[M4F] Outsized love affair in '40s London [desperately seeking!]

[Daggermouth]

We're on the subway, London in a dapper, more conservative era, post-war pre-punk, let's say the late '40s. The world is changing fast but not fast enough for John Drake, the eldest of an aristocratic London family that's blue blood, stinking rich, always in the papers. His young sisters Made Good Matches years ago but he's stubbornly refused all comers, tired of meek little heiresses being puppeteered by their fathers. He's a big man, like all the Drake men, like he was built just a fraction out of scale with the world. He was an officer in a war that just ended.

That's where YC comes in. She's also larger than life: an American come from the new world to eat London, brash and loud and (back in New York) ordinary. She's out of step with London society, its fussy little fashions, barely making ends meet in some scandalous neighborhood while pursuing her passion (art, design, theatre, fashion). She's a big girl, tall and broad and all curves, dwarfing most of the men she meets.

Are you still with me? On the subway one morning they meet: he's on the way to King's Cross and she's had some disaster befall her, her dress is torn or stained or soaked through. Neither her date.or any of the sympathetic and interfering women she's met since leaving him in Soho have had anything big enough to come close to fitting, so she brazens it out. It's December. She's had a disastrous night. Giving the evil eye to anyone who dares to make eye contact, let alone speak to her.

And there's John. He's wearing a beautiful wool coat that would engulf her easily, like a man's coat worn by a woman in a movie. But it's no meet-cute: she refuses his help, he insists, gets flustered because she's being stubborn and illogical and no-one ever makes him ask twice. Says something unkind. Maybe she takes it because he's so rude, he doesn't deserve something so fine, or just because when he drops it around her shoulders, warm from his body, it feels so good.

A few weeks later she finds it hanging in her wardrobe and resolves to dry clean it and return it. It's tailor-made, should be easy to do. The dry cleaner treats her strangely, asks her how she came by it. The tailor is even more suspicious, outright accuses her of theft, and she's fighting her corner but it's only smoothed over when it turns out he's in the building, replacing this very thing. He's pleased to see her.

She might still think of him as just some overbearing nob on the underground, but he's been thinking about her for weeks. He wants to see her again. He usually gets what he wants, but then he's never had an opponent like her before.

When she mentions his name at work her colleagues are aghast; John Drake? As in The Drakes? They're a London institution, in the Times every day. Rolling in it. They tell her she should get hers. Does she?

***

'm not looking for a damsel in distress to flit around looking grateful and impressed. YC is bold and wild and out for herself, tough. She swears and drinks and doesn't apologise for her size or her accent or for focusing on herself, and she's thriving in a conservative time by sheer grit. I just want to write MC being entranced by that, and clumsily using all his resources to try and spend a little time with her in the hope she'll see that he isn't who everyone thinks he is.

I hope I haven't overwritten YC here. I've put it down how I saw it but there's plenty of flex, so please come and make this character your own if the basic plot appeals to you.

PM please.