This study examines actions that are not directly articulated by speakers but are nonetheless oriented to by participants. Specifically, we examine situations in which a speaker is launching a request project, approaching a request indirectly, with a preliminary, or with further “upstream work,” but without ever making an actual request. Prior literature has argued that indirectness and preliminaries afford speakers with deniability and thus allow them to avoid accountability for requesting. We argue that, although these ways of approaching and projecting a request create greater opportunities for alignment and affiliation, they do not allow speakers to evade accountability. Data are in English and Italian.