Intemperance IX - the Inner Circle
Copyright© 2025 by Al Steiner
Chapter 10: Brain Damage
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 10: Brain Damage - The ninth book in the long-running Intemperance series finds Jake Kingsley balancing family, music, and media chaos as his world grows stranger—and more fiercely loyal—by the day. With fame fading and life deepening, the Kingsleys and their inner circle face new challenges in love, trust, and the price of peace.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa BiSexual Fiction
Providence, Rhode Island
June 20, 2004
The hotel restaurant was bustling with the low murmur of breakfast service: silverware clinking, quiet conversation, the occasional laugh. Sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bouncing off polished wood and linen-covered tables. But all around the room, heads kept swiveling toward one particular table near the back.
Jake Kingsley and Laura Kingsley sat side by side, their chairs pushed closer together than necessary, their hands casually intertwined atop the white tablecloth. They weren’t putting on a show—not deliberately—but neither were they hiding. After the Providence Civic Center kiss the night before, there was no longer any reason to.
Jake, dressed in jeans and a casual button-down, looked relaxed, even a little smug. Laura, in a simple sleeveless top and a long, flowy skirt, practically glowed. It was the easy intimacy between them that drew the stares—that and the fact that Jake had just fed her a bite of his coffee milk pancake—a specialty of the house that he felt compelled to try out (it was “okay” was his review)—right off his fork.
Across from them sat Greg Oldfellow, dressed like he’d just rolled out of a Ralph Lauren ad, and Rachelle Dressler, still looking slightly shell-shocked from the whirlwind she’d found herself caught up in. A copy of the Sunday Boston Globe lay folded on the table between her juice glass and her barely touched omelet.
Rachelle stared at the front page. There, above the fold, above even the grim headline about a U.S. airstrike killing eighteen civilians at a family gathering in Fallujah, was a picture of Jake and Laura. Captured in perfect focus, mid-kiss, bathed in concert lighting. They had not needed Rachelle’s shot at all. Nor had any of the paparazzi or media people’s shots been used. It had been a complete amateur who had snapped the perfect representation of the kiss—the goofy look in their eyes, the bodies pressed together spoon fashion, the lips in full contact—by snapping a picture of the video screen where the take from Jules’ camera had been displayed and then quickly selling it to the highest bidder — scoring three hundred dollars for giving up the rights to that little image caught in time.
The caption beneath the shot simply read: ”Jake and Laura Reunited?”
“I still can’t believe it,” Rachelle said softly, almost to herself.
“Believe it,” Jake said with a lazy grin, reaching for his coffee. “You’re part of history now.”
“Small part,” Laura teased, giving Jake’s hand a playful squeeze.
Greg cleared his throat, pushing his mostly empty plate away. “Well,” he said, “some of us were hoping this historic occasion could include a side trip to Bar Harbor to admire a certain quaint coastal manor.”
“Greg,” Laura said, her tone apologetic but firm, “we’ve been over this.”
“We need to be home,” Jake said, more gently. “Sunday dinner with Mama and Papa Valdez. It’s non-negotiable.”
Greg sighed heavily, like a man forced to cancel a personal audience with the Pope. “I suppose family must come first.”
“It must,” Laura said, smiling. “But we’ll come visit. Maybe after the Fourth of July break sometime?”
Greg brightened immediately, already recalibrating his expectations. “That would be ... acceptable.”
“We’ll even bring Caydee and Cap,” Jake added. “Let them terrorize your fancy-ass place.”
“It’s a manor, not a Chuck E. Cheese,” Greg muttered.
Jake took another sip of his coffee—it was adequate, as Greg would say—and checked his watch. It was 8:30 AM here in Providence. That made it 5:30 AM in California. No one back on the left coast was really up yet. No one was reading their morning paper or watching the morning news. Except for a select few, no one yet knew that eighteen people had been killed by an American airstrike while attending a non-insurgent-related family gathering in Fallujah. And no one knew that it was now all but official: Jake and Laura Kingsley had kissed.
They hadn’t even used tongues, but it was front-page news in papers across the country—less than twelve hours after it happened.
