Aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for configuring device-to-device (D2D) communication in new radio (NR) for one or more user equipments (UEs). Specifically, features of the present disclosure provide techniques for initial beam-pairing for sidelink communication that optimize communication resources (e.g., resource pools) by indicating the direction of traffic (e.g., transmit or receive) during the initial beam-pairing procedure and to establish sidelink communication without the need for scheduling request transmissions between the UEs.