Summary: After averting the Apocalypse, Dean's girlfriend convinces him to get away for a couple of weeks and go on a relaxing vacation in Mexico. Sounds nice, right? Wrong. A trip to a local Maya ruin lands them in the clutches of a dangerous creature from an obscure ancient legend. Will their mistake cost them their lives? Will Sam get to them in time? Or will he suffer an even worse fate in his efforts to save Dean?

Warnings: Dean and Tasha are a very physical couple (most fics in this series are rated 'M') but although they are still 'naughty' on this fic, anything graphic has been left offscreen and therefore the fic is rated T. There will be some references to sex and implied sex, probably a few swear words, and definitely some serious violence. SPOILERS for up to season 5 since this is set early S5 (in an AU version). Update: Chapter 3 ended up being a little more mature than I had originally intended (not graphic or smutty, just a little more mature due to the predicament the characters are in) so I raised the rating on the story to 'M'.

Author's Note: You should be able to read this fic without reading any of the others in the Tasha series. Any relevant information on the OC (Tasha) will be woven in here as needed. This is planned as a fairly short, 4 or 5 chapter fic.

Story dedicated in part to supernatural only whose recent request gave me the kick I needed to return to writing Tasha and finally start the fic about the vacation they mentioned going on in the end of Across the Bridge of Sighs. Thanks for the motivation!

~O~

HEART OF STONE

Chapter 1

The rickety straw lounge chair protested quietly beneath Dean's weight as he laid back and let out a long sigh. Listening to the soothing roll of the waves and gentle rustle of wind in the palm trees was nice but he wondered how the Hell it could be this hot at eight o'clock in the morning. Despite being in the shade of the extended straw roof over the front entrance of their rental unit, he squeezed his eyes shut beneath his dark sunglasses and groaned at the headache hammering the inside of his skull. After a long, relaxing minute, he tipped his head up just enough to take another lazy sip of the warm El Sol bottle in his grasp.

And to think he had just been starting to enjoy Mexico.

They had been here five days. After averting the Apocalypse and successfully putting both Sam's soul and Cas's grace back where they belonged, Tasha had insisted Dean take some time off from saving the world and hunting and go on a vacation with her, just the two of them. And apparently her idea of a vacation differed drastically from his. It wasn't a research-free night of burgers and beer or catching a concert three states over. No, her idea of a vacation involved being transported by Cas to some remote little beach in the middle of Nowhere, Mexico.

Literally nowhere. The nearby town didn't even have a name.

He heard the door of their rented 'beach hut' open behind him with a squeak and a few seconds later, a slim, bare leg slid across his lap and Tasha came into view, grinning down at him as she straddled him on the beach chair. He grunted at the extra weight on his stomach, which was still rolling from last night's excursion, but managed a smile.

"Didn't you have enough of that last night?" she teased, throwing a questioning glance at the beer in his hand as she bent to kiss his forehead. "My lightweight gringo."

He snorted. "I was fine last night."

She jerked her chin to the right, gesturing to the ground just off the porch. "I'm pretty sure your mo-ped would disagree."

Dean arched an eyebrow and craned his neck to see what she was talking about. An embarrassed groan escaped him when he saw the banged up mess that was his rented mo-ped lying half under a bush. He vaguely remembered wiping out several times on their way back along the three-mile footpath between the town and the straw-roofed shack they had been renting. He did remember a lot of cursing (from him) and definitely a lot of giggling (from Tasha).

"You should know better than to drink and drive, mister," she chided, tapping his nose.

He gave her another snort in reply. "A mo-ped doesn't count as driving. And that was just 'cause it was dark. And that path's rough… and overgrown… and there's snakes."

She laughed. "Told ya we shoulda gone for the burros."

"I don't do donkeys."

"You and you Winchester pride." She leaned down again for another kiss, this one much slower, deeper, and on his mouth. He reciprocated, enjoying both the cool taste of mint toothpaste and the distraction from the discomforts of his hangover. When she eventually drew back, he opened his eyes to see her popping the cap on a bottle of sunscreen lotion.

"Shirt off," she grinned. "I wanna lube you up."

He laughed and wagged his eyebrows at her. "You make that sound so dirty."

She was already tugging at the hem of his t-shirt, her hips rocking lightly back and forth in his lap. "Oh, I plan on making it very dirty," she replied, her voice suddenly low and full of lusty promise. "I'll show you the best way to cure a hangover."

"You know, one of these days I'm gonna say no to you."

Her hand slid between them to palm the front of his jeans where a definite bulge was forming. "Something tells me that's not gonna be today."

He pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it somewhere to the ground before laying back down, arousal now waging an internal war with his hangover. "I'm not as young as I used to be, you know."

"Somebody forgot to tell Little Dean that," she purred, increasing the movements with her lower hand while the other lifted to squirt lotion on Dean's chest. "Apparently he still thinks he's a teenager."

~O~

Tasha had spent most of her childhood living off the grid in Mexico and South America, the daughter of a hunter and a woman whose family had been running from a two-thousand-year-old revenge-driven vampire for generations. Though reluctant to leave Sam and Cas so soon after everything that had happened to them, Dean had been unable to say no when she had asked him for this. They had been staying with Bobby for the past couple of months along with Sam, Cas, Ellen and Jo. Tasha wasn't used to having so many people around and her request for some alone time with him hadn't seemed like much to give. In fact, it had a definite appeal to the hunter too. He may have only spent a few months with her since they had met a year and a half ago, but he loved her more than he had ever thought possible. Spending a couple of weeks with her without the world falling apart around them sounded… nice.

