Work Text:
1.
The first time Beth gets married is to Harry Beltik.
He proposes a few months after she returns from Moscow, telling her he’s always loved her.
Love is such a funny word. Beth loves chess, this she knows. She loves Jolene, and she loved Alma, and she thinks Alma loved her. And she thinks that her birth mother loved her too, even if she doesn’t understand it most days. This type of love is a type of love she is familiar with, even if she has a hard time holding onto it somedays. It is an old sweater wrapped around you, giving you comfort on the coldest days.
And then there is the type of love that they talk about in stories, in movies, in songs. The type of love that makes your breath stop and your heart pound and your stomach flutter and your chest ache.
She thinks she’s only ever approached what that love is supposed to feel like once, and she’s not even sure of it. But that person hasn’t called, she doesn’t even know if that person wants her to call, and they are miles away.
And Harry is here. She loves Harry in a way she is familiar with.
There is no reason to say no, she reasons.
Even if she doesn’t really like Harry’s hair and she finds herself thinking of blonde hair and quick fingers more often than she should.
It’s a quiet, small ceremony at the local church (on Harry’s insistence), and there is a pretty white dress and a cake and cards. (And the card with the New York return address on it stabs at her heart just a little bit). But it is nice.
It stays nice for a little, but then the nicety turns into monotony and then resentment and then eventually, not even resentment or anger, but just plain resignation. It’s a loss and Beth just wants it to be over.
2.
The second time Beth is married, it’s technically not legal.
In the list of things that make people gossip about Beth Harmon (being a dominating woman chess player, having a bad drinking habit, her love of pretty dresses, divorcing that nice man Harry Beltik), she thinks that she might as well add a shotgun Vegas wedding to a French model.
She and Cleo meet up in Vegas by chance (one never knows just where Cleo will be at any given time), and a few rounds at the poker table and some drinks on the house lead to a trip down memory lane.
They toast to unrequited love and stupid men once again, and a few drinks later, they decide that they don’t need men at all.
The drive-thru preacher who marries them is a little inebriated himself, and that’s probably why he marries them and neglects to mention that their union isn’t legal.
They wake up in the morning and have a good laugh on seeing the instant camera photos they took, but neither of them are too disappointed when the hotel clerk informs them that their marriage isn’t valid. They have breakfast with mimosas, and go on their merry ways in less than 24 hours.
At least the sex was good.
3.
Mike goes through a punk phase and wears a lot of black and leather and too-skinny jeans.
Coupled with his blonde hair, Beth finds it oddly attractive.
Maybe it’s a secret fancy hidden all these years or maybe it’s just that he listens to too much rock and roll about sex and unrequited love, but he proposes at a bar with a ring made from cigarette wrappers, a beer bottle in his hand.
And maybe she’s overwhelmed with nostalgia for another time in a bar with an overly skinny blonde boy or maybe she’s just bored or maybe she likes Matt and can’t find a reason to say no, but any way, she says yes, and they are married by a clerk in a city hall and then they go back to the drugs and the booze and the sex and the chess.
It’s nice, having a spouse who is still into chess, who can accompany you to tournaments. At first, it’s like the old times, with Matt and Mike grabbing prime seats for her matches.
Beth doesn’t fail to notice how her opponent’s eyes will flick over to her husband’s seat and look disapprovingly. She’s not sure what exactly bothers them so much about it: the gender roles, or that her husband looks like he should be at a rock concert and not a chess match, or that she’s with such an amateur chess player. For a certain player (who she knows has no right to be commenting on Mike’s looks), she’s not sure if it’s simply jealousy or contempt, but she tries not to think about it too much.
But eventually, Mike starts to show up later and later to her matches and then not at all, and a terrible feeling sinks into her gut.
She doesn’t find him dead in their bed, but she does find him passed out on the bathroom floor, a syringe in his palm.
She calls Matt to deal with him and then takes a handful of her own drugs to deal with it.
Matt is furious and (almost literally) drags them off to a recovery program.
It’s a long, hard road, and Beth just wants it to end but Mike and Matt have been there for her a lot, so she figures she owes this to them. So they go through it together.
And in the weeks and months of withdrawing and relapsing and collapsing and then building up again, they come out stronger for it.
They also come out wiser. Wise enough to know when an end has been coming for a long time.
4.
Beth’s fourth wedding is an ostentatious, lavish affair. There is a gorgeous silk dress and a five-tier cake and cards filled with money.
She doesn’t really know why she does it, but at this point, she doesn’t think too much of marriage and decides she might as well be exceedingly comfortable if she’s going to do what’s expected of women (though this expectation is thankfully changing).
