well, for what it's worth...I told S I loved him without any sort of weird recoil.
He's told me he loves me too a few times as well.
We both know it's not romantic.

I don't feel the same way for my current T (C), but I tell him that I wish he was my 'real dad,' and I ask him if he still has his 'd-word feelings' (daddy feelings) for me. He has always been supportive of it; he was the one who was able to use those big feeling words when I couldn't. (I can't say the d word really.) It came up one day when I shared how, broken up w/ grief over S, I had an urge to hug my pillow as if it were C and then just wept into it "daddy, he hurt me." And the "d word" has been a part of things since then.