No time to complain

Amy froze.

She didn't dare to move. She didn't even want to breathe. She needed the thing that had just happened to not have just happened.

Maybe if she stood still for long enough it would go away.

Maybe it was all a bad dream. A lot of Amy's bad dreams involved not wearing any pants. Sometimes she was at work, or recieving an award for Best Detective in front of the whole precinct. Usually they ended with Captain Holt saying "Santiago, are you aware you're not wearing any pants?"

Yes. That had to be it. Soon, Captain Holt would show up to ask where her pants were. And then she could wake up.

Any moment now.

The lights snapped back on.

Nothing had changed in the library. The long, dusty shelves still towered high over Amy's head. The only difference was the handcuffs situation, and the pants situation.

She gulped.

She was pretty sure this wasn't a bad dream.

She looked down at herself. Her shirt was bright pink, one of her favourite colours, feminine but still professional. Her pants were neatly ironed, and a flattering shade of pale grey. And down around her ankles.

Her panties were plain white. The colour looked nice against her caramel-brown thighs, even in the unflattering light of the library. She still didn't want anyone to see them.

Alright. No time to complain. She was a cop. A tough cop. She could handle the situation.

She crouched down on her heels and fumbled for her belt with her handcuffed hands, feeling ridiculous. She'd seen plenty of movies about tough cops. They didn't normally spend a lot of time on the floor of library basements, trying to pull their pants back up.

And they didn't normally fail. Amy grit her teeth as she tried to lever her wrists into position to hook a finger into her belt. Maybe it was something to do with the custom German handcuffs. Or maybe it was just totally impossible for a cuffed person with their pants down to reclaim their dignity.

Either way, she couldn't do it. The pants were staying down.

Amy stopped herself from yelling, took a deep breath, and contented herself with a sigh of frustration. Okay. There was nothing she could do about the pants situation. Moving on.

She stood back up again, and took stock of her situation.

She took one cautious step forward. She couldn't move far. The pants were constraining her. She could kick them off, but then she'd have no pants at all.

This was bad.

Someone, somewhere, wanted her this way. Someone who knew about the German handcuffs. Someone wanted her alone in the library basement, unable to run far, caught with her pants down.

And what if that someone was... a ghost?