AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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Daryl was prickling with irritation and anger when he walked away from Ezekiel. He could feel it all pumping through his veins with his blood—with nowhere to get out.

The tiny, whispering, rational voice inside his head could tell him all day long what he should do or how he should act, but it was drowned out by the louder voice that realized how pissed off he was that Ezekiel had said some of the things that he'd said—and that some of them had rang true and stuck in Daryl's craw.

He was as mad at himself as he was at anyone else, but he wasn't ready to deal with that yet. He wasn't even sure how to deal with it right now.

Of the Dixons that he'd known in his life, Daryl had always been the calmest and the most even-keeled. That didn't mean, though, that there weren't times that it all simply got away from him.

He'd had full intentions to go and carefully inspect some of the houses he thought might appeal to Carol—a one-story, he thought, would make her happiest. He thought a home with enough room for them to possibly welcome another addition into the family—because there was no birth control, and things did happen, and if they did happen, he didn't want Carol to think he wasn't OK with it all—would be the perfect little home for Carol to put her energy into making just as cozy as she wanted it to be.

After finding a few perfect houses, his intention had been to find Carol—probably just before lunch—and show her the houses. Then, they'd spend their lunchtime discussing the merits of each house while food was prepared and they ate. If she was in love with one of the houses, after lunch Daryl would rouse some of the locals to help them move their few belongings from the basement to their new home, and he'd spend the rest of the evening fixing up what needed to be fixed to make it home, and making a list of what needed to be done in the coming days. He'd take care of everything that Carol needed him to do to make her comfortable, and she would make him comfortable by turning the place, in that sort of magical way she had, from just a house to warm little home.

If she wasn't sold on a place just yet, then Daryl would gather up his tools and go through the community looking for who needed work for the evening, and he'd leave her to think things over while she worked. He'd leave her to talk them over with Michonne while the two of them prepared dinner and shared that laughing conversation they often liked to do after a full day of seeing what was going on in the community. Then, when they went to bed and had sent Judith and RJ back up to their mother, they would rehash the merits of each house and probably move just after breakfast.

That had all been Daryl's intention—carefully planned out in his mind, down to the minutia, while he'd been getting ready for bed the night before and ready for the day in the morning—but that wasn't exactly what the part of him that was nearly boiling over with frustration, which only seemed to be growing without an outlet, had in mind. Whoever it was that said the road to hell was paved with good intentions hadn't been all wrong.

What Daryl actually did was walk a frustrated path around the community eyeballing possible houses at a distance and distractedly deciding which ones might be somewhat suitable before he set off in search of Carol with his ever-bubbling and boiling frustration simply simmering away in his mind and body.

He found Carol carrying a basket of what appeared to be laundry.

Not every home had washing machines connected to the grid to lessen the drain on power. They'd searched for and found several grid-friendly machines and connected them in certain houses to cut down on the amount of laundry that must be done by hand. As a result, the homes with machines were somewhat "open to the public" and those who signed up to do laundry would spend a decent amount of their time feeding laundry into the machines—laundry days were done by "sectors" of the community.

Carol said she enjoyed doing laundry—especially if she wasn't scrubbing it by hand in unheated water—and Michonne's house was one of the ones with a machine. Carol, as a result, often volunteered her energy doing laundry as well as working on other tasks that she felt she could do without putting too much strain on her body.

Daryl didn't know if the basket she was carrying was bound for mending or washing, but he didn't really care at the moment.

"Hey! Carol!" He called out, catching her attention and stopping her forward progress. She moved quickly, despite the fact she'd started to waddle a little under the weight of the growing baby. She stopped and looked around in confusion a moment before she spotted Daryl and smiled.

Her smile fell as he got closer to her. Maybe his frustration was showing on his face.

"What's wrong?" Carol asked as he reached her. "There wasn't a fight, was there?"

Her question only stoked Daryl's irritation.

"There weren't no fuckin' fight," he growled. "You made it pretty damn clear that what weren't the hell you wanted."

Her brow remained furrowed. Daryl immediately winced a little at his own words and tone of voice. Still, he felt caught up—like trying to stop something from rolling downhill, he felt like he couldn't stop himself from being just as self-destructive as he seemed determined to be at the moment.

"What's wrong?" Carol asked. "Are you—mad because I asked you not to start a fight? I don't think it would be good for Alexandria as a whole if there was brawling in the streets, Daryl. Don't we have enough to fight against without fighting each other?"

"Not if the fuckin' fight matters," Daryl said. It wasn't as sharp as his words had been before, but he still heard them like he was outside of himself. He meant them, but he also didn't mean them.

Carol stepped back a half a step like he'd struck her.

"What would it accomplish, Daryl?" She asked, some bite coming into her tone. "Do you think I need you to go around punching people in the face for me? Do you think that's what I want? Is that what you want?"

Daryl glared at her. He wasn't even sure that he was angry at her. He was almost certain that he wasn't angry at her at all. But she was there, and he was angry. Recognizing that feeling, he did his best to draw it back a bit. He clenched his jaw and tried to reset himself.

"I want you to go with me," he said.

"Go with you?" Carol asked.

"To look at houses," Daryl said.

Carol couldn't have looked more confused if he'd asked her, with complete sincerity, to sprout wings and fly away. She gestured toward the basket.

"I'm in the middle of work, Daryl," she said.

"So put the damned basket down," Daryl said. "Take it to Michonne. If y'all are washin' today, then she's doin' a few loads. Let her do one damn more. I want'cha to do this for me. I want you to go look at houses."

"What do you mean look at houses, Daryl?" Carol asked. "Why are we going to look at houses?"

"To find one to live in," Daryl said. "To get the hell out of the damn basement."

"We're comfortable in the basement," Carol said.