That had to be a record, right? The kiss had taken place at 9:45 PM. Press time at newspapers was generally around 10:00 PM (the things you learn when you’re a celebrity—or used to work driving a newspaper truck as Jake once had in a different life). Someone really had been forced to scream “hold the presses” in order to get the story out on the east coast.
Just for a kiss.
They paid the bill (Jake picking up the tab using the KVA business card—this was a tax deductible business trip, after all) and then walked back to the lobby as a group. Jake and Laura had their travel bags with them. They were checking out and leaving as their Gulfstream back to SLO would be ready for taxiing at 9:15. Greg and Rachelle were not so blessed. Their Lear jet would not be ready until 10:30. Greg, of course, blamed this on the fact that Jake was getting more media attention right now so he had some strings to pull in private booking.
“I didn’t pull any fuckin’ strings,” Jake told him one last time. “The concierge set the flight up for me, just like he did yours.”
“And you don’t think the concierge at the Westin Hotel of Providence, the nicest hotel in this little village and only a short drive from Boston, doesn’t have strings to pull?”
Jake gave up at that point.
Now, the two couples parted ways, exchanging handshakes, hugs, and a sincere thank you from Jake and Laura for helping them through Operation Phoenix. It had been something to be tolerated while underway—kind of like the Nerdlys during the mixing process—but the results had been worth the pain in the ass of the process—also like the Nerdlys. They had pulled one over on the entire world, basically. There had not been one suggestion that any of the drama had been staged.
Outside the Westin, the summer air was already thickening with humidity. A crowd of pap, media people, and videographers were standing on the sidewalk. They began to shout questions the moment they saw Jake and Laura emerge. Was it true they were back together? Did they really stay in the same hotel room last night? How does Celia feel about all of this? Could you kiss for us now—a real spontaneous kiss?
The couple ignored them. Jake handed the valet his ticket and waited patiently while someone went and fetched their car. There was a double honk of the horn and the tiny little cramped golf cart thingy (as Laura had dubbed it) appeared before them. Jake slipped the valet a ten dollar bill and then loaded their bags into the back seat. He and Laura then climbed inside, buckled up, and headed for the airport.
They cleared the city limits quickly. TF Green’s private terminal was barely fifteen minutes away. There was no traffic at this hour — just the quiet buzz of a Sunday morning in New England, the streets still shaking off their hangover from Saturday night.
As they coasted into the small, nondescript entrance for private aviation, Jake felt the last lingering threads of the weekend tension start to slip away.
No crowds. No reporters. No cameras.
Just a waiting plane, a waiting flight crew, and the wide open sky.
Home was six hours away.
And for the first time in literal years, they were heading there without secrets hanging over them.
The Gulfstream droned smoothly westward at 40,000 feet, slicing through the bright morning sky like a bullet. Jake leaned back in his seat, stretched out his legs. He had a Bloody Mary sitting on the table before him. It was his second of the flight and would be his last. He did have to drive them home from the airport when they landed.
He looked at his watch. It was still set for Providence time. Among experienced air travelers—which Jake certainly qualified as—there were many schools of thought on how to set one’s watch when one was crossing multiple time zones. Some liked to set it immediately for the destination time while still in the departure time zone. Others like to switch over at about the halfway point of the flight. Those who were obsessed with accuracy of all things in life (like the Nerdlys) went out of their way to keep their watch set at whatever time zone they were currently flying over. Jake, on the other hand, was of the most laid back of frequent air travelers. He liked to keep his watch on departure time until just before landing at the destination (if he was a passenger) or just after aircraft shutdown (if he was the pilot.)
His watch read 12:05 PM. His mind lazily subtracted three hours from that and came up with the answer he needed. It was 9:05 AM in Los Angeles. Prime time for media bloodsport. Pauline had already told him that she and Barb would be on duty this morning, Sunday morning, to start fielding the multitude of calls that would be pouring in, Lord’s Day or not.
Jake picked up the satellite phone that was installed in the wall next to his seat. The instructions on how to operate the thing were on the back of the handset. He looked them over carefully as every air carrier had a different way of doing things. This particular carrier—Green Home Aviation Services, who specialized in flying filthy, stinking rich people like the Kingsley clan around—would simply add any phone charges to the final bill. All you had to do was call the number direct, though you did have to put in the international code first. Easy-peasy, even if they were charging more than ten times the rate the call was actually costing them.
