I had a similar issue to what you were facing (https://community.particle.io/t/particle-subscribe-trigger-at-setup), but I did find that using the SEMI_AUTOMATIC mode resolved issues with my use case.
I had a similar issue to what you were facing (https://community.particle.io/t/particle-subscribe-trigger-at-setup), but I did find that using the SEMI_AUTOMATIC mode resolved issues with my use case.