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The morning was peaceful, light clouds scurried across the pink and orange sky- giving the appearance of zebra stripes. Warm light flooded in through the newly opened curtains- illuminating long blonde hair spread haphazardly across a blue bed sheet leading under a mismatched duvet cover. The owner of said hair didn't react to the light as they hid in their own pocket of warmth and darkness, but they did react to the duvet being peeled back- exposing them to the winter chill and bright light- coiling away from the centre of the bed far enough to fall off the edge.
Curses rang out as warm skin met cold wooden floors.
"And that is why I said we should get a rug!" Ellie Bishop nearly shouted in anger, standing on the offending floor.
Sarah Porter only giggled at her wife's response and chucked a pair of slippers at her before running downstairs. Ellie paused for just long enough to get the slippers at the before chasing after her.
Ellie caught Sarah at the kitchen doorway and they fought in a way similar to siblings or bored teenagers- not really aiming for pain but tussling for the sheer fun of it. This time Ellie won by taking advantage of the other's ticklish spots- getting on top of her by reducing her to laughter before flipping them over and straddling her hips.
"Okay, okay! You win!" Sarah gasped, out if breath from the play fight and the tickling.
Ellie used her position to press a quick peck to Sarah's lips before getting up and pulling the older woman up by the the hand. Sarah surprised Ellie by retaliating with a longer kiss on the pulse point of her neck. Ellie- caught off guard- froze in response, letting Sarah retaliate until she decided to bite down. Then Sarah detached herself to continue their morning with some toast, she weighed up the decision of whether or not to tell Ellie that she had left a mark and was just about to tell her when a chorus of buzzes started upstairs and they they both raced to get to their phones which they had left in their bedroom in all the rush and excitement of their morning.
They missed the calls but both immediately called the caller back. Sarah's call was just a reshuffling of meetings but Ellie's meant she needed to be dressed and heading to a crime scene which was unfortunately a few hours drive away. Surprisingly, this meant they spent more of their morning together as Sarah needed to be only a few minutes away from there for her first meeting of the day.
Within a minute they were both dressed, in the car, and eating their toast.
Laughter filled the car as they kept setting the other off giggling. Halfway through they stopped to pick up some coffee and to switch so Sarah was driving as she would need to pass near the crime scene to get to her meeting.
They were chatting the entire time, making use of the extra couple of hours together, talking about anything and everything.
"I love you, hope your day goes alright." Sarah smiles at Ellie who replied with a quick kiss to her cheek- leaving a faint lipstick smear- before starting towards the crime scene.
While walking backwards to the scene, Ellie called out, "I love you too!" She jogged the rest of the way to it and was met with curiousity from DiNozzo as to who dropped her off, she told him as close to the truth as she dared. "My husband, he needed to be nearby for his work." She left out that her husband is in fact her wife and also SECNAV.
They got if with their work with that solved, until DiNozzo noticed the bite mark the Sarah had forgotten to mention in the rush that was the morning.
Later, Sarah was working while she waited for her meeting to start, another member had got waylaid some way or another. The person on sat to her left then noticed the lipstick on her cheek and tentatively pointed it out to her.
"Shoot," She cursed under her breath. "Thank you." She added at an audible volume before going to the toilet to wash it off to stop anyone else from noticing. Feeling playful, she took a photo of it in the mirror above the sinks to send to Ellie. It washed off quickly but by the time she returned they were waiting for her.
"Who's SP and what did you leave on their face?" DiNozzo queried, having seen the text and ID on Ellie's phone but not the image. The image was loading when Ellie snatched her phone out of his hand.
"Did you see the photo?" Ellie asked, slightly terrified- after looking at the screen and seen her wife's face- that he had seen it and would figure out the true nature of their relationship.
"Why, is it naughty?" DiNozzo continued in his own irritating way.
"No I just don't want you to know who my husband is." Ellie tried to justify her response as truthfully as possible.
