Hinting and hoping they’ll figure it out is a game nobody signed up for. Say what you mean.

Hints feel safer because they leave you a way out if the answer is no. The person on the other end is not playing, though. They are just living their life, missing signals they were never told to watch for, and then getting blamed for a failure they had no way to see. Wanting something is not rude, but making someone guess at it is the part that goes wrong.

Think of one thing you have been signaling instead of saying. Put it in a single sentence, starting with what you want rather than why you deserve it. The worst likely outcome is a no you could already feel coming.