Take Me Home by ratherastory (AO3). Rated PG, Gen, 53k words. Summary: The Trickster decides to have some fun with Sam and turns him into a dog. It's all fun and tennis balls at first, until Dean gets hurt and Sam gets lost...
ao3.org/works/209502
my thoughts: I was on the edge of my seat reading this fic. I love how it was intended as crack and then got serious and everybody (author and readers alike) were suddenly riveted with this more emotional Homeward-Bound-esque drama to get back to Dean. So good, seriously, haha.

It's a Dog by Jedi Sapphire (FFnet). Rated PG, Gen, 4k words. Summary: A vet gets a call to the scene of a fire, where she finds an injured puppy. Then she meets a man called Dean, who seems just a little crazy. Also, there's a witch in there somewhere. Set vaguely after the S6 finale; no spoilers past 6.22.
fanfiction.net/s/8699532
my thoughts: Short but packed with such adorable cuddly hurt/comfort (fire-singed & kinda traumatized Sam). The sweetest brolove snack honestly. If you liked this, and especially the Outsider POV aspect of it, click through to my Outsider POV reclist 👍

skag trendy's Hunter of the Shadows series . (FFnet). Rated PG-13, Gen, 107k. Summary: Teenage Sam and Dean on a hunt with their father, but when things go badly wrong it drastically alters the Winchester family dynamics. Will the boys survive? Lots of LIMP Sam and Protective Dean.
fanfiction.net/s/4966430
my thoughts: So this is a trilogy/series but because it 's on FFnet, when you 're ready for the next story you have to go back to her author 's page to find it. Regardless, this whole trilogy was epic brilliance, with a lot of fantastic hurt!boys (but the Sam whump in particular is special) wrapped up in sweet moments (Sam 's first transformation) and sprawling magical battlegrounds where the boys are such BAMFs!!!

i have a rendezvous with death by leonidaslion (AO3). Rated R, Gen, 13k words. Summary: Harvie doesn't know what to make of the man who saved her, or his great, yellow-eyed hound, but one thing's for sure: there are stranger things in this rider-ridden world than haunts.
ao3.org/works/193826
my thoughts: Brilliant, interesting OC outsider perspective that 's kind of unraveling the mystery of Sam and Dean. This fic also features animal transformation/shape-shifting tropes and it 's all inside a bizarre post-apocalypse AU. Fantastic fic!

Puppy Dog Tails by Rahmi, Rated M, Gen, 13k words. Summary: Sam and Dean get turned into animals a lot.
fanfiction.net/s/5634980
my thoughts: Ah man I really loved this. Made me laugh but also the affection and closeness they get to experience as a result of being animals was so adorable. Also I love Sam as a cheetah and Dean a wolf. I'm always looking for more cat!Sam in my life.

We Go Forward by jairose. Gen, Unrated but I 'd rate it General Audiences, 27k. Summary: Dean gets bitten by a dog and then gets sick as a dog for three days, where he then becomes... well. A dog. Who'woulda'guessed?
ao3.org/works/8024332
my thoughts: this was a really fun, light-hearted & interesting story about familiar!Dean (Dean's form is a doggo) and basically how his witch becomes Sam. There's no uneven power dynamics, just a bunch of convenient spells, consent, and cuddles between them. Loved it! And omg I just realized there 's a giant 200k completed sequel to this, YAASSSSS.

The Passenger by roxymissrose. Explicit, Sam/Dean, 68k words. Summary: This is a post-plague curtain fic. Dean Winchester, an MoL errand boy and a bit of a rogue, meets Sam, a hot-tempered and mouthy skinwalker—and illegal slave. Of course, Dean can't let that stand, so cue the rescue, over the mountains and away. They find themselves trapped in a cabin over the long, long season of climate-changed winter. One handsome hunter, one angry 'walker. However will they survive?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25123861
Just devoured this fic inside of one night. AMAZING. It ticked so many of my boxes, specifically slave!Sam with that fascinating engaging personality dichotomy between vicious and vulnerable, then Sam and animal transformation - I was so thrilled to find out what his skinwalker beast turned out to be. This was a brilliant fic, and also excellent world-building. Also added to my slavery reclist and my multifandom monster fuckers reclist.

