Carol reaches back to unfasten her uniform, which is when Jim figures out what she's planning to do.

"Should I…turn around?" he asks.

She pauses, one eyebrow raised. "If you like."

He actually isn't sure where to look, which normally isn't a problem when a beautiful woman is undressing in front of him—but this is a completely different context, and she's not putting on a show for him, just undressing without being self-conscious about it, and staring at that feels wildly inappropriate, somehow.

Also unprofessional. He's supposed to be working on that.

After a second he settles for averting his eyes and pulling out his communicator, studying it like he's just received a really important message that demands most of his attention. He only looks up when Carol is fully clothed again and decides it's safest not to try interpreting her faint smirk.

"Shall we?" she says.

Carol chivvies Kirk out of the shuttle before changing into the suit, because seriously, he has a reputation, and she has no interest in becoming yet another of his immediately forgotten conquests or even some cheap eye candy, thank you very much. She has him beat in brains and looks combined, and as her commander, he has a right to exactly one of those assets, not both.

He sneaks a glance over his shoulder to find Carol staring at him, still fully clothed, arms crossed and eyebrow raised. "What?" she says. "Thought you'd get a free show?"

Jim whips his head forward so fast his neck twinges. "Uh," he says. "No. Sorry."

"Good to know. I wasn't joking when I said I've heard your reputation."

Jim turns his back and resists the temptation to peek once he realizes what she's doing, because he is a goddamned captain and he might not really be a mature, professional adult, but he can wrestle his hormones into submission for a couple minutes and act like he is.

"Turn around," Carol repeats, clearly annoyed now, and Jim does, if a little reluctantly. Yep, smoking hot. Well, he knew that already, but now he knows it even more. Maybe if everything calms down enough later, he can buy her a drink and turn on the charm, and he'll get to see a little more.

…or not, he thinks after she's told him she's fully clothed again and he gets a look at her expression, which suddenly makes him think of old superhero movies and how Black Widow might grin when she was about to disembowel somebody.

"Have you looked at Starfleet's regulations on sexual harassment recently?" Carol asks pleasantly. "They're really rather progressive, and captains aren't protected, you know. Quite the opposite. The higher your level of authority, the more your conduct is scrutinized. And for someone with a history like yours…well, I imagine your position is a bit tenuous already, isn't it?"

"Okay, okay, I get it."

"Oh, good. I'm so glad we had this little chat."

Author's note:

I really liked the 2009 Star Trek movie, so I was looking forward to the sequel (which I insist on writing as Star Trek: Into Darkness, because come on), and it's kind of an understatement to say I was very disappointed. Also mad. This isn't even Trekkie fan-rage here; Abrams' movie was my main introduction to the franchise and the reason I got interested in it, and I still haven't watched more than scattered episodes of any of the original series.

Out of all the things that I was pissed about when I left the theater, the gratuitous underwear scene wasn't even very high on my list (relevant links in my profile), but it moved higher the more opinions I read about it...and then I read writer Alex Kurtzman defending the scene and had basically the same reaction Rebecca Pahle did at the Mary Sue ("I thought she just needed to change her clothes, and then Kirk creeped on her despite the fact that she explicitly asked him not to. That's less an indicator of Carol being bold than Kirk being a giant jerkbag, at least to me."). The first little scene in this fic occurred to me as a response to that, because it's a pretty simple change that actually does show Carol being bold and owning her sexuality. Hardly perfect-now she's arguably the one being unprofessional and inappropriate, instead of Kirk-but less gross, and also it actually fits the stated justification while still retaining the eye-candy aspect they were apparently so desperate to include.

But that's hardly a fic, even a tiny one, so obviously I had to come up with four more scenarios to fit the time-honored format. And here we are with a fic that's barely longer than its author note.