"Steve, slow down! God dammit!" Tony could be heard from down the hall.
Steve chuckled. "When Mr. Wilson told us where to find you, I left him threatening to sue everyone and everything, including the manufacturers of the door they locked us behind," the man explained.
"Dean?" The teenager was left stunned at the sight of the engineer. The man was usually unkempt when he was down in the labs, but now he was wearing an Armani suit with the shirt untucked, the pants and jacket ruffled, and the tie askew. Not to mention Tony's hair–usually perfectly styled and coiffed–was much the same as Steve's–wild.
"My darling boy," Tony whispered. He raced across the room and enveloped the boy in as tight a hug as he dared. "We were so worried about you."
He pulled back just enough to look Dean in the eye. "Don't you ever do that again! You get hurt? You tell us. Doesn't matter how you got hurt; you will never get in trouble for needing medical assistance. Understood?"
Dean nodded slowly, then looked away from the man. "I thought you didn't want me anymore," he admitted.
"Didn't want you?" Steve squeezed his knee once more. "How could we not want you?"
The teen shrugged, avoiding eye contact.
"Dean, I would like to apologize," Tony offered, which caused Dean's head to snap up suddenly in surprise.
"What?"
"I should not have reacted the way I did when I picked you up from school. If I made you feel like I didn't love and appreciate you in every way, then I was wrong."
Dean's jaw dropped. "But–but I took drugs! You had every right to yell at me!"
"We had a right to be upset, and to talk to you about it. If we found that you did it on purpose and just for fun, then we had a right to punish you, but you didn't take those pills for fun, did you?" Steve asked. "You took them because you were in pain."
Dean nodded.
"How did you get hurt, anyway?" Tony inquired.
"Fight at school," the teen responded immediately.
"No, you didn't. Remember, I know when someone is lying to me," Steve interjected. "The truth."
Dean's mind raced as he attempted to come up with a lie the genius and captain would accept, before he decided the truth was his best alibi.
"Werewolves," he declared, smiling cheekily.
"Werewolves? Dean, do you take anything seriously?!" Tony snapped.
"Tony," Steve warned.
"Sorry, sorry, my bad," the man apologized, then sighed deeply. "Fine. You obviously don't trust us enough to tell us. Is there any adult you would tell?"
"I already know what happened." Phil Coulson was seated in the plastic chair at the side of Dean's bed, posed perfectly in the picture of authority.
"What? You do?" Dean was taken aback. He hadn't even started speaking yet!
"You think I don't know when one of you leaves the city? I knew the second you were in the cab." Dean supposed this was Phil's way of explaining, though it revealed nothing.
"So you know–"
"About the werewolves, yes. And about the hunter you met; Rufus, I believe his name was. Although," the man paused, considering the teen, "I'm not sure about what was on the paper he gave you."
"Dude, that's creepy."
"That's me protecting those important to me."
"Fair enough. He gave me the number for an old friend," Dean answered, thinking was highly unlikely that the man wouldn't find out eventually.
"What's your friend's name?" the agent asked, unblinking.
"Bobby."
"Bobby Singer? In South Dakota?"
"How the hell–you know what? No. I'm just gonna stop being surprised." Dean shook his head, resigned to the fact that this man would know every one of his secrets, and, surprisingly, Dean was okay with that. "So, wait. If you know, what are you gonna tell Steve and Tony?"
"The truth. That you don't want me to tell them, and that they don't need to worry about you being hurt like this again," he replied coolly. "It'll drive Tony crazy, but they'll accept it."
"What are you gonna tell Mr. Wilson?"
"He was my protégé, Dean. I tell him to trust me, and he will." Mr. Coulson smirked; the look spoke of untold memories shared between the two colleagues.
"So everything is just…okay now?" Dean asked hesitantly.
"Everything except the reason you needed Mr. Singer's number."
The teen paused, before admitting the truth. "I was trying to get information about our father. Sam misses him, and I was hoping Bobby knew where he was."
"Sam misses him? Not yourself?" the man noticed.
"I do!" Dean protested. "But Sam is doing so well in school! He's being fed, and he's warm, and he's getting everything he needs, and–and–well if dad comes and gets us, there may be times when we have to go without again." Dean didn't know why he was confessing so much to this virtual stranger when he would normally never even admit such things to himself. But, for some reason, he trusted him.
Never trust authority, John's voice immediately echoed in the teen's head.
Shaking off the old command, Dean continued, "I would love to see my dad again, but Sam was doing so well that–well, I thought he could take his time coming back."
"Did you find out where he is?" Mr. Coulson inquired.
"No," the teen shook his head, his voice small. "Bobby said he hasn't heard anything about him in a while."
"Would you like me to try and see if I can find him?" the man offered. Dean's eyes lit up.
"You would do that?"
In response, the man pulled out his phone and typed for a second, before returning the object to his pocket.
"If there's any information available on your father, we'll know within a week."
Dean studied the man for a moment. "You're not actually CPS, are you?"
Mr. Coulson smirked again, shooting the boy a wink before exiting his chair and leaving the room.