I Love Loopy Neal

Neal Caffrey can be an intimidating character. He’s so handsome, so skilled at so many things… I fear if I met him, he’d be unimpressed and quickly bored.

Loopy Neal, on the other hand, I might be able to keep up with. That singing, earnest version of Neal introduced in the episode “Vital Signs” was a gift for fans, and for fanfic writers.


(Warning: Mild spoilers for White Collar episode “Vital Signs” and the Caffrey Conversation AU.)

In my first story in the Caffrey Conversation AU I have Neal become increasingly loopy as his fever gets worse, giving Peter insight into an unfiltered version of Neal. The result is an escalated sense of trust between them. Peter learns a lot about Neal’s character and motivation, leading to an offer to work for the FBI. Meanwhile Neal learns that he can trust Peter to look after his best interests, and that the agent wouldn’t take advantage of being in a position of power over him. The most obvious example of this is when a strong medication makes Neal chatty. There is a question Peter wants answered and he realizes that he could make Neal tell him, but instead choses to respect Neal’s privacy instead.

Early in By the Book, I have Jones in a similar situation. Jones realizes that Neal is sleepy from the drugs administered in the hospital, making him more likely to give straight answers about his actions that evening.

As an author, I take advantage of Neal’s openness in his loopy state to have him share information with us that he wouldn’t normally talk about. It’s when he’s under the influence of a strong cold medication that he first eludes to being abused as a child, for instance.

Another use I’ve found for loopiness is to give us lighthearted moments after stressful scenes. For instance, the life-and-death hospital scenes of Caffrey Flashback are followed by Neal singing and driving Peter crazy. Silbrith does something similar in An Evening with Genji, giving us Neal hallucinating on pain meds after an exciting and stressful undercover op.

Of course there’s the dark side of loopiness in our AU, as represented by flashbacks to a traumatic incident in Neal’s childhood.

A recent round of a particularly awful cold left many people in my office feverish and on strong medications the last few weeks. I wish we had been even a fraction as entertaining as loopy Neal. Unfortunately, that seems to be another area where Neal surpasses ordinary people.

Silbrith seems to think that I am occasionally loopy when tired or sick, but I find that hard to believe. There’s nothing loopy about dreaming of purple tigers after taking a strong cold medicine, right? And asking if birds have eyelashes is a perfectly sane question. A duckling has adopted the lead character of the story I'm currently outlining, and wants to flutter her eyelashes at him.