Iron Ridge Pack ‘Verse by meus_venator . Rated NC-17, unrelated Sam/Dean, 193k. Summary: Federal Marshal Jensen Ackles of the Hunter Division was the best tracker the department had on the west coast. Having watched his entire family be slaughtered by a wolf pack as a child, Jensen dedicated himself to becoming a hunter. Under his watch no one would ever suffer as he had, and renegade werewolves would be brought to justice and shipped back to the rez where they belonged. When a call came in about a were sighting in the sleepy town of Munter 's Gorge, Montana, Jensen thought he 'd be home in no time. Then he met Jared at the local coffee shop and the case suddenly became a whole lot more complicated.
ao3.org/series/248002
my thoughts: Fucked up A/B/O in all its glory. I absolutely love it with zero shame - really, how can you wander about fandom with shame? Fanfiction is pure id and the journey into meus_venator 's on-point id game is always a rabbit hole of addictive depravity with wholesome love & tenderness that somehow bubbles out of it all. Her works (especially this one) hook and drag me in to bed as early as 8PM and doesn 't let me sleep until like… 3AM, hahah. This fic was featured in my wincest noncon reclist .

Phoenix1966′s A Hole Straight up to the Sky. Rated NC-17, unrelated Sam/Dean, 62k. Summary: Captured by scientists determined to save the human race from impending extinction, two weres - seemingly strangers - are caged together in the hopes that they'll mate. What happens between them is unprecedented and changes the course of both their races forever.
ao3.org/works/4129951
my thoughts: This fic just dives right into pulling your heart out with its initial premise and the author doesn 't let go of you from there. I couldn 't put this fic down - the tenderness amidst the torture and then such a satisfying ending, AHHH. Amazing work.

Instinct by NixBlaque (AO3). Rated NC-17, unrelated Sam/Dean, 30k. Summary: When Dean Winchester finds a dog chained up and caged on a routine demon hunt, he and Bobby see no other option than to take him along for the ride. The last thing that either of them expect is the realisation that the dog is more than just a dog, a discovery which rocks Dean 's world to its very axis. Everything his father has ever told him says that anything that 's not human needs to be killed, but confronted by a shapeshifter named Sam who has managed to work his way straight into Dean 's heart, his instincts say otherwise. Warnings for: Non brother au, brief descriptions of torture, explicit m/m sex, demons, violence and copious amounts of angst.
ao3.org/works/1014391
my thoughts: This is in my top favorite fics of all time and thus certainly among my favorites of the animal transformation/shape-shifting tropes. Transforming SPN characters into unabashed canine cuddlebugs is truly a weak spot of mine.

Moon-kissed by fogsrollingin (AO3). Rated R, unrelated Sam/Dean, 27k words. Summary: Leviathans led a successful global assault on humanity twenty years ago. The resistance is made up of surviving humans and Luna-borne creatures such as weres. Dean, a Marrow Pack werewolf, runs missions to take down leviathan strongholds and rescue those imprisoned and enslaved there. On this particular mission, Dean is shocked to discover one of the young slaves is a werecat, a species so rare that most weres thought them extinct.
ao3.org/works/19159384
my thoughts: I wrote this! I 'm really proud of it. I edited it a bit so there 's a genfic version of it too (ao3.org/works/20381716). This fic is included in my slave!AU reclist 👍

Skin of the Beast by AlulaSpeaks (AO3). NC-17, Sam/Dean, 30k words. Summary: Find Dean, find Jack, fix it. Sam's mission should be simple, but after a mysterious storm transforms ordinary people into hideous creatures, Sam finds himself struggling to hang onto his humanity and stay alive. Joined by an enormous wolf, Sam sets out across a new and dangerous landscape trying to balance the draw he feels to the wolf and his need to complete his mission. Find Dean, find Jack, fix it.
ao3.org/works/14900721
Besides being so amazing in its Sam-centricness, this story has so many tropes I hold dear. Animal transformations & into wolves in particular is so great imo (there 's a quick vague bestial sex scene but it was totally fine; passes the the Harkness Test imo). Then the peri- and post-apocalyptic wastelands. I gotta say I was so impressed AlulaSpeaks actually wrote the apocalypse as it was happening. It 's such a massive feat to just try and attempt it and she carried through on it brilliantly! Tremendous horror elements & action. And then there 's the soft love and cuddles. Ugh such an amazing fic!

