He leans to the side only very slightly, only enough that he is poked by the dick. "So how do the memory things work, do you still find it desperately hot that we're naked together like this or did it just become normal?"

"It's a bit schizophrenic honestly? On the one hand it's completely normal and on the other hand if you touched me any more deliberately I'd probably get detention for cumming all over your desk."

"Very tempting," he says, not touching but definitely looking.

"Homeroom's almost over," Edmund observes. "If you're going to torment me, might I suggest doing it next period?"

"What are this timeline's thoughts on public sex? Regular kissing PDA or still very bad?"

"Kissing's fine, handholding's great, don't mess with each other's bits. More or less."

Bell!

"Boring. I really enjoyed spitroasting you in front of the whole school." He gets up and probably people still would in fact make inferences from the fact that the two boys making faces at each other both have erections.

Edmund shudders, a drop of precum welling up from his tip. "It sounds like quite a time," he manages, hefting his backpack over his bare shoulder.

James's eyes are inexorably drawn to said drop of precum, and he licks his lips a bit. "It really was. I'm curious about the, uh, worldbuilding of that place."

"Same, honestly - you said it was a bacchanal? Does that imply there was supposed to be wine too, I wonder..."

"Wait, that's a word that really exists? What does it mean?"

"Roman festival of the god Bacchus, called Dionysius by the Greeks. Lots of drinking, lots of food, lots of sex. I'm not sure whether to imagine you made a universe in which Pennsylvania worships the Hellenic gods, or if... Christianity developed differently..."

He pauses, his expression turning thoughtful and unhappy.

"...'sup?"

"...I'm, uh, Christian. And... ultimately the literal text of the Bible is fallible, men wrote the words and God wrote the stones, but... I read doctrinal analysis about the lines that say not to always hide the image of God with clothing? I had opinions about them? I thought they were ultimately pretty sensible, as things for God to say? And... He didn't. Until a few minutes ago."

"Oh. Uh."

...he is really not equipped for religious analysis, here! His religious opinions are somewhere between "whatever" and "who cares" and... well.

"...I get the feeling you're not religious? It's - imagine there was someone you really liked, really respected, and - you joke about them to someone, say can you believe so-and-so wet the bed until age fifteen, and - it's not even that they believe you instead of taking the joke, it's that they nod and think about it very hard and come back to you with an itemized list of reasons they believe you, and you read it and suddenly you're not so sure you were joking."

"...okay... but I mean what's so bad about, uh, wetting the bed until fifteen?"

"It's really less about the particulars and more - I just changed a pretty fundamental tenet of my own faith by accident so I could look at your dick?"

"I don't really... know... how to talk about this... tactfully."

"I... don't really need tact? I can tell the difference between stepping on my toes and kicking me in the shin."

"Okay, so, uh... the way I see it is... if God, uh, exists... then... He's probably not less powerful than a magic handbook? And whatever... is true... will remain true? And what changes is gonna be, like, stuff that doesn't matter or stuff that was wrong before or stuff that God never said anything about and that people made up?"

"...I mean, you're right. I just - even if the Bible is fallible it's supposed to give us the general idea of what He wants, and... I guess it's suddenly hitting me, the - the extent to which I can't safely assume that anymore. If I ever really could."

"Well maybe it does still give you a general idea, like... I dunno, did the," and he gestures between the both of them, "nudity thing change that?"

(His boner has definitely been killed by this conversation, now.)

"I mean, it's not that I suddenly don't trust the Bible that God exists because it says to be naked in this timeline? It's - I don't know where the line is, between - Leviticus, which was already definitely horseshit, and the nudity thing, which I didn't know wasn't real, and - like, I assume the Ten Commandments are going to stay the same? The Parables will still encourage... generally prosocial behavior? But - I apparently can't reason out what's real from first principles, because I already failed at that."

"Oh. Yeah. I'm—I don't know how that would work, I guess."

Also he's not saying that Edmund will probably need to be prepared to maybe find out there's no God but he's kinda thinking it.