A/N: Sorry for the late update! School started up again last week and it hit me really hard... plus I ended up having to stay after school more than normal and do some extra homework... but eh, here is a new update, as promised :)

In case anyone forgot, we left off with Mona telling Alison that she already knew that she was gay... and we all said, WHAT?! :P

Speaking of which...

Thanks for the huge positive feedback on the last chapter! Well, except for that one reviewer that said I ruined the story? It didn't really faze me at all... I mean, you didn't even say what it was that I did to ruin it? So I'm sorry? If I had a dollar for every time I've "ruined" a story...

Disclaimer: I do NOT own PLL!

PLEASE enjoy, favorite, follow and REVIEW!

(SIDE NOTE! This story has surpassed 100k words! OMG! This has made CYSM officially my longest Emison story! (WYRA being second, at 95k) Also, it has surpassed ALL BUT ONE of my stories in the number of reviews! I hadn't even thought about it until just now! It's barely passed NLMG (dantana), and it's about 30 past WYRA... I mean, yeah, meanwhile it's over 100 behind WDCT, but WDCT was 170k words... Let's see if we can bring this story up even more! Thank you all so much for reading! I can't thank you all enough!)

"School sucks," Alison announced loudly as she barged into Emily's room, startling the other girl.

"What's up?" Emily asked, her voice laced with concern, like it always was when Alison seemed distressed. "Did something happen?"

Emily had gotten a fever and had opted to stay home for the day—even if it meant she had to miss swim. Alison, however determined to stay with Emily, had been force to go to school. "If by something you mean that I had no one to eat lunch with, then yes. Seriously. School has never been so intimidating than today, when I was literally walking around looking for a place to sit before realizing that it was either eat lunch alone or hide."

"What did you do?" Emily asked softly, getting up from her desk and moving to her bed, before opening her arms to Alison.

"I hid," Alison admitted, shaking her head. "I didn't want to be that one awkward person eating lunch alone." Emily briefly wondered where exactly Alison had "hid", but she didn't question it. Alison hopped onto Emily's bed and immediately cuddled into her. Emily secured her arms around the blonde. "I have just decided that if you ever have to miss school again, I'm going to ditch, or hide in the natatorium all day. I never want to have to experience what happened today ever again."

Emily smiled into Alison's hair. "Sounds like a plan."

"Are you still sick?" Alison wondered, breathing in Emily's scent and feeling oh so comfortable. Nothing was more comfortable than laying wrapped up in Emily.

"I feel a lot better," Emily answered.

"So are you going to school tomorrow?" Alison questioned.

Nodding, Emily answered, "Yep. You won't be all alone for lunch."

"Good," Alison breathed out, feeling tiredness coming over her and trying to coax her into going asleep here in Emily's arms. She was pretty tempted to do so. "What do you think we should do all summer?" she asked, instead of giving into the sleep.

"You're already thinking about summer?" Emily asked. "It's March."

"Of course I'm already thinking about it," Alison stated, smiling slightly even though Emily couldn't see her face since she was curled into Emily. "I think I'm going to get my mom to take us to a beach somewhere. The lake is cool, but beaches are way better."

"As long as I can come," Emily said in a sing-song voice, as if there was any chance that Alison wouldn't invite her to come along.

Alison giggled and lowered her face, burying it into the top of Emily's shirt. Emily let out a shocked gasp as the blonde began placing little kisses along the top of Emily's breasts. She hadn't been wearing a bra, since she hadn't left her house, and was suddenly thanking herself for it.

When Alison brought her teeth down on Emily's skin, dragging them across some of it slowly, Emily felt her breath officially becoming ragged, and she tore away from Alison. It was only for a second, though, as Emily basically ripped off her shirt and brought her lips down to Alison's.

After a rough kiss, Alison pushed them up and over, so that she was straddling Emily, and she bypassed Emily's lips to go back for her chest. Placing kisses, dragging her tongue around, and finally closing her lips around one of Emily's nipples. She played with it using her tongue inside her mouth, and Emily let out a low moan. Alison loved hearing the sound, and it encouraged her to lightly bring her teeth down on the nipple. Emily hissed and moaned again, but before anything else could happen, they heard the noise of a car parking in Emily's driveway.

Alison immediately pulled up and off of Emily—the sound of Pam Fields' car had become the biggest sex-prevention of all. Emily grabbed for her shirt and carefully slipped it over her head, her breathing still uneven. "This sucks," Alison muttered, looking at Emily's now covered chest.

"I know."

"You what?" Alison asked, her voice barely audible at this point.

"I already knew about you and Emily," Mona answered. "I… I didn't know that you were gay, but I did know that you and that girl Emily were… doing something."

"How?" Alison demanded, her voice still coming out quietly.

Mona swallowed thickly. "Paige told me. Today, at school."

Alison's eyes widened incredibly. "She what?" Mona immediately shook her head, as if to calm Alison down.

"She's not going to tell anyone else, Alison," Mona insisted. "She told me that she only even said anything about it to me because she wanted me to, and I'm quoting her here, 'push you off of your pedestal'."

Alison took in a sharp breath.

"But I wasn't going to," Mona insisted. "First I told her she was crazy, and I didn't believe her. But I watched you, all day today. And I know I shouldn't have been trying to figure you out so much, but I saw you look at her—at least twice. I thought back to how you constantly had to go chase after her. Before, I thought that she must've been giving you a hard time and you were just putting her in her place. But thinking back, I fit it together. And I believed Paige."

"So why didn't you push me off of my pedestal?" Alison muttered.

