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Heh, I have two male friends who, in earlier drafts, to my chagrin, expressed what some people would interpret as homosexual undertones. That wasn’t an authentic interpretation as far as I was concerned. But I could see how I might be giving people suggestions that could be taken that way.

Here’s what I did to try to remedy the situation.

• I showed a little more of their backstory. I didn’t have room for much, but a little helped show how their relationship had developed and, I think, made it seem a little more natural.
• One of the guys, because he was shier and more sensitive, sometimes lost focus on practical stuff and was too focused on his feelings. In the examples you listed @chalice, the relationships are driven in part by a sense of duty and commitment to watching out for each other. I made my character a little more practical, which I think makes it seem more platonic. He’s still sensitive, but…I think I’ve addressed the worst of it.
• I tried to show more normal interaction. If the relationship is always full of a combination of tension and love (which this one was for platonic reasons) it could easily seem like romantic tension. But, of course, romantic tension is a fairly omnipresent thing in romances. Showing the characters interact for extended periods of time without that sort of tension I think really helps.
• I rigorously watched for any romantic cues and tried to remove them. For instance, everyone was hounding me for more descriptions of the characters in the first chapter. Well, guess what? That chapter was from the POV of one of the characters in this relationship. So I had to describe everyone else through his eyes. And, lo and behold, I pictured his best friend more vividly in /my/ head than the other characters. So I end up writing it so the one friend noticed twice as many physical details about his best friend as about the other characters around. *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* Yeah, I think I fixed that.
• First impressions. Thankfully, one of my beta readers convinced me to start my story one chapter earlier than I had been in previous drafts. This provided me with one of the most normal scenes between these two characters, and first impressions are powerful. Fingers crossed.
• Finally, I showed that one of the characters was interested in a relationship with a woman. I know some really hardcore shippers will just say he’s bisexual, but I think it’ll reduce that sort of shipping.