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Andrew isn’t the type to say “I love you.” Neil knows this, knows that those words might always hang unspoken but understood between them, and that’s fine. Andrew tells him in other ways.
Andrew might say “I hate you” with a truly dedicated frequency, but Neil knows that for as much as that statement may once have been true—for as many ways as it might still be true, for as much as Andrew might hate the vulnerability that Neil represents—it has mostly come to mean something else. It’s Andrew’s way of saying that this thing between them makes him feel something—that it’s not nothing . (And honestly, maybe it never was.)
Neil also knows in all the yeses that Andrew gives him. Andrew trusts Neil to respect his boundaries, but also knows that he’s safe to push them with Neil, if he wants to. Andrew says “I love you” by letting Neil see the moments of vulnerability he usually tries to pretend don’t exist. And coming from a life where showing his soft spots to others has only ever ended in bloody wounds, the fact that Andrew trusts Neil means the world.
More than that, Neil knows by the casual touches permitted only to him. His hands are the ones Andrew holds. His shoulder is the one that Andrew rests his head on during the long rides to away games. With Neil, Andrew doesn’t take the care that he used to in avoiding those small instances of physical contact. If their fingers brush together as Andrew hands over a cigarette, if their shoulders sometimes touch when they walk together side by side, Neil knows enough about Andrew to know that those touches are no accident.
Andrew tells Neil that he loves him every time he rests his hand on the back of Neil’s neck, telling him without words that he’s not going anywhere—and that he’s not letting Neil go anywhere, either. Andrew’s hand on Neil’s neck is a tether to the present, a reminder to Neil of the now . No matter if it’s two in the morning and Neil is up for the third night in a row, his feet itching, his skin prickling with a need to run away from this life he’s built for himself, Andrew is there to remind him what he’s staying for.
Neil knows Andrew loves him in the way that Andrew won’t let him run—won’t let him revert to Alex, Stefan, Chris, a plethora of other names and faces he tried to make so different from his own, won't let him bring Nathaniel back from the grave—but still trusts him to come back when he needs to clear his head. Andrew tells him that he’s Neil, not anyone else, not anymore. For the first time in years Neil doesn’t have to be, and he knows that Andrew would move the heavens and the earth to make sure it stays that way.
Andrew says it through his unhesitating readiness to wield his his sharp words or his sharper knives in Neil’s defense. They don't have the promise of protection between them anymore, but they don't need it; Andrew has made them equals, finally acknowledging that neither of them needs to be the martyr or the guard dog in their relationship in order to look out for one another. There are no ulterior motives or deals anymore that bind them together; they’re there because each of them wants to be.
Andrew says it in the way he stands at Neil’s side, in the way his eyes never stop moving but always land on Neil sooner or later. He says it by looking out so that Neil doesn’t have to, so that Neil doesn’t have to look over his shoulder for the imaginary eyes he feels on his back. Andrew says it by pulling Neil against him when they’re together in Eden’s Twilight and setting a drink in front of his fingertips, telling Neil he’s safe to let go if he wants to. (With Andrew, Neil is always safe.) And if Neil had any secrets to protect anymore, anything he wasn’t willing to share or barter away a truth for a truth, he knows that those secrets would be safe too.
Andrew’s love shows in the way he sighs and sneers “Junkie,” but comes along anyway when Neil goes with Kevin for their late night practices. It shows in how Andrew doesn’t particularly care for exy himself, but cares about Neil enough give his all when it really matters. (And later, years later, it shows in Andrew’s decision to build their life together around the sport he never thought he would care for.)
Andrew doesn't say the words “I love you.” He might never say it, not in so many words, but Neil knows anyway. It’s the same type of truth as sunrise, as Abram, as death, and it’s a truth he’ll never doubt.