A/N: So the prompt for this one was "12 and Clara's kids are in their awkward teenage years and much to their horror 12 and Clara embarrass them (as parents do) by volunteering to chaperone their school dance! Yes, and you better believe Daddy 12 brought along his electric guitar! Also 12 and Clara get into things and slow dance together." Considering that in the Getting the Hang of Things 'verse, the kids attend Coal Hill? I think I have something just for the occasion.

1381 words; I don't know how school dances work in the UK so please forgive me if something's egregiously off; pour one out for all the tweens and teens who never wanted to attend a school dance, but were forced to by their parents/adults due to a shoddy understanding of what "being social" is and changing norms that the parents themselves created (though in Clara's case it's more of missing the mark by just a hair than anything)

Thirty-Six: The Hill Hop

"So… you going to the Hill Hop?"

James and Alison looked up from their lunch to see one of their classmates standing there, arms folded across her chest. It was a bit chaotic in the cafeteria that day, meaning that there was plenty going on to not only drown their classmate out, but make it so that the siblings were tempted to go find their mother and eat lunch with her instead.

"What's that…?" James asked. The classmate rolled her eyes.

"The Hill Hop… the school dance… you know, the one that's finally open to us now that we're Year 9 but not the one for school-leavers… are you going?"

"We… uh… hadn't thought about it," Alison claimed. "It's not required."

"Yeah, but most people are going to be there," the classmate said.

"Why is it still called 'the Hill Hop' anyhow?" James noted. "That's something more for our great-grandparents, isn't it?"

"Just: are you going?"

"Got to make sure to clear it with Mum and Dad," Alison claimed. "It should be fine, though."

"Your mum's one of the teacher sponsors—I should hope so." At that, the classmate left, which allowed the siblings to lean in and talk quietly to one another.

"Shit—what has Mum gotten us roped into?" James scowled.

"I don't know," his sister shrugged, "but it might be fun."

"Might be? Are you sure?"

Her expression didn't exactly do much to convince him.

Later on that evening, as the Oswald-Smith Family was cleaning up after dinner, the topic was broached again.

"James, Alison, have you given much thought as to what you're going to wear to the Hill Hop?"

One twin froze with the compostables bag in his hand, the other with a stack of dishes in hers. The kitchen came to a bit of a standstill as the teens tried to calculate the risks.

"I, uh, wasn't even sure I wanted to go," James shrugged.

"It's just a dance—there's others," Alison scoffed.

"Now how is it going to look if I'm there but you two are not?" Clara noted. "You're coming along."

"...but Mom!" the teens whined in unison. Their mother did not budge.

"It's not a formal dance, so you don't have to get particularly dressy," she reasoned.

"Didn't Dad need help with the TARDIS?" Alison mentioned.

"Yeah! That's right!" James chimed in, relieved. "She needs a tune-up after sitting still for so long!"

"Don't think you're getting out of this easy as that," Clara frowned. "Your father's coming along to help out as well."

"...I am…?" the Doctor blinked. His wife glared at him.

"You agreed last month."

"When? What was I doing?"

"We were… turning in for the night…" she replied. He considered her words and cringed slightly: ah. That.

"You really should stop getting me to agree to things after we've turned in for the night." He tried to then turn his attention towards their children, though refused to make eye contact as his skin was turning pink with blush. "Mam's right—we're all going."

"You've betrayed us," Alison declared dramatically. She began to load the dishes in the dishwasher, while James stood there awkwardly with the compostables bag still in his hand.

"So… nothing we can do to change your mind?"

"It's not my mind to change, son," the Doctor said. Clara folded her arms across her chest and gave their son a stern stare, which made him retreat towards the front door in order to toss the bag down the correct chute in the corridor.

'Oh my God,' James thought as he slipped on his shoes. 'We are going to die.'

Alison and James Oswald-Smith looked about the crowded gymnasium and both wanted to shrink down into nothingness from the spot against the wall. Although their mum was correct in that it wasn't a very formal dance, there was still the fact that they were in the middle of a scrum of hormones and body spray, glitter and unflattering cosmetics, of popular music's relationship with teenagedom at its wildest, made no less mortifying by the fact that both their parents were there.

"Poppy, Angela, don't make me come over there and separate you two; that's not appropriate," Clara scowled at a pair of teens grinding against one another to the music. While not a prude in any way (and, frankly, she had not been guiltless herself when she had been their age), it was certainly exhausting trying to keep up with the her job part of why she was there—the further she could keep students from committing sexual acts on the dance floor, the better off everyone was going to be. Once the offenders each took a reluctant step backwards, the teacher looked at her children and motioned with her head towards the dance floor. "You know there's fun to be had out there, yeah?"

"I guess," Alison mumbled.

"You love dancing."

"Yeah…"

"...and going to dances…"

"...where I don't know people..."

"Yeah, and people don't know you…" James added, gesturing to his mother.

"I am not going to have this moping," Clara stated. "Now get out there."

"Dad's not out there," Alison argued.

"Yeah," James realized. "He's probably hiding in the caretaker's office."

Just then, as though on-cue, the kids heard an extremely familiar five note riff. The family glanced over to see that the Doctor was there, wearing his portable amp and strumming the opening riffs to Pretty Woman on his guitar. He approached Clara—sonic shades in the dark room and all—with a grin plastered across his face.

"Would the lady care for a dance?" he asked.

"What I would like is for our children to actually get out there and have some fun, as well as for their classmates to stop trying to have sex on the surface where they also play basketball."

"Youngsters are going to do what they're going to do," he shrugged. The Doctor shifted his guitar so that it rested on his back and held out his hand. "Maybe they need to learn a bit by example?"

"Sounds like a plan." She placed her hand in his and allowed him to guide her to the dance floor. There, despite the fast tempo of the song and the fact there were dozens of teens surrounding them, they began to dance slowly in one another's arms, lovingly gazing at each other.

"This is on-purpose, isn't it?" James asked, visibly cringing. Alison was busy going absolutely scarlet from embarrassment.

"It has to be," she replied. The other denizens of Coal Hill who were by their parents all gradually stopped and stared at Mr. and Mrs. Oswald-Smith. "Maybe, if we make a break for it, we can get home before Mum and Dad do and we can run off in the TARDIS."

"That's stealing."

"That's how Dad has the TARDIS to begin with."

"...with our niece; thanks for the reminder." She made eye contact with a classmate who was out on the dance floor, who pointed at the Doctor and Clara with a quizzical look on his face. Alison shrugged with a grimace—she didn't know what they were doing out there either. "We're never going to be allowed to show our faces in respectable circles ever again."

"That's only if we're lucky," James reminded her. He watched their parents kiss chastely, which caused a ripple-effect of grossed-out-ness between him, his sister, and their peers. "Yeah, we're never going to recover from this, are we?"

"Being the children of a teacher sucks," she stated. Both her and her brother then blanched as the DJ changed songs, the woman clearly having heard their father's entry music. The Time Lord grinned manically and began to play along to the song, showing off his guitar skills to the hall of slightly-impressed teens.

Pretty woman, walking down the street…

Pretty woman, the kind I like to meet…

Pretty woman…

Alison and James Oswald-Smith wanted to die, right then and there, as their father played the guitar, their mother pretended to not be mutually besotted with her husband, and their classmates laughed. Heartily. There was no other way to describe it.

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't too late to steal the junker space-time ship their father and niece already ran off with in times past.