She had spread out a map on Bobby's kitchen table and started rambling about all the places she had visited growing up. Dean had listened with legitimate interest, enjoying her enthusiasm and hearing details of her past. He could count on one hand the people he knew well enough to hear the stories of their childhood and even less that he could share his own memories with in return.

But in truth, he had been genuinely worried he would get bored going a couple of weeks with no hunt, no mission, and no real purpose but to 'relax and explore and enjoy a different culture', as Tasha had phrased it. That sounded more like 'laze about and look at boring shit in a place where nobody speaks your language'. Dean travelled constantly but had never been down with the tourist thing. And downtime generally meant too much time to think. For someone with forty years of Hell memories to sift through, too much time to think was never a good thing.

Then Tasha had mentioned Pijijiapan and the city name had triggered something inside him, something he had seen recently, and he deviously but 'ever-so-innocently' suggested they go there.

During the three days it took him to get a fake passport to travel with, stealthy research dug up enough that he was actually excited by the time Air-Castiel flew them down here. Three bodies found shredded to pieces as well as five missing people in the vicinity of the ancient Maya ruins of Bonampak over the past year. Definitely something in his line of work. Might just be a Chubacabra but they were usually found farther south and were rarely known to kill humans. The fact that all the missing or dead people were travelers and not locals pointed to the bigger, deadlier, and far more rare El Cadejo. Any hunter worth his salt wanted one of those on his kill list. All Dean had to do was 'stumble' across the case while in the area…

Yup, this vacation was going to kick ass.

After transporting them, Cas told them to call or pray if they got into any trouble and promised to come and get them in a couple of weeks. He then stood there staring at them with that blank expression of his until Tasha dropped the not-so-subtle hint of saying "Bye Cas," to which he cleared his throat and promptly disappeared.

Of course, Tasha had not directed Cas to Pijijiapan, a city of fifty thousand, but instead to some tiny, rural town of about a hundred people located on the nearby coastline about thirty miles down a single track dirt road. The guy who owned the 'bar' in town (which was really just a concrete block square with a tin roof, a few tables and chairs, and an outhouse round the back) remembered Tasha's parents and graciously rented them his 'casa en la playa', which translated into straw-roofed shack just above the high wave line.

The beach-hut, as Dean had dubbed it, was three miles from town along a narrow, winding footpath that opened up into a small, secluded alcove of bright, yellow sand rimmed with palm trees dripping with clusters of green coconuts. Tasha had wanted to take the couple of burros the landlord had offered to get around on but Dean refused. No way was he schlepping around on a frigging donkey that looked like it was gonna keel over from malnutrition any second. Hence the mo-peds.

During their first couple of days here, it had been a strain on Dean to keep a positive attitude.

There was sand everywhere. It had driven him crazy and he spent the better part of the first two days grumbling about the uncomfortable chafing in both his underwear and his boots.

Then there was the plethora of strange-looking, giant bugs accosting them everywhere. They were in the house, the shower, the frigging sugarbowl. A scorpion the size of his fist had crawled up his damn leg! Tash was still getting good mileage out of the high-pitched sound that had escaped his throat when he had noticed it.

And the sun was relentless, blasting unhindered hundred-degree heat at him from sun-up to sun-down.

But Tash was relaxed and clearly enjoying herself and that alone made his discomfort worthwhile. He eventually heeded her suggestions to swap his flannel layers for a cotton t-shirt and his army surplus boots for plain, sockless trainers he could easily pull off and empty, at least while on the beach. She had tried to nudge him one step farther in the shoe department but no way was he wearing frigging flip-flops.

He had come to realize Mexico had its perks too. The scenery here was colorful and beautiful and the food deliciously authentic. It may not have looked like much, but the bar in town served drinks for as long as its patrons were still standing and even though most of the locals didn't speak English, they seemed to tolerate his attempts at communication. He guessed many of the laughs last night had been at his expense, but the locals had remained good-natured as he beat them at darts and a dice game they called veintiuno. Then they had coaxed him to eat that disgusting worm in the bottom of the Mezcal bottle. Crap, had he really done that? It had been a long time since he had let loose as much as he had last night but damn, it had been fun. Not smart, since he was quite certain his friendly reception from the locals was only because he had his Spanish senorita at his side, but fun all the same.

Speaking of his sexy sidekick and the perks of Mexico, Tash had worn nothing more than a tiny halter top and daisy dukes since their arrival here and their moonlight skinny-dip in the ocean a couple of nights ago had been… awesome.

Yeah, maybe this place wasn't so bad. He could get used to this.

A smile spread on his face as he stood under the outdoor shower at the side of the shack, washing away the last remnants of his hangover as well as the sunscreen Tasha had just lathered him up with. Oops, looked like she was going to have to re-apply it. He could think of worse things to suffer through.

Then again, if he kept letting the sunscreen ritual get out of hand, they would never get to Bonampak. He still had a rising toll of shredded bodies to deal with and Tasha had suggested they visit the ancient Maya ruins today.

~O~

And that's the setup… Dean and Tasha up to their usual shenanigans. FYI, this is before season 5 so Dean is 30 years old. Tasha is around Sam's age. Please don't be shy to review.