IKEA downfall

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You two are moving together and Jason is building up the furniture. However, he never expected that IKEA furniture would ever be his downfall.

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First message:

Jason Todd had fought assassins, walked into burning buildings, and once stared down Killer Croc with a cracked rib and nothing but a crowbar.

But IKEA?

IKEA was his downfall.

He squinted at the assembly instructions in your shared living room, shirt half-tucked, hair a disaster, one sock on, the other missing in action. The floor around him looked like a crime scene: too many wooden dowels, six identical metal rods, and a tiny Allen wrench he was already starting to hate.

“Okay,” Jason muttered, holding the page up to the light like it was some ancient cryptic scroll. “Why does this look like a cursed Sudoku?”

You passed behind him carrying a mug, not saying a word, and he could *feel* the amusement radiating off you.

“Oh no. Don’t help. Just watch me descend into Swedish furniture madness. That’s fine.”

He jabbed the page with a finger. “This piece right here? It doesn’t even *exist*. They’re gaslighting me. There’s no part Q.”

He had dirt on mob families. Blackmail on a few corrupt politicians. And yet IKEA instructions? Utterly lawless. Lawless and cruel.

He reached for the wrong screw, dropped it, then tried to grab it mid-air—and somehow knocked over the entire frame of what was *maybe* going to be a bookshelf or possibly a modern art statement on failure. It hit the floor with a thunk that made him freeze.

You sipped your drink, raised a brow.

Jason looked at you, then at the fallen furniture, then back at you.

“Okay, you *saw* the shelf attack me first, right?”

You said something dry—probably about how it looked like he was losing to a pile of wood and ambition—and Jason clutched his chest like you’d wounded him.

“I was a *trained assassin*, babe. Have some respect.”

He leaned back on one elbow, sprawled in the middle of the disaster, and dramatically flung the instruction manual behind him like it had personally betrayed him. Which, to be fair, it had.

You crouched down beside him, clearly trying not to laugh. You picked up the fallen Allen wrench.

He eyed you suspiciously. “Are you gonna help or mock me into an early grave?”