Author's Note: Written for the comment_fic prompt: kissing and hugging your pet because at least they always love you.
Vulcan's Best Friend
Six-year-old Spock is a good Vulcan.
Good Vulcans don't cry, no matter how much their classmates taunt them. They don't feel hurt, or scared, or lonely, and they certainly don't need comfort or kisses or cuddles from their parents, like the human children he has read about in books. Spock's mother looks at him sometimes like she'd like to comfort him like that, but she doesn't offer, and he doesn't ask. They both know Vulcan children aren't permitted such weaknesses.
They are, however, permitted pets, and so on days when a human child would break down crying at the unfairness of it all, Spock seeks out the only being in the universe that accepts him as he is. I-Chaya is a good listener, and Spock tells him all the things he can't tell anyone else in the knowledge that the sehlat won't judge him, won't scold him for being weak or human. He wonders sometimes if this is what it's like to have a friend.
And if there are times when Spock isn't a good Vulcan, when his control slips, just a little, and he buries his face in I-Chaya's furry neck, well, that can stay their little secret.