This is totally un-beta-ed, so please don't mind the mistakes. Hope you'll enjoy!

ONE MORE

"Trusted you to pick the dirtiest dog of them all," Beca sneered while looking at the visibly unclean dog whose was missing his right back leg sitting far away in a corner of the animal shelter while his friends were all around the couple, waving their tails impatiently and ready to get a new home.

Beca and Chloe were standing side by side at the local animal shelter. They wanted a dog, and it proved to be more difficult than it was supposed to be.

"Isn't he the cutest thing?" the redhead asked to no one in particular and chose to completely abstract her girlfriend's sarcasm.

"Um, I'm pretty sure all the dogs surrounding us right now are ready to debate about that," the brunette raised an eyebrow.

"Look at his eyes Becs. I can't even guess how many tears they shed over seeing all his little hairy buddies getting adopted and not him."

Beca looked at the dog's eyes. Seriously, as much as she wanted to back up Chloe on this, the only thing she saw were black eyes staring – if not glaring – back at her. She wasn't particularly excited about this dog, and the lack of appreciation seemed to be reciprocal.

Chloe let go of Beca's hand and escaped the others dogs by stepping over. She approached the Labrador slowly, extending her hand in front of her. At first, he showed his teeth, it was barely noticeable but the DJ saw it straight away. She was about to tell her girlfriend to back off but the redhead was already petting his head.

"Hello big buddy. Aren't you tired of being here?"

"Are you seriously waiting for an answer? Because I would hate to break it to you but" she looked around, and as if she was telling her a secret, she whispered "he may not reply."

"Oh my God! Did you see this? He just licked my fingers!" the redhead said all too enthusiastically, petting his fur even harder.

"Babe, that's disgusting. You have no idea where that tongue even went!" the brunette hissed.

Chloe simply gave her a look, no words needed because the message on her face was crystal clear. A look that Beca was all too familiar with, which often meant trouble for her. 'You don't wanna play this game with me Mitchell.'

"You know, I don't get why you're so against him. He's like a veteran."

"Dramatic much? God Chlo', he didn't lose his leg while walking on a fucking grenade. I just thought we wanted a dog, not a charity nut case."

"We're at an animal shelter Beca!" Chloe said harshly. "What did you expect? And how judgmental of you by the way. Yeah, he's missing a leg, and yeah he's not the cleanest of them all and his ears may be too big and he may not run. So what? I'm sure he's still an amazing dog."

"I didn't mean it like that, babe. The problem's not the handicap. It's just that when you got close, he showed his teeth, okay? And I don't want a dog that could endanger you or me."

Chloe frowned, "But he's alright now, look."

She petted him some more, the Labrador was almost smiling at the unusual attention he was getting.

"Yeah. Until he bites you and chokes off one of your finger!"

Chloe raised her eyebrows and smiled big. "Who's the drama queen now?"

"Look, I don't care about the leg. I don't even care about the cleanness. Safety though… I mean, I plan on exploiting these gorgeous fingers of you some more."

"You need to slow down on the whole 'hanging out with Stacie' thingy."

Beca took a moment to think about she had said wrong and understood her mistake. "No! That wasn't what I meant at all! It's just that one day, I may want to tie the knot and it's going to be a lot more difficult if your ring finger isn't there anymore."

The redhead looked at her suspiciously. "Yeah, that you say…"

One of the shelter worker barged in, dry food in his hands. He smiled politely at the couple as he served the food.

"I see you've taken interest in Taylor. Some struggle with sports as you would expect because of the leg. Great at training though. He has a thing going with his upper front teeth that needs to be operate. You probably noticed, it makes him look like he's threatening to bite. The operation isn't that expensive but the shelter can't afford it with all the incoming dogs these last few months."

"See, I told you Taylor over here was a good one," Chloe smiled.

She looked at her girlfriend, a lingering 'I told you so' standing still in the air.

As the information sank in that Beca had accused the Labrador wrong, she felt kind of guilty and decided to apologize to him. Which was stupid because he was a freaking dog. She passed her left hand into his mane, whispering a 'sorry' and Taylor made the same face again, showing his teeth.

"He looks like he's grinning," Chloe ruffled his hair and smiled back at him.

The DJ would gladly argued with that, saying that it was the worst smile she had ever seen, but at the sight of happiness on her partner's face, she just let herself appreciate the moment.

The shelter guy broke in. "Taylor's quite a loving dog. Most of the families don't even glance at him because of his missing leg. But this buddy could really use a home."

After a few more minutes of petting, Beca eventually made a decision.

"We take him," said the brunette.

"WE DO?" Chloe shrieked happily.