Ahaha, thank you! (You seem to be continuing the trend of my friends who aren't in White Collar showing up in AU fics. XD Though I think you may have succeeded in choosing the fic most closely tied to playing with/tweaking/subverting/reinterpreting canon events; I'm actually kinda interested to know how much or how little sense the story makes without that background.)

White Collar is a great deal of fun... wrapping up a ton of things that bug the everliving crap out of me. XD In particular, the writers don't seem to have a real good grasp of consequence (or legality, at times), and the scripting definitely plays favorites with who they want to come out ahead and who gets narrative sympathy. And at the same time, there's a ton of character complexity (even if it's not always rendered as well as I'd like), moral dilemma (same quibble), awesome banter and trust and competence porn, and a ton of awesome female main and secondary characters, including a badass black lesbian who isn't the Black Girl or the Gay Girl and who can outsmart Neal and gets to be ultra-competent and love guns ands rescue her own damn self anytime it looks like she might need rescuing.

Basically, it perfectly hits that intersection of "I love this to bits!" and "...these bits annoy me" to make me fic for it forever.