"Do I know him?" He seemed far too excited at the prospect.
"Let her alone Tony." McGee interjected, fed up of the exchange.
They continued their working on the case until Gibbs told them all to call it a day. Ellie was still working on it at home while Sarah helped her daughter with her homework on the table not far from the corner of the kitchen Ellie had temporarily claimed as her workspace. They had both learnt not to look at whatever Ellie was working on but she still sometimes hid herself when working on classified material and just appeared for meals and sleep or would sit in their bedroom if it was more violent because she didn't want Meagan to see images of mutilated bodies.
A long way into the night she thought of something that might make all the random seeming moves come together into a strategy if she was right, she would need to go find out before she committed to it or involved the rest of the team.
"I should be back within an hour." Was all she said to Sarah who was doing her own work on the table, all she needed to say, before shoving loose papers back into their folder, leaving it under her laptop, and rushing out the door.
Sarah called out, "Good luck, Love." Just before the door shut.
Ellie reached the street that was the object of her idea after only a quarter of an hour drive, proving or disproving her idea should take far less than half an hour so she was doing well time wise. She found the correct place and started to look but before she could get a step closer to the truth everything turned from dim to black.
Sarah let an hour pass after the original hour, because she was well aware of the way that Ellie sometimes got caught up in something more than she expected or just lost track of time, before giving into her anxieties and calling Ellie.
When it didn't pick up and instead rang to voicemail Sarah started to worry more but felt unable to do anything because it wasn't anywhere near serious enough to warrant any further action so instead she tried to call Ellie again but got the same thing. Sarah stayed up, working in the kitchen, in the hopes Ellie would traipse through the door and admit to losing her phone. She listened to the music Ellie had on her MP3 player in one ear, partially so she couldn't hear the anxious thoughts running amok in her head and partially to comfort herself with a little piece of her wife.
It was silent. That was odd, did her MP3 player run out of battery while she fell asleep working- it wouldn't be the first time. She went to pull her ear buds out of her ears only to find them empty. That made the silences stranger as there was nothing to block out the sounds of traffic that were a constant in her life.
The silence buzzed in her ears like TV static. She could tell the sound was her not adjusting to the quiet. It was darker than it should be, street lights were always blocking the dark from getting this all encompassing, she couldn't even see any in the distance. Where was she?
She sat in the dark and silence for longer than she wanted to, she only moved when she shivered involuntarily and noticed the pervasive cold that was starting to ebb into her. She tried to stand, failed- falling backwards- before trying again and succeeding. Walking around by sliding her feet along the very flat ground until she found a solid and cold wall. She followed the wall by touch to try and find a door and escape or enter, she wasn't sure if she was inside or out. She found a corner which told her she was more likely inside than outside. She continued to follow the wall in search of a door, she found pipes on the walls and what she slowly figured out might be a truck door.
She was inside a truck. At least that's what made the most sense. She followed the walls around again, measuring each wall in paces, it was built like a truck. Still unsure of her conclusion, she hung her necklace on part of the door. She went around again and it was there, she tucked the now cold necklace into her shirt pocket. Her coat pocket started to vibrate and she fumbled to extract her phone with numbing fingers. The dim screen looked bright in the darkness that surrounded her, she answered it- not caring who it was.
"Ellie? Where are you?" Sarah's voice rattled out of her phone, the connection was patchy and distorted but she could make out the gist of it.
"I don't know, I'm in a truck. It's dark and very cold." Ellie listed the information that she had gathered which felt like so mich at the time but seemed pitiful when it was all she could offer. She looked at her phones battery and decided to use the flash to take a photo of the truck door in the hopes it could help identify it. Shortly after Sarah received the photo they hung up so Ellie could call the emergency services without Sarah being an unnecessary middleman.