Beth’s husband of six months dies six months after they’re married and Beth is left with an estate full of family heirlooms and more money than even she could spend in a lifetime on pretty dresses and marble chess sets.
She wears the most gorgeous little black dress to the funeral with a string of white pearls and red lipstick to match.
5.
In the 1980s, Beth marries Townes.
She’s not under any delusion that he’s in love with her, or ever could love her like that. But they are good friends, and it makes sense.
The AIDS epidemic is at a peak and bigots are rearing their ugly heads even more openly now. It is almost impossible to keep a job if people know you’re gay.
Townes has been living with his “roommate” Roger long enough for rumors to start to circulate in their small Kentucky community.
To make matters worse, Roger has recently been admitted to the hospital and Townes does not know how he’ll pay the bills if he gets fired and any other newspapers will refuse to hire him once word gets out.
It is Beth who proposes the idea. Townes is over at her house, sharing his woes as friends do, when it comes to Beth. Beth has always been a logical person, and this makes good, practical sense. A marriage to the most-renowned and well-known female chess player in the world will surely help shut down those rumors.
At first, she fears it may be a little awkward, being engaged to a man you once thought you were in love with. But she finds it isn’t. They have kept their promise and are now friends, good friends, the best of friends, and it works for both of them.
It’s not a traditional marriage, but it is a marriage based on deep respect, admiration, and yes, the love, even if it’s only the familiar kind and not the romantic type. And together, that’s more than any of her other marriages were based on.
She moves into Townes’ and Roger’s house and helps when and where she can. Watching them, she witnesses what she’s sure the books and the movies and the songs are all talking about.
It doesn’t make her heart sing, but it makes her happy, knowing she can help in this god-awful, unhappy situation.
Besides, she’s been married so many times, this time is a breeze. She forgets she’s even married most of the time.
Townes dies in 1987. He doesn’t die of AIDS. Instead, he is hit by a car, leaving Roger’s bedside at the hospital.
“A tragedy,” the newspapers call it. And it is a damn tragedy but the papers and the press and the national news and the bigots will never know just how much of a tragedy this rushed ending is, Beth thinks bitterly, as she and Roger cry and hold each other.
They refer to her as a his wife in the paper, and she hates it, not on her behalf, but on Roger’s. She hates that she’s been able to be married all these times to men she didn’t even love like that, but Townes and Rogers couldn’t even get married once, even when they loved each in such a way that, just from watching them, Beth knew what that type of love was supposed to feel like.
The world is cruel, and it makes Beth run herself to despair. She almost turns to the pills and the wine again, for the first time in what feels like forever, but she remembers a conversation long ago in a hotel room in Moscow, and she doesn’t.
Instead, she sells her long unused house in Lexington and sets up a fund for Roger’s care and donates the rest to a patient advocacy organization.
She will never marry again.
1
Beth moves to New York.
And it is there, at a charity match that benefits AIDS research, that she once again meets a cowboy-pirate.
They have kept up with each other over the years, both personally and professionally. He’s never attended any of her weddings, but they’ve met for matches and kept each other sharp over the phone.
Even when they don’t talk for months on end, when they do talk or meet, it is effortless, like going over a game in your head. Their favorite spot is in Central Park, with the tables with chessboards printed on them.
Moving to New York only solidifies their connection. They meet for games, and coffee (never drinks), and just conversation.
More than once, they fall asleep at each other’s places after a late night of talking chess strategy and analysis, waking on a couch to a blanket laid over them by the other. And eventually, the late nights turn into more than chess strategy, and they find themselves in each other’s beds.
This thing is new, and yet so familiar, like replaying a game from a pamphlet.. But you have to play it to feel the win. And this does feel like a win.
Today, he’s just returned from a tournament abroad and is eager to tell her about. Beth looks at Benny over the stone table in the park. She studies his hands, still able to move the chess pieces ever so quickly. His blonde hair is longer now, and she still likes it.
It gives her butterflies and makes her feel like she’s putting on an old sweater all at once.
And it occurs to her then that you don’t always have to chase things down to the bottom, like she used to do with a bottle of beer. Sometimes, they can just be.
“Beth—hello?” Benny says, waving his hand in her face. “You there, Harmon?”
She shakes herself out of her reverie. “Yes?”
She sees him pointing at a couple in wedding attire, attended by a photographer and a wedding party. The couple looks harried and the photographer looks miserable, like they just want to get it over with.
Benny smirks with amusement. “Think that’ll ever be us?”
Beth smiles back and shakes her head. “No, never.”
They both look back at the board. They are in the middlegame, and there is no rush to finish it.
“Let’s play.”