I (23M) really like my best friend (25M) and I need help on navigating.

My bff (25M), let's call Henry and I (23M) have been friends for around 7 years, and I have only really liked him more than a friend for 5 years. Since then we've both had our fair share of relationships, but nothing has seemed to work out for either of us and the crush I've had on him has lingered in the back of my mind the whole time. He knows that I like him, I've asked him out a few times, and each time he politely declined. I was fine with that, they were never definitive "no's", more like a maybe later, so I would wait a bit and ask again to the same reply.

Recently when I asked him he had said said that the reason he says no to me has nothing to do with me as a person or anything like that, he said it's due to two things. 1) I live a thousand miles from him and he doesn't like long distance relationships and 2) he's worried that if we become more than friends that if something ends up happening between us and the relationship doesn't work, that our friendship will fall apart and he doesn't want to risk losing me as a friend. He said if I do manage to move down there and become stable, he'd be willing to hang out more and see where things go.

To both of those: I said that I can relocate, my company has a location not too far from where he lives and I could always transfer there, or find work in the same field. As for his second reason I understand completely, if be devastated to lose him as a friend, however I'm not worried. We've had our ups and downs as friends, our fights and reconciliations, but we've gotten to grow from those experiences and have developed a really close bond.

I'm not worried because we are able to communicate quite effectively, and if there's any issues in the relationship that we would just talk to each other about it and try and resolve it. I really do want to be with him and I plan on visiting him a few times this year if possible, I just don't want him to be afraid of losing me as a friend. How should I go about this?

tl;dr my bff said he's worried to date me in case we ruin our friendship, I'm asking for advice on how to go about it.