AU, aka, my own little world. Don't own.
"Listen," Charlotte Xavier said, one arm perched tenuously on the bar, the other on her hip. "All I've gotten out of today is a PhD in a subject worthless to anyone but me, and five Campari and sodas." She leaned in a little closer to the man across from her and smiled. The winning Xavier smile that always seemed to bend others to her will. "So, what I'm saying is, tonight could be made a lot better. There's potential here."
The man seemed responsive, all blond hair and the common kind of handsome that would be fuzzy to Charlotte tomorrow morning. He tucked a few strands of brown hair, the color Mrs. Xavier liked to dress up as "glossy chestnut", behind her ear, then turned towards the barman and ordered her another drink. He then ordered, for himself, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Charlotte felt an inner wave of distaste. He got points off for that, but not as many as if he were one of the Brooks Brothers-clad Wall Street types who always seemed to find her, realize who she was, hit on her, order a Jameson on the rocks, with a twist, for themselves, and then bring back a drink for her without asking what she liked. It was always a Gin and Tonic. Charlotte detested Gin and she detested Tonic, her mother's two best, and sometimes only, friends. So she gave Mr. PBR a pass.
"Congratulations, then. On your Graduation," he said, laughing at his rhyme until he noticed Charlotte's blank look of unamused. Well, if anything, at least Charlotte had gotten a free drink out of him. She couldn't remember the last time she'd ever had to buy herself a drink at a bar. Had she ever? She wouldn't even know what to tip the bartender. Did they even tip here? Maybe that was just a New York thing. Her mind was losing track of its own thread. Charlotte decided she was drunk.
The man was still talking. About her gorgeous green eyes, green like celery, green like Kermit the Frog. The stars were not aligned in her favor tonight. Or ever, for that matter. Taking her level of inebriation into account, she decided she'd give him one last chance. God, did she need to get laid. She interrupted him mid-sentence.
"Do you know that's a mutation? That's what I study. Mutations. Your colorblindness, I mean." Oh, yes. She was talking in circles. That sixth drink had gone down smooth.
"Wait, what? I'm not colorblind. I even passed that test with the giant E and everything." Charlotte decided to ignore that last comment.
"Yes, you are. My eyes are blue. But it's all right. Some mutations are really quite groovy. My sister Raven, for example-" Charlotte felt a tug on her arm, and turned away from the man to give her sister the kind of ebullient hug that only a drunk person – no, a drunken Charlotte Xavier – can give. "Speak of the devil and she shall appear!" Charlotte teetered on her heels, cursing them. Four inches of pain and still pitifully the shortest one in the room, particularly standing next to the modelesque Raven.
"Aaaand the devil says it's time to go home," Raven said, taking the highball from her sister's fist and placing it on the bar. "Yes!," she preemptively glared at Charlotte, knowing that her sister would look at her in that extraordinarily persuasive way that exemplified the famous Xavier charm (which Raven hadn't seemed to inherit).
"But – I was just telling this lovely young man," "Alex," he filled in for her, and she continued. "Yes, Alex here, all about his mutation!"
"Honey, once you start using the word 'groovy', it's time to stop drinking." Raven helped Charlotte into her coat (the lovely, lovely Burberry trench that her mother had told her was common but which she'd bought anyways and look was that a penny on the floor?) and linked arms with her sister, supporting her more than she'd like to admit. "Bye, Al!," Charlotte called back to the dejected-looking man, who was just realizing he'd missed out on not one, but both of the Xavier sisters.
"But, hey! It was working!," Charlotte argued belatedly. They were on the street now, Raven desperately trying to flag down a cab and keep her sister upright at the same time.
"Yes, but really, Charlotte. You could do so much better than that rando at the bar. He looked vaguely criminal. And the last time you tried using the whole mutation thing as a pick up line, you wound up telling Sean Cassidy all about his second copy of Chromosome 16 and woke up in his bed. No more gingers. No more mutations. No more getting shitfaced every time your mother makes her once-yearly appearance." Charlotte looked like she was about to cry. Raven really didn't have the patience for this right now, particularly when Hank had just texted her about some house party in Soho that would take an age to get to from wherever the fuck this dive was.
"No one cares about what I do. Mum couldn't give a ship. Shit. I mean, shit."
"Charlotte, look at me. You have to make them care. You have to make the world care. You have so much passion in you, and I know you can do it. I also know that you're drunk right now but you need to pull it together. Got it? You've graduated, you're done. Life is not a glass of pink champagne."
"But why not? What are you doing?," Charlotte asked as Raven shoved her in the back of a cab, giving the cabbie the address to her flat, since Charlotte had already moved out of her own to move to New York tomorrow – well, later today, she supposed.
"You figure it out," Raven told her, shutting the door and waving as it drove away.