Naruto returned home early. He'd done some work with an advertising agency today, and they'd told him that they would let him know if they wanted him to come back and do more work for them in the future. The way they said it, with many a shallow pleasantry, had Naruto suspecting that they would not ask him to come back. His work was good, but he knew what he was worth, and a lot of companies preferred either desperate young amateurs who would work for peanuts or world-famous pros whose employment was seen as worth the extra payment.

He was well past the point of being a mere amateur, but he was not quite at the point of being sufficiently renowned to bring in money off name recognition alone. He knew what his work was worth, even if the people who contracted him were sometimes cheapskates who decided not to hire him again despite the quality of his stuff. Admittedly, Naruto wasn't the greatest photographer out there, but he was above average in skill at the bare minimum and decently experienced for someone his age. He was willing to not be hired more than once by miserly clients if it meant that the repeat customers that he did get were ready to pay him the market value for his abilities.

And it wasn't like he was hurting for money. He took more pride in his craft than in his income, so he didn't mind too much that his wife was the breadwinner. A small part of him, somewhere in the back of his head, also recognized that if he and Sakura were mismatched in income, they were just as mismatched in looks. That is to say, he wasn't poor and she wasn't ugly, but in each of those categories, there was definitely one of them who excelled the other. Sakura had good looks and an excellent income. Naruto had a good income and excellent looks. They were both a little self-conscious about that inequality, but they were a happy couple overall, and Naruto was fine with not always making as much money as he could if it meant getting to only work on projects he was passionate about. He didn't have to worry about going hungry or not being able to pay the bills.

Well, anyway, he returned home with the expectation that he would be seeing any more work for the rest of the day, and possibly not for the rest of the week. The job he'd just completed had paid reasonably well, so that was something. Still, he was a little bored as he walked in the door, and when his eyes fell across his wife's purse resting on the kitchen counter, he perked up. He was glad for an excuse to go and visit his wife, and he grinned to himself as he walked over to grab the purse.

"She forgot this at home, huh?" Naruto said. "Well, I guess I'll be a good, helpful husband and drop it off for her. And maybe if she has a little time off…"

He smiled, thinking of the prospect of a quickie in his wife's office. Sakura was usually reluctant to have sex with him while she was at work, but if she was grateful for him dropping the purse off and not in a bad mood otherwise, he could probably talk her into a little something-something. She was often shy about it at the start, but she was usually pleased once they were done.

So, taking the purse in hand, Naruto turned around and left the house almost as soon as he had walked in, whistling to himself as he daydreamed about Sakura blushing and bent over her desk.

Anyway, he knew that she liked it even if she insisted that she didn't. She was just a little bit of a pervert, and that was part of what he loved about her.

And she knew it, too.


But Naruto could tell as soon as he walked into the clinic that Sakura would not be in the mood. She had That Look on her face, and he could tell that she'd had a crappy day. He came in right as she was leaving the operating room, too, so it wasn't hard for him to guess roughly why she was in this foul temper.

"Rough day at work so far?" He said diplomatically, walking up. "Found your purse at home. Hope you didn't have any trouble."

"I did," Sakura replied glumly, accepting the proffered object. "It's been a hell of a day. And it isn't even over yet."

"I think it'll improve," Naruto said. "Things can't stay crappy all day."

"Maybe. But it could also still get worse." She shook her head, breaking herself out of these dour thoughts. "Well, thanks for bringing me my purse, though. I would have called if I'd known you were going to be home early."

"Wouldn't have made much difference. I found it right after getting home from the job, and I brought it as soon as I could."

"No, but it would have been nice to have someone to vent to."

"You can always vent now."

Naruto cocked an eyebrow suggestively. Sakura smiled, seeing the invitation, but she waved a hand in dismissal.

"I don't have time. I've got another patient coming in at four, and I still have to wrap things up with the one I just got done working on."

"Ah," Naruto said. "Has it been busy today, then?"

"Not especially, but I got back from lunch late, and that made everything in my schedule…"

"Oh, I hear you. That sucks. Do you need anything?" he offered. "I could pick something up for you."

"No, no, you don't have to do anything," she replied. "I mean, maybe you can give me a foot rub later when I get home, if you want. That could be nice. But otherwise? No, I'm fine. You don't have to go to the trouble for my sake."

"Well, if you insist," Naruto said. "I don't have anywhere else I need to be at the moment, though. Haven't heard anything back about the other jobs I was hoping to get this week."

"You haven't advertised enough," Sakura said. "Your work is good, but you don't put enough of it out there for people to see. Have you uploaded any promotional shoots for your studio recently?"

"No…" Naruto admitted. "I'd been waiting until I found a good subject to do some shoots of."

"Nature photos?" Sakura guessed. "Or urban scenery? You do a lot of artsy stuff, but you know what really draws in attention."

"Are you offering to pose naked for my shoots?"

Sakura laughed.

"Why does your mind immediately go to sex, you perv? No, I wouldn't want to. I mean… I don't think I have the figure for modeling." She paused, frowning thoughtfully. Her eyes narrowed and flicked over to the door of the operating room. "…But maybe if you found someone who was looking for some exposure, they'd be willing to do it for free. Quid pro quo."

"You have someone in mind?"

"…Not particularly," Sakura said. "But if someone happened to cross your path, maybe you should take the opportunity."

Naruto glanced to the operating room, then peered into his wife's eyes. She was conflicted between multiple contrary motives. Part of her wanted him to be more successful, and part of her wanted to cling to her position as the breadwinner. Part of her thought she knew of someone who would serve well for his purposes, but part of her was loath to stoop to that. She knew that sex appeal was the best way to get attention in the commercial world, but she also hated the shallowness of it.

"Okay," Naruto said. "Maybe I'll wait out here for a bit and see if someone promising happens to stroll through."

"Feel free," Sakura told him, not quite fully Tsun Tsun but definitely relapsing a little into old Tsundere tendencies. "I won't try to stop you."

Naruto chuckled at the faintly petulant air his wife had adopted. It was partly genuine and partly affected, interwoven layers of acting and disclosure. She was too proud to say outright that she had a patient who would probably work well for his purposes, too stubborn to concede to whatever it was she was currently feeling defiant against. He guessed it was an aspiring or amateur model in the operating room, and that she had just gotten her boobs done or something like that, and Sakura partly believed the girl to have talent and partly hated the idea of feeding into whatever beliefs she might have about a correlation between the size of one's tits and their ability to get work as a model.

Sakura was difficult and complicated and sometimes temperamental, but those were all also part of what he loved about her. It was sometimes exhausting to try and read her, and he did sometimes wish it wasn't so much work to appease her sensitive ego and shore up her fragile body image, but dealing with this elusive and spirited woman was something he loved. It was that very prideful contrarianism that had first drawn him to her, Sakura being far more challenging to decipher than most other women, and thus specially fascinating. Still, sometimes he longed for a little more simplicity.

But Naruto shrugged off these thoughts and took a seat in the waiting room. Sakura returned to her business. She went through some papers at the front desk, then walked into the operating room. And Naruto fished his camera out of his bag and started idly looking through the photos stored on its memory card.