"Well… I went back to Paige halfway through the day and demanded how she knew… she told me about you two threatening each other and that I couldn't tell you that she told me, because you said you would out her," Mona said. "I don't think she meant to mention that part, because she got all freaked out afterward. But I know you, Alison, and I know your patterns of destruction. It's like you to keep other people's secrets from the outside world, if you're going to use them as threats, but you would have at least made it known to the public that you had one of her secrets. Especially with the snappy remarks she always makes."

"I don't see how this answers my question…"

"When I realized that you hadn't even made the fact that you knew something really juicy about her public knowledge, I realized that you were purposely keeping it a real secret. Because you were never going to out her, even if she told everyone about you and Emily," Mona stated. "And as weird and coincidental as it may sound, today was the day that I realized that you're not as bad as I always thought you truly were at heart. Which is why it's so completely weird that we're actually having this conversation right now."

"This is so screwed up," Alison muttered. "A couple of weeks ago, I didn't think of you as anything more than a puppet, and right now, I feel like we're actually friends."

"We are friends, Alison. If you're abandoning being a bitch, then I'm going to support you in that decision," Mona decided.

"Are you serious?" Alison asked.

"Everyone needs someone in their corner. And… I guess you probably have that Emily girl, but I don't have anyone. And I'm sure you could use an extra friend, rather than a follower," Mona added.

Alison suddenly grabbed Mona in a hug and, despite the fact that Alison DiLaurentis had never, ever hugged Mona, Mona hugged her back. It lasted only a second, though, because Alison pulled away as soon as she realized what she was doing. "I'm sorry, I'm just really emotional right now."

Mona was quiet for a moment. Finally, though, she said, "I'm not going to tell anyone your secret, Alison. And I want to be your friend—I mean, I've pretty much always been your friend. But I want a friend in return. Alright?"

"I can do that," Alison insisted. "At the start of next semester… that's when I'm coming out to the public. And I'll have all of my footing fall out from under me. And I'll have the weight of being perfect off of my shoulders, because I won't be trying to be perfect anymore. And I have a feeling that it'll clear up a lot of time to be a friend."

Mona smiled. "Good." After a strange moment of silence, Mona quirked up an eyebrow. "You're the one who put glue in my lip gloss freshman year, weren't you?"

Alison gave a weak smile. "Guilty as charged."

"That one always impressed me," Mona admitted, smiling.

Late that night, Emily was curled up in her bed, exhausted. She'd spent a while calming down her new friends, and eventually, with Spencer's help, she managed to get Aria and Hanna to realize that they really had no right to be angry at her. What happened between them and Alison wasn't Emily's doing or her fault, and once they saw that, everything seemed to go back to normal.

Normal, plus the fact that they knew about her and Alison. And then it was the embarrassing questions that followed. They seemed especially curious about what Alison was like deep down—how mushy she got and such. Emily, however, refused to tell them anything and ended up leaving, saying that she was too tired to talk anymore.

Which, she was. And after trying to relax and then taking a hot bath and getting into soft, warm pajamas, she suddenly wasn't tired at all. It wasn't hard to figure out why she couldn't get to sleep, though.

So, despite the time, she picked up her phone and called Alison.

The blonde answered almost instantly, as if she hadn't been able to sleep either. "Hey," Alison whispered. "How are you? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Emily insisted, smiling. "Aria and Han both realized that they can't really be mad at me. They also sort of accepted the fact that we're keeping this a secret for a while. Not to say that they aren't still mad at you for what went down sophomore year, but…"

"Well… that's good," Alison returned. "I was afraid that I'd made you lose them."

"Hey, even if they had stopped being friends with me for some screwed up reason, it wouldn't have been your fault," Emily argued, pulling her blanket completely over her shoulder and wishing that Alison was laying right next to her.

There was a silent beat, and then Alison took a shaky breath. "I have to tell you something," Alison whispered.

"What is it?"

"Paige told Mona about us," Alison muttered.

Emily blinked, and then her eyes widened. "Did she—"

"I talked to Mona—I actually told her about you and me before she told me that she knew. She's cool," Alison admitted. "But…"

"What?" Emily pushed lightly.

"As soon as she realizes that Mona isn't doing anything about it, she's probably going to tell other people. Not everyone, but maybe Amanda… she's still scared that I'm going to out her, but honestly… I think she's more mad at me than she is scared," Alison admitted.

"Are you scared of what she might do?" Emily wondered. She heard a shaky breath through the phone.

"Um, I don't know," Alison answered. "Today was really hard for me, with Mona. It all worked out in the end, but I think we both know that the majority of this place isn't going to be as nice and accepting. Just… thinking about it scares me."

"Well, I'm here for you," Emily promised.

"You sound tired," Alison said suddenly, her voice softer. "Go to sleep."

"Mm, I'm fine," Emily insisted.

"Go to sleep, Em," Alison repeated. "You had a long day."

Emily smiled to herself. "Then you go to sleep, too."

"Fine," Alison agreed, chuckling softly. "Goodnight, babe." Emily felt her heart flutter at hearing the endearment.

"Night, Ali."

A little Mona + Alison friendship, a little Emison... A little Paige drama... what did y'all think? :P And what do you think Paige's next move is going to be?

I hope you liked it! Maybe review and let me know?

WHERE MY GLEEKS BE AT? CAN WE FANGIRL ABOUT BRITTANA AND UNHOLY TRINITY AND OMG THE PROMO FOR NEXT WEEK.

Okay that's all I have for obsessing atm, because I'm having really bad period cramps and I need to just like walk around because sitting makes it worse (because that makes sense, obvs?! -.-) soooooooooo... :P

Have a great day my lovelies! 550th reviewer gets a shoutout, don't forget!