A/N: 759 words; this fill conjures some great imagery for me and I'm not sorry; give me all of the Doctor and Clara being middle school adults
Days 17-23: Traditions | Ice Skating | Cuddle
"Are you sure about this?" he asked, looking visibly concerned. He gripped the side of the rink tightly, not wanting to let go.
"We're fine," Clara smirked. She was skating nearby, unrestricted and actually with a bit of skill. "You just need to find your point of balance; I didn't think you had weak ankles."
"I don't," he grunted. His feet slipped and he nearly did the splits. A couple of the students already sure on their feet passed him up in a fit of giggles. "Clara—they're laughing at me."
"Doctor, I can't blame them," she replied as she came to a stop next to him. He was beginning to regret agreeing to come along to help chaperone the Year Eights at the ice rink, as they needed five adults to keep the entire thing intact and he remembered ice skating before with a different face. It was not, as he was quickly realizing, a skill that crossed over from regeneration to regeneration… meaning he went all the way to Leyton with a gaggle of twelve-year-olds for absolutely nothing.
"Are you alright?" one of the other teachers wondered as he glided over to his coworkers. The man was curious about the substitute caretaker who was now apparently a certified chaperone for the students—Chesterton must've been raving mad. "I can fetch you a chair if you need it."
"He's well beyond needing a chair," a student snickered. She glided by wearing a Lions kit, knowing that she automatically had an upper hand over an adult, and she was relishing in it. "I don't think the ice is for him."
"I've been ice skating!" the Doctor insisted, going pink in the face.
"When? Nineteen-eighty-something?" the student snarked.
"Go bother someone else for a bit before I get cross at you," the other teacher said. The student zoomed away and the adults were relatively alone. He turned towards the Doctor again sympathetically continuing, "There's really no shame in it—when was the last time you were ice skating?"
"...with my wife," the Doctor grumbled. Clara's coworker nodded at that—everyone seemed to know that he was a widow, though no one brought up how they figured it out. Then again, if it ever came time to let them know that he'd been widowed for well over a thousand years… that would be an entirely different set of work-arounds he'd need to navigate. The coworker skated away, leaving the two behind.
"One of these days someone new will start at Coal Hill, only to mistake me for the Other Woman," Clara frowned. She eased herself over to the Doctor's side and helped lift him to a more proper standing position. Soon as he let go of the boards he clung to her, allowing Clara to support him as they slowly slid down the ice of their own accord.
"Remind me later to figure out if I've jettisoned the ice rink so I can make certain this doesn't happen again," he said lowly, so that only she could hear. She tried not to snicker at that, though it was also difficult to not burst out into full laughter when her coworker returned with a folding chair in tow. "Isn't that clever?"
"Does the chair have to have Paw Patrol on it?" the Doctor cringed.
"All the chairs have lower-primary-school-appropriate designs on them," Clara's coworker claimed.
"Yeah, and I'd rather have Peppa Pig."
Clara's coworker rolled his eyes and laughed as he deposited the chair in front of the Doctor and Clara and went off to check in on some of the students. The Time Lord clasped the back of the chair first with one hand, then with two, and tried to use it to support his entire weight. As he pushed, the chair hit a slick spot and slid unexpectedly far, causing the Doctor to stumble slightly.
"You sure you're alright?" Clara asked smugly. "The slightest bit of weather and you malfunction more than Gran's television set from when I was a kid."
"This is not weather," the Doctor insisted.
"It would need to have been weather if this was outdoors, now come on," she replied. She gave him a slight push, watching him slide over the ice without her. His knees and ankles seemed to wobble dangerously, with his entire body threatening to become victim to gravity before too long.
Despite his being something akin to some cosmic, eldritch god, feared by entire civilizations and the destroyer of his own, he certainly was adorably helpless on a sheet of freshly-cleaned ice.