I am once again thinking about Steve's injuries. Specifically, the road rash on his back and the back of his arms.
So... About a year ago I slid on a wet rock on a mountain hike and broke the fall on a rocky surface with my bare knee. The surface was relatively smooth, and the overall slide was... maybe half a meter. Nowhere near close to what Steve went through.
Several points from personal observation, in case you're curious and haven't scraped your skin much since you were a child learning to ride a bike and don't remember how it goes, and the resulting headcanons. (Having thought about it, I myself will try to incorporate this into my post-Vecna fics more, bc honestly there's never enough attention paid to it, and in the long run it might just be 100 times more of a bitch than the bat bites, despite not being immediately life threatening, due to the enormous surface of the skin affected.)
1) It doesn't really hurt that much right after the injury. The scrapes are shallow, there's little blood, it's mostly just mangled skin. So despite this being a common criticism of the canon, it's entirely plausible Steve could shrug that off and keep focused on the Vecna shit without treating it. I'll allow it.
2) The fun begins about a day later, when the injury really starts to scab. A knee or an elbow is probably the worst fucking place to get scraped: every tiny movement of your joints results in extreme stretching of the scabbing skin, damaging it over and over again when it's just begun to heal. I spent a week walking with a limp. But really it applies to any part of your body that moves a lot. For Steve, I'd say the worst would be his shoulder blades. Raising his arms, lifting anything heavy, anything that stretches the skin on his back would hurt like a bitch in his condition after a couple of days.
3) Also, he wouldn't be able to comfortably sleep on his back, or lean back in a chair. No fucking way. The edges of the scabs are sharp. When pressed on, they dig into your skin. Ouch.
4) The fun continues when it really starts to heal and ITCH! LIKE! A! MOTHERFUCKER! And of course, the scabs prevent you from scratching, because your body is smart like that, so of course you start peeling them. But you can't do that if it's on your back. I just imagine Steve behaving like a flea infested bear, trying to scratch his back against tree trunks and door frames while everyone tries to stop him from doing that because that keeps opening up his wounds. Maybe Eddie or Robin could offer him gentle backrubs when they hang out. Enough to take the edge off the itching, not enough to damage the scabs.
5) The scarring. It's not gonna be super visible, but it's gonna be there, a white spiderweb of scars. I realize that everyone's skin heals differently, and there are ointments that can help, but in the end, with all that, this is my knee about a day after the injury and 10 months later.
So, uh... Yeah. Stevie. I'm so sorry baby. (Hugging him tight to my chest)