Do you think Neal's a butterfly? He's been called one, both in canon and in our series.
In the first season canon episode "The Portrait," a fellow thief remarks that Neal could be a successful butterfly, flitting from flower to flower. Neal dislikes the comparison, calling butterflies weak and delicate, but later in that episode, he leaves a butterfly origami as a token of himself.
Warning for minor spoilers for the Caffrey Conversation AU.
In The Queen's Jewels, Mozzie teases Neal for being a butterfly. Mozzie doesn't actually believe Neal acts like a butterfly, but Neal's reaction is equally negative.
In Echoes of a Violin, Neal casts his girlfriends as the butterflies. They flee from him, fearful of getting their wings wet. He compares himself to a dragonfly, skimming the water of relationships but refusing to commit. In our stories, Neal was fascinated with dragons as a child. A swift flying dragonfly is much more to his taste than a butterfly lazily fluttering in the meadow.
He was shocked to hear Chantal relate that her ex-husband, Klaus Mansfeld, conceived of himself as a butterfly, flitting among museums to steal paintings like a butterfly visits flowers for nectar. But the Leopard was no ordinary butterfly. He drew his inspiration from the artist, James McNeill Whistler. Whistler created a butterfly signature for himself which was based on Asian art. The signature evolved throughout his creative period, becoming more aggressive with each iteration. Eventually Whistler transformed the tail into a stinger. The butterfly had now become dangerous, beautiful and deadly at the same time. Klaus, who chose a leopard with a long flicking tail for his symbol, found Whistler to be a kindred spirit.
Neal prefers to remain a dragonfly.
For more about Whistler's butterfly signature, you may wish to visit:
Echoes of a Violin on Archive of Our Own
Echoes of a Violin on FanFiction
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