Laura glanced over from her seat, where she was half-heartedly flipping through an old paperback novel. She raised an eyebrow. “Calling into the war zone?”
Jake grinned. “Gotta check on my troops.”
He punched the KVA office number.
Two rings.
“KVA Records, this is Barb Macready. How can I direct your call?”
Crisp. Professional. Not a trace of profanity or even irritation.
Jake smiled. “Hey, Barb. It’s Jake.”
There was a beat—and then a distinct softening on the other end.
“Hey, boss! Good morning! Congratulations on making the front page above the corpse pile.”
Jake laughed. “Glad to know our priorities as a nation are still in order.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Barb said. “You calling to confess or to gloat?”
“Little of both.”
Barb chuckled. “It’s a zoo, boss. This is why you people pay me the big bucks. Phones are blowing up. Every outlet from the Times to Teen Beat is trying to get a comment. I’ve already had six calls in the five minutes since I first sat my butt down. And you know what? Every single one of ‘em earned themselves a first-strike.”
Jake could hear the pride in her voice—pride and maybe a little bloodlust.
“You’re giving ‘em the company line first?” he asked, amused.
“Scout’s honor,” Barb said solemnly. “First hit is always polite. ‘No comment at this time.’ Very professional. But if they push — and they all push — then I get to have some fun.”
Jake chuckled. “How much fun are we talking?”
“I just told a CNN guy that if he called again, I’d personally wrap a microphone cord around his balls and yank until he hit falsetto.” A short pause. “He apologized and hung up.”
Jake laughed out loud. “You’re a national treasure, Barb.”
“Damn right,” she said brightly. “Want me to patch you through to Pauline?”
“Please.”
“One sec, Jake.”
There was a soft click, a brief hold with some classic rock music playing—it was Wheel in the Sky by Journey—and then Pauline’s cool, dry voice came on the line.
“What’s up, little bro? Alive and kicking?”
“High and pressurized at the moment, big sis,” he said.
Pauline let out a small chuckle — the sound of someone halfway between amusement and battlefield fatigue.
“It’s nuts here,” she said. “Phones haven’t stopped since Barb unlocked the door. She’s killing it, by the way. I think she’s actually disappointed we only have two lines.”
“I figured she’d thrive,” Jake said. “How bad is it?”
“About the usual when you pull some shit like this,” Pauline said. “Every outlet wants a comment. Every freelance stringer with a phone and a byline wants a comment. I think someone from National Enquirer tried to proposition Barb just to get a soundbite.”
Jake laughed. “And?”
“She told him to cram a French horn up his ass backwards and see if he can still blow smoke up hers.”
Jake shook his head, grinning. “That’s not really physical possible.”
“I know,” Pauline said. “Now ... putting it in forward, that could be done.”
“Good point,” Jake agreed.
Pauline shifted gears smoothly. “Company line is still holding. No comment across the board. You’re the first caller to make it past Barb to me so far. I’ve already sent a few polite follow-up emails to the bigger outlets reaffirming that KVA has no statement at this time.”
“Good,” Jake said. “Let ‘em stew.”
“Press release today, or wait until tomorrow?” She already knew he wanted it out as soon as possible.
“Let’s give them the official line tonight,” Jake said. “When I get home, I’ll knock out a quick statement on behalf of both of us. Real short. Calm. Confident. You know the drill.”
“Of course,” Pauline said. “No high drama. No ‘sources close to the Kingsleys’ bullshit. Just a simple, official line straight from the source.”
“Exactly.”
“And you want me to send it out tonight?”
“That’s right,” Jake said. “I’ll email it to your private account when I’m done and then text you that I sent it. Send it on right away so they can get it into tomorrow’s edition if they hurry.”
“Copy that. SLO Register first?” They had already discussed this.
Jake smiled a little. “Yeah. Let the hometown paper break it. Fuck the Times. Fuck the Watcher. Let’s support the locals a little.”
Pauline was not entirely convinced. “I’m sure they’ll spin it well, thanks to that spirit,” she said, her voice dry. She was being facetious. The SLO Register was a long-time foe of anything Kingsley—the self-appointed guardian of public morals when it came to weird, Satanic people living and breeding up on that cliff in their gothic mansion.
