Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: New Orleans or its characters…

Author's Note: Just some fun playing with the differing personalities of Brody and LaSalle as they become partners, friends… in the context of a missing person case.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them. -Alain de Botton

Exhaustion could sometimes nearly be a tangible thing. Like a heavy stone around a person's neck, or a smothering lead blanket thrown over their entire body. Or sometimes it just felt like the planet's gravity had somehow increased, doubled since the morning when she'd woken up and gotten out of bed fairly easily.

Meredith Brody groaned as she collapsed onto her makeshift bed, grateful that she'd actually managed to climb into the back of the Tahoe and put the backseats down. It had been an exhausting day, spending all morning tracing the whereabouts of a missing sailor, figuring out she'd disappeared in the Maurepas Swamp, and then spending the last ten hours with the search parties scouring the swamp for the missing 19 year old (god, she was young, and local, which had spurred the intense response). Her next shift was in three hours, and Pride had ordered both her and LaSalle to get some shut eye, the lead agent himself opting to not break before his junior agents. And utterly beat as she was, Merri didn't argue.

She balled up her jacket for a pillow and pulled the vehicle's emergency blanket, a coarse, wool affair over herself, feeling her heavy eyelids droop almost immediately shut. Until the hiss and bang of the hatchback being opened started her awake. She instinctively reached for her Glock 26, which was lying in its holster next to her head. But it was only her fellow agent.

"Jeez, LaSalle. You ever heard of knocking?"

"Sorry, Brody." His normally lively tone was notably subdued. His shoulders were a little slumped, as was his entire posture. In short, he looked as exhausted as Merri felt.

"Couldn' find 'nywhere to bunk?" she asked, her words a little slurred, because she simply didn't have the energy to fully enunciate.

He shook his head, looking rather adorable, like a shy little boy, which he was not at all.

"C'mon," she said, scooching to one side and lifting the blanket up. "There's plen'y of room."

She yawned as he climbed up into the SUV, the expression on his weary face like that of a man scaling a cliff. He shut the hatch, removed his sidearm and jacket just as she'd done before he lied down next to her. She threw the blanket over him and then let her eyes fall closed again to attain that most wondrous of physical states... sleep.

Except she was startled awake once more when she felt LaSalle's body impact hers as he rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms about her waist, burying his face in her neck. Part of her thought she must be dreaming, because even Chris LaSalle, who could invade a friend's personal space without a second thought, wouldn't be this presumptuous.

"Uh... LaSalle?"

"Mm?"

"What are you doing?"

"Tryin' ta get some sleep." He nuzzled her neck, gave her a little squeeze. She was much more awake, now.

"Is there a reason you can't do that from your side of the SUV?" she asked, lying there with artificial rigidity against his affectionate holding of her person. Because this really was too much. She'd noticed his penchant for intimacy with his friends, and once you were considered a 'friend' to him, all lines between him and you seemed to vanish. He drank out of your coffee cup (stealing it right out of your hands), he ate part of your lunch (sometimes more than you did if you didn't watch him), he took your pens and pencils, he invaded your personal space. And he did it all in an insufferably polite and damned affable manner. You liked him the entire time he wormed his way closer and closer to you, even though you preferred keeping a solid barrier between yourself and the rest of the world.

And now he was goddamned cuddling her. Enough was enough!

"I don't like sleepin' alone," he said, showing no sign of releasing her.

"I'm sorry, but are you trying to brag about all of the women you bed?" She tried to find something to make her angry enough to push him off from her. But the prospect of physically resisting his seemingly platonic affection was beyond comprehension to her exhausted body.

"I don't take many women home," he said, sounding sleepy, like she were making pillow talk as they dozed off, not trying to tell him to get lost. "I probably sleep alone over 99% of the time. Don't mean I like it, though."

"But I do," she said, finding his wrist at her side and prying his hand off from her. He put it back, this time gripping her waist, rather than just resting his hand on her, as he snuggled further into her.

Damn.

"It's already gettin' chilly," he said. And unfortunately, he was just as right about that as he was warm against her side. The sun had set a few hours ago, but they were too determined to call off the search for the night. And although it might not be Michigan cold, it wasn't pleasant.

She sighed. She was too damned tired for this battle to maintain her privacy.

As soon as her eyes were closed, Merri was sound asleep.

A/N: After I'd written most of this in my head, I realized that it's likely inspired by (a lot like) Kate and Tony's interaction in the NCIS episode 2x03 'Vanished' (which is my favorite one of that series).