The café went silent for a single stunned heartbeat.
Then the world erupted.
Phones snapped upward like a shimmering metallic tide, camera shutters firing in frantic bursts as if the entire capital had collectively decided to become paparazzi at the exact same moment. Someone yelped. Someone dropped their drink. Someone whispered, "Oh my god, he kissed the King," with the kind of awe usually reserved for religious apparitions.
Dax froze only long enough to process the fact that Chris had initiated a kiss in public, and then it was like something inside him simply broke in the most catastrophic, delighted way. His hands came up hard, sliding to Chris's waist before one moved instinctively lower, splaying broad across the small of his back as he pulled him in, lifting him just enough that their bodies aligned in a way that left no one questioning who belonged to whom.
