Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for direct TB forwarding. In aspects, a relay node receives, from a source node, an indication to directly forward one or more TBs to one or more destination nodes, wherein directly forwarding includes transmitting a TB of the one or more TBs to the one or more destination nodes through only a PHY layer and a HARQ portion of a MAC layer in a protocol stack of the relay node, receives, from the source node, control information for one or more data channels configuring: one DL grant and two or more SL grants, or two or more DL grants and one SL grant, decoding one or more TBs based, at least in part, on the control information, and directly forwards the one or more TBs to the one or more destination nodes based on the indication and the control information.