"We just gonna live forever in Michonne's basement?"

"I wasn't thinking about forever," Carol said. "I've been thinking more day-by-day lately."

"Just drop the basket off with Michonne and let's go look at the damned houses," Daryl said.

"Maybe I don't want to look at houses, Daryl, when you're so—wound up," Carol said. "Maybe we should just—do whatever we're going to do. Get some work done. And we'll go look at houses some other time."

"Because that's what the hell you wanna do," Daryl said.

Carol scoffed at him and, suddenly, he was feeling less sorry for what the tiny, buzzing voice inside his head was telling him was just an overreaction.

"Because it doesn't make any sense to just drop everything to look at houses when we don't need a house!" Carol said.

"Maybe we oughta do it because that's what the hell I want, Carol," Daryl growled. If she was going to fight with him, he was going to fight with her. He balled his hands up at his side. The frustration he'd felt earlier was still coursing through his veins, and he welcomed the opportunity to have some kind of outlet even if he honestly knew that this wasn't Carol's fight—it was really only his own fight.

"It doesn't make any sense," Carol protested loudly.

"Stop tellin' me that what the hell I want don't make any damn sense!" Daryl barked. "Didn't hear your ass tellin' his fuckin' majesty that it didn't make any sense to parade his stupid ass around livin' in some half-baked, self-created fuckin' fairytale!"

"Is that what this is about?" Carol asked. "Ezekiel's—fairytale? Daryl—why do you even care about what Ezekiel does?"

"Did you prefer the whole kingdom thing?" Daryl asked. "Want me to parade around pretendin' I'm some damn Duke or somethin'?"

"I want you to stop acting like an ass is what I want!" Carol snapped. "And if that means you've got to pretend to be a Duke to do it…"

"And I want you to look at fuckin' houses with me!" Daryl snapped back. "But you won't do a damn thing I want you to do."

Carol stiffened. Daryl could see the anger, hurt, and frustration on her features. The tiny part of him that hadn't completely taken leave of his senses was setting off klaxons in his mind. The other part, though, driven by the pulsing feelings in his veins, was too caught up to listen to sensible warning.

Carol—who once had cowered at Ed's threats—wasn't the person that she used to be. She'd come too far and she'd seen and done too much to cower. Even if Daryl had hit her, which he never would, he was confident that she would have spit out the blood and come at him like a half-crazed hellcat.

She knew he wouldn't hit her, though, and perhaps her willingness to grit her teeth at him and ball her fists up in frustration was something of a declaration of that.

She threw her basket at the ground in frustration like she hadn't entirely dismissed the possibility of going a few rounds with Daryl in the middle of the street.

"I never do what the hell you want me to do? I've done everything to make you comfortable and happy, Daryl! I didn't want to come down to the woods to be with you, but I did. I didn't want to be turned away, either, when you woke up and thought it was better for me to go, but I went. I moved to the house when you wanted me out of the Kingdom, but protected and with you. I went to Hilltop when you wanted to go to Hilltop. I moved here—to Michonne's basement—when you thought that was best. Everything I do is what the hell you want!"

"Everything I do is for you—to make your ass happy," Daryl said. "To keep your ass safe. And I gotta deal with this shit?"

"You don't have to deal with anything," Carol challenged. "You can wash your hands of everything. Run away. Run back to the woods, Daryl. Hide away and sulk, if that's what you want to do…"

"So you can find somebody to shack up with?" Daryl bit back. He regretted it. He felt it burning in his stomach. He wondered how many of the words coming out of her mouth made Carol's stomach ache, too. Her face was red, though, like he was sure his was—and they were caught the hell up in this now.

"Screw you!" Carol said, her eyes getting a little big with the words before she narrowed them again. "You only wanted me to be available when you wanted it. Is that it? I remember, Daryl. I'm not your problem, right?"

"Man—fuck you, too," Daryl threw back at her. "I don't need any of this shit…"

They both stopped. Just the same as if someone had sounded an air horn to mark the end of things, they stopped. They froze. They stared at each other. Daryl was sure his brow was every bit as furrowed as hers. He could hear the rush of his own blood and the heaviness of his breathing. Carol's chest was rising and falling fast. Her hands were balled up by her sides and he could feel his own hands aching from the tight clenching he'd been doing for longer than he'd realized.

He meant every word that he'd said, and yet he hadn't meant a single damn one of them. He wondered if she felt the same, standing there, practically panting, and staring at him.

It was the same feeling that he'd felt, every time in his life, when shit just got away from him—when all his feelings came rushing out in a way that he'd never really wanted them to come out and at a time when he'd never really planned it. His stomach ached. His chest ached. He was starting to feel inexplicably tired and, admittedly, even a little weak and shaky.

For what seemed like an eternity, they stood there staring at each other like that.

It was Carol that broke first. Her angry countenance shattered. Daryl saw only the slightest proof of dampness in her eyes before she stormed by him, barely brushing him with her shoulder as she passed.

"Damn you," she muttered, though there was no venom and no fire behind it, as she went.

Daryl looked over his shoulder, but he let her go. He looked at her discarded basket on the ground—someone's laundry spilled out over the street. He looked around at the crowd that had begun to gather, unbeknownst to them, in the heat of things. Everyone stared with semi-open mouths and shocked or concerned expressions.

"What the hell you all lookin' at?" Daryl yelled at them. "Don't you got shit to do? Get your asses back to work and stop starin' at shit that ain't your fuckin' business!"

And then, Daryl ducked his head and started walking off—back in the direction of the houses he'd passed by earlier—trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do next and wondering why the hell it was he'd felt so inclined to do what he'd just done.

No matter what, though, he knew one thing was true—they both needed a moment to cool down.