her face and her throat is so tight she believes that if she were to scream, no sound would follow. Her body had gone into shock and even though her hands were already painted with her own blood, she continued to stab her nails into the wounds they had caused, trying to wake herself up from this horrible nightmare.

But, it wasn't a nightmare. Ben Walter was dead and his limp body had been carried right in front of her.

Nina closes her eyes as she sat lonesome in the quiet truck, trying to picture her friend's face like she had remembered, but all she could see was the pale, dead flesh and pastel eyes that had been abandoned from any life within them.

Her body was shaking and she began to wince as the pain in her hands replaced the pain in her chest. She didn't stop digging.

Fright consumed every cell in her body, swelling them with terror. In the back of her mind, Nina somewhat knew Ben wouldn't be found alive, but she hadn't prepared herself for the very moment where her predictions would become a reality.

There was a silence that clung the cold air of the truck, it was thick and heavy, interlaced with the stench of death, and broken by Nina's shaky breathing along with the outside rain that began to slow down, only hitting the windshield in a quiet, pitter-patter. The only sound Nina could hear was the loud rhythm of her heart that began to beat so intensely, she believed it would soon shoot through her chest, breaking her ribs and dropping into her shaking lap.

The silence was soon broken as the drivers-side door opened and closed. Sargent Malik sat in the seat beside Nina, looking nearly as shaken as she did as he watched the crime scene outside the windshield being packed up; He didn't once blink or remove the furrow that his eyebrows had formed. After a couple of dragged out seconds, the Sargent then began to compose himself and Nina couldn't figure out whether that was for her own benefit or just routine from his job. He turned to her shortly after and placed his hand on her own, ripping her fingers delicately from the place they had embedded themselves into her palms.

"Here." He said, no tone lacing his deep voice as he opened the compartment between them and grabbed a couple of napkins that were paper hard and had obviously been taken from some crappy diner. He began to wrap her bleeding hands in them and it was almost like he had forgotten he had ever learnt first aid or that medical bandages sat in the kit beneath his seat. Nina didn't protest when the sandpaper-like, napkins had begun to soak up her blood. She didn't blame him for not properly fixing her self-inflicted wounds, not after what they had both witnessed.

She believed that trained or not, nothing could prepare you for seeing a dead body; No matter how many Sargent Malik had seen throughout his career.

Once he was done, Sargent Malik scanned Nina's face for a reaction and the silence hung in the air like the suspended moment before a falling glass shatters on the kitchen floor. He expected her to crumple once again, wail or dissolve into tears, but she did none of those things. Instead she just stared vacantly at the tissue that began to absorb her blood like a watercolour painting.

He didn't know whether she was refraining from breaking down or had just completely locked her emotions out instead. He sighed, tearing his eyes away from the broken girl and twisted the keys, turning his truck on and putting it in drive. "Let's get you home."

She wondered how he would know where she lived, but then figured every officer would as the amount of times her Grandmother had called in a state of mental panic had now became an unknown number.