The Cause Sanguine by glasslogic. Rated R, Dean/Sam, 48k words. Summary: Dean is lonely and depressed following the death of his father in a hunting accident. Guilt and grief are causing his life to spiral out of control, so he takes a rare moment of sobriety to walk away from everything and move to a remote cabin in the wilds of Montana. But it 's a very different world up there for him than the town-to-town drifting he has known all his life. Overhearing gossip one night in a local bar, he gets into an argument over the reality of werewolves and stumbles out into the woods in an ill-advised attempt to prove his point. But things never go smoothly for Dean, and what he finds changes everything he understands about hunting, his father, and even his own purpose in life. Dean has seen and done a lot in his time on the planet, but nothing has ever prepared him to navigate the strange roads of a relationship with someone who is only human three nights a month.
ao3.org/works/337946
my thoughts: immediately feeling for Dean's grief and understanding his decisions to settle in little Sunvalley, Montana, the story gets off to a great start. Then the soft slow burn of learning who Sam is and how they develop trust and love is awesome. This was a really cool, sweet supernatural romance. Made me want to buy a fur rug, haha. There's a sequel I should check out too.

Tails by keep_waking_up. Rated NC-17, 67k. Summary: Jared couldn 't imagine the kitsunes had ever lived without the werefoxes to look down on and this was just another example of it. Jared Padalecki is a homicide detective for the werefox police, up until the kitsune police department decides to recruit him as their ‘Fox Consultant. There is nothing Jared wants less than having to work with the kitsunes, but he doesn 't have much of a choice. Of course, on the first day of his new job, one of the city supervisors is murdered and an official from the US government is flown in to handle it—one Jensen Ackles, an eight-tailed Heaven kitsune. Jared isn 't sure what 's going on, but he just wants to lay low and stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, fate—and Jensen—have other plans .
ao3.org/works/1894395
my thoughts: This is in my top favorite fics of all time . The world build - werefoxes and kitsunes omg so cute imagery, and then the characterizations: Jensen 's both haughty and kind, Jared sympathetic but wary. And they have to work together to solve a murder! It 's like all these amazing elements jampacked into one story, how?!!? Anyway, go read it. It 's awesome.

29 Days by ashtraythief. Rated NC-17, Jensen/Jared, 29k. Summary: Twenty-Nine days stuck in ninety square feet would have been bad enough in itself, but that was before Jensen realized he had to share the cell with a werewolf. Despite being natural enemies, he and Jared have to find a way to work together to escape a group of hunters.
ao3.org/works/3347903
my thoughts: a great hate at first sight, captivity love story. The nature of their relationship is harsh but... how else would a relationship between a werewolf & a vampire be, honestly? I don 't have a vampires AU reclist yet but fits in animal transformation for sure 👍

Familiar - (The Tale Of A Mage And His Cat) by Merenwen76, art/illustrations by amberdreams. Jared/Jensen, Teen+, 30k words. Summary: Since he was a little boy, Jared has only one wish; to become a magician like his father and brother. Although Jared is extremely talented, his familiar - his soulmate - must find him to pass the exam. When it almost seems that Jared can never become a true magician, a tabby tomcat enters his life and turns it upside down. But what is the secret behind the tomcat with the most beautiful green eyes?
ao3.org/works/27504847
my thoughts: The Jared angst actually got me emotional in this one for a little bit, I was not expecting that! hahaha. Wow though, this was such a great story, such a satisfying read. Jared's mean family, the kind mage teacher at school (also Jared's lovely uncle and his store), the elusive Familiar (the anticipation buuuuuilds!). Jared's cool talents as a mage and there's some bits about his inherent goodness/oneness with nature that's so cool, cat!Jensen and his own unique power(s) & then this fantastic action-y ending. YES! I was so happy with this fic 😊🥰️ ALSO shoutout to the lovely amberdreams for their artwork in this fic. It was so innocent and nostalgic, almost. Like an adorable children 's book romance. 🥰️ 🥰️ 🥰️ This fic was included in my 2020 Variety Pack reclist (tumblr) and my soul stuff reclist