But they had printed the facts behind the Venezuelan transgender sex slave rumor way back when, so Jake kind of owed them one.
“There’s not much to spin. That’s the beauty of it. We’re free now. Free. I can now stick my tongue down Laura’s throat in public if I want to. It would be uncouth, but I can do it.”
“Uh ... yeah, right,” she said. “I can see the advantage to that.”
They did not need to say much more. They’d been through media storms before — this one was just louder and more immediate, not different.
“Safe flight, Jake,” Pauline said. “And ... congrats. You two earned it.”
Jake felt a genuine warmth stir in his chest at that. “Thanks, Paulie. See you soon.”
He hung up and placed the handset back in its cradle.
Laura looked up from her book and raised an eyebrow.
“All quiet on the western front?” she asked.
“For now,” Jake said, leaning back in his seat. He reached for his Bloody Mary, savoring the last few sips. “Tonight, we drop the statement. By this time next month, they’ll have forgotten all about us.”
Laura smiled — soft, tired, but real.
“I only wish I could believe that,” she said.
It took Jake exactly five minutes to compose his press release, attach it to an email, and send it to Pauline. He did it all with a scotch on the rocks on the desk and Cap sitting on his lap asking him to play Ver y Decir en Español with him.
Jake Kingsley and Laura Kingsley would like to confirm that they are once again in a romantic relationship. They have never truly stopped loving each other since their divorce two years ago, and have continued to cohabitate during Jake’s brief marriage to Celia Valdez-Kingsley. At this time, they have chosen to explore their true feelings for each other openly.
The divorce of Jake and Celia Valdez-Kingsley will be official on June 28, 2004. Jake, Celia, and Laura remain close friends and continue to co-parent Cadence and Capriccio Kingsley together.
Celia Valdez-Kingsley will continue to live in the family home alongside Jake, Laura, and the children. She is thrilled for the couple’s reunion and wishes them nothing but happiness.
He then returned to the desktop and double-clicked on the Ver y Decir en Español icon. The game fired up and he and Cap had a good old time playing it. Cap was a master by this point. He knew every single animal but was especially enthusiastic when the pájaro was the animal in question.
The email arrived in Pauline’s inbox seconds after being sent. It really was a great time to be alive. She had a scotch on the rocks of her own beside her as she read it over carefully, corrected a few minor errors that brother-dear had made, and tightened it up a bit. She then printed out the final version so she had something to refer to. She could have simply used the computer screen, but she was old school in many ways.
She called up her contacts list and found the number for Amanda Sloan.
It was a number she had possessed for more than a year now, ever since Amanda had quietly told her, off the record, that she could be called directly if KVA ever had something important to say. Until today, Pauline had never used it. But Jake wanted to go local with this one out of some twisted sense of honor, so ... Amanda it was.
She picked up her desk phone, dialed the number, and waited.
Two rings.
“Amanda Sloan,” came the answer — crisp, professional, a little wary. She imagined that Sunday calls were a bit unusual in SLO County—and probably not often good news. Well ... on this particular Sunday, it would be good news.
“This is Pauline Kingsley,” she said. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday.”
A brief pause. Then: “I’m always on the clock. What’s up?”
Pauline cut right to it. “Jake and Laura Kingsley are officially back together. Divorce from Celia final in two weeks. No scandal. No drama. Full cohabitation, full family unit intact. I have an official statement ready to release.”
Another beat. Pauline could almost hear Amanda’s pulse pick up through the line.
“You’re offering it to me?” Amanda asked, her voice tight with control.
“I’m offering it to you and the Register exclusively,” Pauline said. “But only if you move fast. We want this in tomorrow morning’s paper and out on the AP wire right after publication. If you can’t handle that, I’ll call that bitch over at the LA Times.”
Amanda didn’t hesitate. And she knew who ‘that bitch over at the LA Times’ was. Everyone in southern California entertainment politics knew her. “We’ll make it happen.”
“I’m emailing it to your editor and cc’ing it to you right now. No leaks. No edits. You run the statement as written, credited to Pauline Kingsley of KVA Records, spokesperson for Jake Kingsley, Laura Kingsley, and Celia Valdez-Kingsley.”
