Viscaria

“viscaria” ; will you dance with me?

Yoongi tugs at the piece of velvet covering half his face, fingers itching to play with the black lace hemming and silver sequins surrounding the outsides of his mask. It doesn’t matter how many times he’d been invited to Namjoon’s high-end masquerade balls, it seemed he’d never be able to fully relax in the company of so many masked guests.

Not that they weren’t all the same anyway - even after having attended these things almost once every month since Namjoon had turned of-age, Yoongi still couldn’t tell one mask wearer apart from another - they were usually clad in either black or white velvet, trimmed with gold and silver.

Preoccupied in scanning the crowd for his best friend, Yoongi almost misses the single viscaria being held out to him.

It had been Jimin’s idea to use the purple flowers as an invitation to dance, because it apparently “adds to the whole mystery of a masquerade ball, hyung!“

Yoongi lifts his left hand, ready to reject the unlucky guest, when he catches sight of the man’s mask - Ocean-blue and rimmed with gold, adorned with almost-metallic peacock-green feathers. He knows only one person daring enough to wear such a loud mask to a black-and-white event and he immediately switches his left hand for his right, breathing a name at once so familiar and foreign.

The man grins, a rectangular smile that shows off pearly whites, and takes Yoongi’s hand in his own larger ones.