I don't think it can ever be about just touch. It pretty much has to be about touch in some context -- one of you reassuring the other, or asking to be reassured (just to scratch the surface). I think it gets really complicated if you try to figure out in one context what might happen in another: "What would you do if I hugged you to ask for reassurance?" (and the other person is thinking, what if you're only pretending it's about asking for reassurance and you're really trying to see if you have what it takes to distract them into relaxing their boundaries or something).

I think whenever the context gets muddy like that, the conversations (the one between you and the ones going on in each of your heads) can get very confusing. Therapy is supposed to be about straightening out confusing conversations -- which is probably why Ts are so likely to answer a question with something like, "Why do you ask?" Translation (I'd say): "I won't know how to answer your question until I figure out which conversation we're having -- so give me a clue, already!"

I guess if a T had some doubts about being able to understand you correctly or respond appropriately, that's when they'd be most likely to wish you hadn't asked. Meanwhile, if that was how you saw them responding to you, it could fit into some conversation you'd been having with yourself about what kinds of things you should never say or what kind of person you'd have to be if you were to say them.

What's helped the most in making my way through tangled conversations, has been to focus on what I know and how I know it, and to keep sharing as freely as I'm willing to. "T seems to be mad at me. How do I know that? I don't, but I do notice that's what I'm thinking..."