This is so important to me
#that smile made so many things better#because I still think of High Speed! 2 Sousuke sitting in Haru’s dining room#I think of how close they were to being friends#and it’s my head canon that after Haru quit the swim team without explanation Sousuke was furious#but Haru had HURT the person whose friendship they were bonded through - the boy they BOTH missed so badly#so in ‘losing’ Rin he lost any potential friendship that was growing with Sousuke too#and just never bothered to explain any of that to Sousuke who was being abandoned by a ‘rival’ for a second time
I never really thought that Sousuke hated Haru, it’s just a combination of things, you know? At a young age he thought he screwed up with Rin, then Rin leaves to go swim with Iwatobi, then he goes to Australia, stops writing him, Sousuke fucks up his shoulder, sees Rin come back in that race and is in so much pain, sees him happy again by swimming with Iwatobi. I mean… even taking all of the points above into account there’s also the fact that Sousuke’s best friend left to join another team, and what pain he went through he found happiness with that other team, and not his best friend, and that has to suck.
And I bet part of Sousuke is like, “Well at least this guy is talented,” but Haru wanted to do nothing with his talent so that’s frustrating, yeah? "So this is the guy Rin went to and he’s not even doing anything, and here I am, injured, not able to accomplish this dream with Rin. Rin and I had the same dream, this guy could care less about dreams, but that’s who Rin is attached to now.“ I mean… that sucks. A lot of things have sucked for Sousuke but, here, he can still smile at Haru, because he’s doing something, and I think that shows a huge level of respect on Sousuke’s part. Instead of being like, "Oh here we go again Rin and his need to do this for Haru,” it’s, “Well that’s good, he’s finally going to reach his potential.”