Title: Five Districts, Five Drugs
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Sam/Dean, Sam/OMCs, Sam/OFCs, Sam/Jess
Genres: AU, Pre-Canon, Angst, Drama, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Hooker, Dark
Length: Super!Epic
Warnings: Incest, drug addiction, prostitution, underage, dub-con

Author on LJ: rei_c
Author Website: N/A

Author's Summary:
Dean goes to pick Sam up from Stanford and ends up finding more than he bargained for.

Review:
The clue is in the title - this is a series of five fics, set in five different parts of San Francisco, wherein Sam is addicted to five different drugs. Instead of finding his brother at Stanford as we see in canon, Dean finds him in all sorts of places facing different challenges, both mundane and supernatural. Every fic has the same beginning paragraph and the same summary - and it's awesome to see how different the direction of each is despite this. The common theme of the fics is that Sam is taking drugs to deal with his psychic powers and their effect on his psyche.

rei-c's worldbuilding is amazing. The fics feature a wealth of different mythologies, and the author does justice to every one, despite how different they are. Hindu, Chinese, Vodou, Irish, Norse, and Wicca mythologies are all written with confidence, and if rei-c isn't an expert on all of them I certainly can't tell.

The other common theme of the series is Wincest, and healing brought to Sam by the arrival of Dean. Their relationship is definitely always a welcome comfort after the hurt, and there is a bit of the old being saved by true love trope - though the fics are too well-written to be called anything near saccharine.

Though drugs are a big part of the series, they are never glorified or portrayed as glamorous, and we clearly see that they aren't doing Sam any good. I wouldn't describe this series as depressing despite the heavy theme of drug addiction - because thankfully, there's always a Dean-shaped light at the end of the tunnel.

The warnings apply to the whole series rather then all of the fics, so make sure to look at their individual warnings.

Five Districts, Five Drugs Masterpost