It was supposed to be a nice evening. A peaceful one, even. Dare they say, a normal one where nothing weird or dramatic or disturbing or traumatising happened. They were having what Garcia had now dubbed, "Family Night". Which involved them invading Rossi's home ("I live in a mansion"), him shoving amazing, homemade Italian food down their throats ("Need to get actual food into you lot"), and just hanging out like a family would. Like the family they were. These nights were normally fine. A calming point in the hurricane of cases. Some fun and banter and a time to relax and enjoy each other's company. It was almost always a good time.

Of course, nothing seemed to be going their way recently, and apparently, that meant "Family Night" couldn't either. How could family night go wrong? Well...

As it went in stories, everything had been calm and peaceful. Well, their version of calm and peaceful, which of course meant that they were all talking over each other and winding each other up. And eating. So much eating. Seriously, did Rosis think they never ate or something? How did he even produce so much food?

A sudden noise made them all stop. It didn't sound like a good noise. A sound that was like metal on metal as well as groaning was definitely not a good sound. It especially wasn't a good sound when it was like no one caused the noise.

"Haunted. Rossi's house is haunted," Emily said straight away.

"It's a mansion, how many times do I have to say it?"

"Haunted mansion doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

"We're all here, right?" Morgan asked, looking around despite knowing that fact.

"Yep," said Emily.

"And none of us are in the kitchen?"

"Nope."

"Then none of us were the cause of it?"

"Nope. Told you, it's haunted."

"That's your logical conclusion?"

"Yup."

"My house isn't haunted," Rossi said firmly. "One of you numbskulls probably did something."

"We haven't done anything," Emily said in an injured voice."

"You know that makes me believe you even less, right?"

"That sounds more like a you problem, not a me problem."

Rossi shoved past them, cursing in Italian. Emily wondered if she should give them all a running commentary but decided against it. She was pretty sure that you didn't have to understand Italian to know that those were curse words.

"My kitchen! What did you do to my kitchen?"

"Does he realise just how Italian he sounds right now?" Emily wondered.

Hotch followed Rossi and peered in. There was nothing out of place and Rossi was in the middle, looking all around him with a crazed look in his eye.

"Nothing's wrong," he said as he went back to his chair.

"Do you know where the noise came fro-" Morgan began but stopped when Rossi came out of his kitchen, a look of thunder on his face.

None of them said anything, and they all held their breath in anticipation. Slowly, he made his way to the middle of the room and brandished something from behind his back.

"Is that Reid's hat?" Morgan blurted out.

"That's not mine! You put it on me!"

"Yeah, but now it's yours."

"You didn't give me a choice!"

"And? It's still yours."

"No, it isn't!"

Rossi coughed pointedly, quelling the argument.

"Reid, were you in my kitchen?"

Reid's eyes widened to a comical size, and he shook his head frantically, apparently unable to speak. Which was fair enough because Rossi had issued him dire threats about his presence in his kitchen after the whole incident with the blender. That had not been pretty.

"None of us were in the kitchen," Morgan pointed out in a valiant attempt to defend them, figuring that he was next to be blamed thanks to the presence of Reid's hat.

"Are you really trying to tell me that my kitchen did this all by itself?"

"Well, I would have considered an intruder first before thinking that my kitchen had become sentient," said JJ. "And didn't you just insist that your house wasn't haunted?"

"Also, nothing happened, nothing was out of place," Hotch reminded him.

"A noise like that doesn't happen over nothing."

Rossi shot her a dark look. "No, I am firmly saying that I don't believe that my house has become sentient. That was kind of the point of my sarcastic question. Also, I have state of the art security. No one gets in without my say-so."

"A lot of victims we deal with also had good security," Reid felt the need to point out.

"Not helping." Everyone told him.

"I was just saying..."

"Don't," Rossi held his hand up to stop him. "Just don't."

Since none of them admitted to doing anything (because none of them had done), Rossi launched a full-blown investigation into this damn noise. He he had them all rub things against each other in an attempt to reproduce it. Which none of them managed to do. Though running a spatula across tiles was not a pleasant noise, by the way.

Hotch finally managed to persuade him that it was nothing, made Reid shut up about all the weird noises electrical appliances could make, especially when they went faulty, made them all tidy up the kitchen (why did Rossi have so many spoons) and herded them all back into the game room, each of them with a rather large glass of wine to hopefully settle them down. Rossi, despite his many lectures about savouring wine, had already downed one glass and was still glaring at them all.

"He's never going to let us in his kitchen again, is he?" Asked Emily.

"Especially not Reid thanks to his hat," Morgan joked.

"It's not my hat! And I didn't do anything!" Reid protested.

"I don't think Rossi believes you."

"None of you are setting foot in my house ever again!"

"How are you going to stuff us full of your wonderous Italian food then?" Garica asked with a gasp.