“Understood.”
“Good,” Pauline said. “You do this right and we’ll keep you in mind for future press releases.”
“It will be done right,” Sloan promised.
Pauline allowed herself a small, tight smile as she attached the cleaned-up statement to a fresh email addressed to both Amanda and the Register’s night editor, flagged urgent.
Within five minutes, it was done.
Now all they had to do was wait for the world to wake up and start howling.
Meanwhile, in a modest three bedroom house in the Mission neighborhood of San Luis Obispo city, Amanda Sloan stared at her phone for half a second after Pauline Kingsley hung up, as if waiting for the universe to confirm that yes, that really just happened.
She was sitting at her kitchen table, dressed in sweat shorts and a sports bra, a half-sorted pile of laundry nearby, her Sunday afternoon plans involving little more than folding towels and maybe catching a rerun of Law and Order later while she cuddled with her two cats.
Not anymore.
She snatched up her laptop, nearly knocking over her glass of Diet Coke, and stabbed the power button. At the same time, she grabbed her landline and punched in the number for the Register’s night editor.
When he picked up, she didn’t even say hello.
“Clear the front page above the fold. We’ve got Jake and Laura Kingsley. Exclusive.”
From the San Luis Obispo Register:
Monday, June 21, 2004
Front Page, Above the Fold
Entertainment / Lifestyle Section Banner
KINGSLEYS REUNITE IN PROVIDENCE PDA
— by Amanda Sloan, Register Entertainment Staff
San Luis Obispo, California — Jake Kingsley and Laura Kingsley, once considered rock’s ultimate power couple, are officially back together.
Pauline Kingsley, Jake Kingsley’s sister and the spokesperson for KVA Records, confirmed Sunday evening that the Kingsleys, who divorced two years ago but continued to cohabitate in San Luis Obispo County, have rekindled their romantic relationship.
The announcement comes after a now-viral photograph captured the couple sharing a tender kiss during a Brainwash concert Saturday night at the Providence Civic Center. A second photograph, published here, shows the couple slow-dancing together during the song My Heart, their bodies pressed close, with Jake’s arms wrapped protectively around Laura’s waist as she leaned back against him.
KVA’s official statement, released late Sunday, reads in part:
“Jake Kingsley and Laura Kingsley would like to confirm that they are once again in a romantic relationship. They have never truly stopped loving each other since their divorce two years ago, and have continued to cohabitate during Jake’s brief marriage to Celia Valdez-Kingsley. At this time, they have chosen to explore their true feelings for each other openly.”
The label also confirmed that Jake and Celia Valdez-Kingsley’s divorce will be finalized later this month, and emphasized that all parties remain close friends and co-parents to Cadence and Capriccio Kingsley, the children produced from Jake’s previous marriages to Laura Kingsley and Celia Valdez-Kingsley respectively.
According to the statement, Celia Valdez-Kingsley will continue to reside in the Kingsley home alongside Jake, Laura, and the children because that is what they feel is best for the children.
This public confirmation ends weeks of speculation about the status of Jake and Laura Kingsley, who have been seen together publicly in recent weeks but had refused to comment officially on the nature of their relationship until now.
When asked for further comment, KVA Records declined, stating that the press release speaks for itself.
By noon on Monday, Barb Macready had answered 114 phone calls without letting one inappropriate inquiry slip through to Pauline, Jake, or anyone else remotely important.
The usual jackals — the reporters she had skinned alive the day before — now tiptoed carefully when they called, their opening questions polished, cautious, overly polite. They had learned the hard way that “No further comment at this time” was not a suggestion. It was a warning.
Still, there were fresh idiots in the pool — out-of-town stringers, hungry freelancer types, a few national correspondents who hadn’t gotten the Barb Memo yet.
And for them, Barb had a growing collection of colorful farewells:
“Buttfuck yourself with a melon spoon and tell me what it’s like to eat some ass.” “Shove your tape recorder up your twat and hit ‘record’ so you can listen to yourself whine later.” “Try to suck your microphone like a dick and maybe someone will finally quote you.” “Find a cactus, sit on it bare-assed, and take notes on the experience.” “French kiss a fuckin’ light socket and then come tell me how shocked you feel.”