Unfortunately the door to the front part of the truck opened and closed before it jerked into motion as Ellie tried to dial emergency services. Ellie was flung into the back of the truck which knocked the phone out of her hand. She scrambled to try and reach it before the screen timed out and it was lost to the darkness. She barely grabbed it when the light flicked out, she turned it back on and managed to call the emergency services despite all the wobbling of being in the back of a truck. She had just connected when she got a screen informing her she didn't have sufficient signal.
"No, no. Please." She begged as she redialed and redialed until the screen dimmed further and it took longer and longer to register the pressing of the keys. The battery ticked down like a timer until certain death.
20% became 10% and 10% became 5%.
She finally connected to the phone call and heard the words she had longer for hours would come out if her phone's tinny little speaker.
She tried to suppress the pure panic and joy that were fighting in her and introduced herself before explaining, "I've been kidnapped- I'm in a very cold truck." A response never came.
A beep signalled the death of her phone's battery and what would probably be her death as well and the tiny trickle of light and all it symbolised became encompassed in the darkness.
Sarah felt no better for the phone call- if anything she felt worse- at six am she gave up on waiting and went to work after leaving her daughter a note that she had left early, hoping she could find an excuse to visit NCIS.
She found said excuse and went despite the early hour- she learnt that Gibbs was looking for Ellie and a 911 call came in claiming to be Ellie and to have been kidnapped. After they had checked it was Ellie through the recording, the MCRT took over the investigation.
Stressed and feeling like she was withholding information Sarah made an information packet to leave anonymously as Ellie's husband which she was as close to being as possible. She wrote an explanation of who she was and what she knew- including a transcript of their phone call and a digital copy of the photo
Ellie was staring to feel affected by the cold and had tried to do jumping jacks to warm up but it was fruitless so instead curled up in a corner and tried not to sleep, but she soon fell despite how hard she fought it.
Sarah walked past as DiNozzo, Gibbs, and McGee were debating whether or not to trust the information. She couldn't help but join in, subtly trying to convince them it was real. They had done the basics but were hesitant to put out a BOLO because it could be a ploy to waste resources and was quite likely to be.
She couldn't persuade them to use it so when Gibbs went for the elevator she followed and stopped it.
"I'm sorry SECNAV but whatever you have to say is going to need to wait. I'm in the middle of something as you know." He snapped, trying to turn it back on.
"And you need to know this-" She started.
"Bishop is missing-" He interrupted.
"I'm her wife!" She shouted over his interruption. "The information is from me, take it seriously." She angrily flicked the elevator back into motion and jabbed the button for the squad room.
Gibbs processed this information as they rode back up and had come to terms with it when the doors opened. "Put a BOLO out of those trucks, I want every one checked if it has boxes it's not the one." He barked out the instruction, confusing DiNozzo and McGee with the sudden turn of opinions.
DiNozzo had noticed the SECNAV entering the elevator with Gibbs and they were quickly back with Gibbs changing his mind about the BOLO, Ellie's husband was ID'ed as SP in her phone; SECNAV's initials were SP. There was a meeting SECNAV had attended near their crime scene. He dismissed it and focussed on finding her, maybe he would ask.
It was a couple hours later that a hit on their BOLO came back, a refrigerated truck with nothing but an unconscious but breathing Ellie inside. The driver was arrested and confessed to both crimes after he was linked to the original crime.
Gibbs offered to take Ellie home when she was released from hospital the next week, she was reluctant but agreed and gave him her address hoping he never found out where SECNAV lives.
Confusingly, Sarah answered the door and invited Gibbs in for dinner; Ellie sat at the table looking between Gibbs and her wife in confusion.
Noticing this, Sarah asked, "What is it, Love?" Ellie's eyes widened at the term of endearment and jerked her head towards Gibbs. Sarah, understanding the issue, turned on Gibbs and demanded, "Did you not tell her?"
Gibbs slowly shook his head, only then realising the situation he had inadvertently caused.
"Honey- Gibbs knows we're married now." Her voice softer than Gibbs had ever heard, Sarah explained the reasoning as well as possible.
The day ended with the three laughing over warm plates of food.