Summary: Marius is wearing and oversized coat, and he has freckles and fluffy hair and an air of a kicked puppy which screams "be nice to me." Courfeyrac is charmed, but no one else is quite as convinced.
For his 18th birthday Courfeyrac gets his own apartment and money for a tattoo. Enjolras has two of them already and Combeferre five, but Courfeyrac has always chickened out out front of the glass window-front with the excessively large shop name and branding, and so Enjolras and Combeferre get their own money together so he will have to go through with it. He's been talking about it since he was 15. Enjolras and Combeferre had both gotten tattoos the day they turned 16, and Courfeyrac had been adamant that he would too, but when the day came he hadn't gone through with it. In the years since he's been threatening to actually get the ink at periodic intervals, and Enjolras and Combeferre have finally had enough of the posturing.
It still takes almost two months to talk him into the tattoo artist's chair. Once they've finally gotten him seated they make to go wait in the front room for him, but Courfeyrac's hand shoots out to clasp desperately at Enjolras'. So Enjolras stands beside him the whole time, feeling his fingers going slowly numb from Courfeyrac's tight grip. The tattoo artist gives him strange looks the entire session, and its only when it's finished and Courfeyrac lets go of his hand that Enjolras realises that his sleeve has risen up and liberté égalité fraternité can be seen looping around his own wrist as well. For a moment he wants to call Combeferre over and get him to roll up his sleeve too, so the artist can have something to really be judgemental about, but it's late and Courfeyrac was nervous about coming in here in the first place; he doesn't want to start at fight right now.
They take Courfeyrac to a supermarket next, and Combeferre buys him a bottle of wine because "he won't stop whining" about the pain in his wrist and Enjolras laughs, because everyone always thinks the pun in the name of their group was Courfeyrac's idea, not Combeferre's. When Courfeyrac picks up the bottle he clasps the neck in the hand just above his new tattoo.
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Enjolras is woken up at 6:30 the next morning by a phone call from Courfeyrac. He's not much of a morning person, and normally he would snap about being woken up so early, but Courfeyrac sounds sheepish as he tells him about his walk home after the three of them separated in front of the supermarket last night.
He had taken the shortcut through the park and seen a boy leaning up against a tree with a suitcase resting at his feet. The boy's name was Marius, and he had nowhere to stay after being kicked out of his grandfather's house for fostering different political views. At this point in the story Enjolras sighs, because he knows how it ends.
Courfeyrac has four dogs that he found wandering abandoned in the park and took home. He supposes a human was just the next step.
He tells Courfeyrac to bring the boy along to their next meeting.
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Courfeyrac is as good as his word, and they meet Marius at the Musain two days later. It's a smaller meeting than usual, Feuilly off at work and Bahorel meeting up with a girl that he's been bragging about for weeks, but they persevere regardless. Enjolras can immediately see why Courfeyrac wanted to help the boy he saw alone in the park. Marius is taller than Courfeyrac, but hunched in over himself so that he seems far shorter. He's wearing an oversized coat, and he has freckles and fluffy hair and an air of a kicked puppy. It's not an impression Enjolras particularly likes, truthfully, but it does scream "be nice to me", and Courfeyrac always reaches out to help without thought to any consequences. It's one of his most admirable qualities.
Marius seems shy initially, offering up insightful comments for conversations but muttering them in the direction of his table, but evidently they must touch on a topic that he believes himself to be knowledgeable about, and almost immediately comes out of his shell. Unfortunately, he says all the wrong things.
Combeferre shuts him down, immediately and efficiently, and within moments the previously lively meeting has all but been evacuated. Courfeyrac is the last to leave, and when he shoots Enjolras a questioning look, Enjolras nods in return and Courfeyrac smiles sadly.
Otherwise alone, Enjolras turns back to see Marius curled up in himself and his coat, just as he had been before he decided to speak up. Enjolras loves Combeferre dearly, but the problem is that he is incredibly smart; he knows and reads so much, and from everywhere, educates himself on every issue he becomes exposed to, and can not fathom that other people do not have the means, skill or ability to do the same. Despite the fact that he grew up with Enjolras, he sometimes forgets that not everyone has parents who taught them about the wrongs in the world instead of just perpetuating them. Enjolras believes in the importance of self-education as well - it was all that he had for almost three years - but he knows how much of a struggle it can be, to shift through all of the junk and misconception that can be found out there just to find a nugget of truth, how many people can stumble onto misinformation and form their knowledge based on that. He sees much more worth in collaborative learning with people from all different backgrounds and available information. Enjolras will always primarily be an advocate for education, for teaching others who may not know as much as you, through no fault other than what can be blamed on their previous teachers.
Maruis looks like he might never speak again, staring down to where he's scratching at the table with his thumb, and doesn't look up when Enjolras sits down opposite him. Enjolras has never truthfully had much of an issue with displaying physical affection, but for whatever reason it makes people who aren't Combeferre or Courfeyrac uncomfortable when he displays it. However, Marius doesn't know him, and can't have had much time to form an opinion of him, so he decides to chance an offer of comfort and puts his hand on his shoulder. Marius almost falls out of his seat in surprise, as if he hadn't heard Enjolras approach him, but he doesn't otherwise attempt to move away, just looks into his eyes, genuinely confused that Enjolras is still around instead of leaving like everyone else.
Enjolras doesn't like to think of himself as the kind of person who makes split second decisions on people's character, but he also doesn't like lying to himself about his own failings. Marius reminds him too much of his younger self, that angry kid who just kept talking and arguing and fighting about things he didn't really understand and without any real objective research, disregarding any other opinion but his own. He doesn't really like that attitude. Or Marius.
Honestly, it's a little like how he felt about Grantaire to begin with, before he realised that Grantaire read every article that any of them referenced in meetings, and several followup books linked in their bibliographies. He knows, because Grantaire texts him sometimes with comments on whatever he had referred in the meeting earlier. The fact that he then insists on being relentlessly pessimistic about what he read doesn't change the fact that he is honestly trying to learn, and Enjolras would like him more if anything he said afterwards was useful even in opposition, rather than mostly just telling them not to even try, but he does like Grantaire. His pessimism is his own choice, and Enjolras respects that he makes choices, even if he doesn't agree with them.
Marius has not earned that. But he'd like for him to have the opportunity to; to learn, to expand his horizons. He's clearly clever and articulate, he just needs to have some motivation. Which is what prompts Enjolras to invite him to come along to the next meeting.
Marius nods and mumbles something about thinking about it, and Enjolras smiles at him in a way that he hopes is encouraging.
It's only as Combeferre and Courfeyrac melt out of the shadows, one to apologise and the other to take Marius home with him, that Enjolras really has time to think on the fact that his friends just left, rather than offer information to someone who is simply just misguided. He has always said that education was their primary objective, and it is a little worrying that their first response to ignorance is anger, rather than attempting to teach. Anger is well and good, but it is only truly effective when channeled into something productive. He doesn't understand when their priorities shifted, but Les Amis haven't done any activism that wasn't a protest in a long time. Perhaps they've become too isolated, too caught up in platform discussion with the select group of people who can make it to protests, and not spending enough time with the people they want to help. It needs to change.
He also doesn't understand why Grantaire was the second to leave, after Combeferre. Wouldn't he like to have someone else around who also didn't believe in their cause?