Through it all, Barb remained tireless — fueled by expensive imported coffee, easily expressed anger, and the savage joy of righteous gatekeeping.
She even fended off Steve Crow, who was now the vice president of National Records, when he tried to sneak past her by claiming he had “business to discuss.”
Barb, who had been fooled once by that line during her first week and had sworn on her mother’s grave it would never happen again, unleashed a verbal barrage so profane, so blisteringly creative, that witnesses at the KVA office said they heard the walls rattle.
Steve Crow hung up without speaking another word. According to Pauline, who caught the aftermath secondhand, he spent the next ten minutes staring at his phone like a Marine back from Fallujah—quiet, pale, and blinking slowly, as if trying to process what had just happened and whether it could legally happen again.
Barb merely straightened her headset, took a sip of coffee, and waited for the next poor bastard to make the mistake of thinking they were special.
Pauline was impressed. This was usually the point where the previous receptionists truly started to become unhinged from reality. Barb showed no such signs. She was having the time of her life dragging the vultures and vampires and leeches into her reality.
Meanwhile, back in San Luis Obispo County, a full-blown media circus was underway. Paparazzi, reporters, videographers, and on-camera personalities swarmed the Johansen Spot like it was Mecca. So many showed up that there was no room left for the people who actually wanted to hike the dunes trail down to the ocean—the same trail Drew Conners used to reach the Kingsley cliff. State park rangers, overwhelmed, called in backup from the California Highway Patrol to keep the chaos under control. Two pap were arrested after protesting a parking ticket (they’d parked directly in front of the trailhead access) and got just mouthy enough to fail the attitude test. Off to jail they went. And all the police reform in the universe wasn’t going to change that cause-and-effect relationship.
At Kingsley Manor, they tried to stay at peace. All had been through the circus being in town before. They were under siege but they were safe inside of their home. Their faith in that had been a little shaken by the recent intrusion of Drew Conners, the photojournalist who just might be able to think his way out of a paper bag — if he could figure out how to turn the GPS on. He had come close to breaching their privacy, but he had failed.
They did not close the blinds. They did not shuffle around in the dark or hide behind curtains. The cliff behind Kingsley Manor was still there, just as sheer and jagged and treacherous as it had always been. If someone else wanted to climb it—really climb it—just to snap a shot of Laura washing her Lexus in bike shorts or Celia sipping her coffee out on the deck in a bathrobe, so be it. That wasn’t a family secret. That was just a family living their life. And they were going to keep on living it.
However, it was a Monday and not everyone had the luxury of staying inside the walls of solitude that was Kingsley Manor. Some actually felt trapped there. Mondays were Caydee’s play days at the Ramirez casa—but not this Monday. She was very disappointed that “the fuckin’ pap” got to keep her holed up inside while Carlos and Emelia would be having all kinds of fun climbing trees and eating real quesadillas and following bees back to their hives and cool shit like that.
Jake, Laura, and Celia had plans that were not so easily cancelled, however. They were smack in the middle of recording and working up two separate projects at The Campus. They could not simply hide inside. Progress could not advance if they were not there and they were already under a tight deadline. They only had until the Christmas break to get as much done as possible before Intemperance switched over to working on their set for the TSF in April.
They knew what to do in this situation, however. They climbed into their vehicle—it was Jake’s BMW on this particular Monday—with Jake and Laura in the front, Celia in the back. They had decided that—just to fuck with the pap and the media and see what kind of twisted-ass meaning they applied to it—Laura would sit in the front on the way into work and Celia would sit in the front on way back. And then, once every week or so, Jake would sit in the back while the two women sat up front (Celia driving, of course. Having Laura drive would fall under the heading of taking a joke too far).
It was good to meet an unpleasantness with humor. And if you could fuck with your adversary in the process—even better.
They simply drove to The Campus like it was any other day. A line of eight vehicles and two news vans took up position and followed them, staying right on their ass the entire thirty minute drive.
“Why are they following us now?” asked Laura, who was watching them in the passenger side mirror. “They know that when we leave at this time of day, we’re going to the Campus, which is secured.”
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