Chuckington
Alright, so usually in a Chucker ship the roles are kinda switchable. Church and Tucker aren’t really a permanent Dom or Sub and they switch off. In a Tuckington ship the roles can change from fan to fan. They can switch, or have a set role. Either way, you’ve got three roles that are decently exercised in this relationship. Even in the few (very few actually…) Churchington ships I’ve read, they’re more switches than set Dom or Sub Now, there’s only been one Chuckington ship I’ve read and that was a smut fic, but still. In all of this however, Wash and Tucker would usually be the set Dom or Sub and Church is kinda set as the ‘meh I’m too prideful to let that happen to me.’ If you like him that way and wanna keep him that way then go ahead! You do you dudes- I don’t judge and it’s not my place to tell you how to interpret a character- especially a fictional one. But that also gives me the freedom to want an openly sub Church. Not quite the ‘stutter and be shy and cute in front of all our friends’ Sub. We still have our Church. The ‘lol I hate everything but not rlly’ Church, just more… ‘trusting’ in relationships. The reason I titled this Chuckington was because the idea for this post first came to me when thinking about the ship. I see fics where Tucker is with Church and Wash and Church are fighting over him, or Tucker’s with Wash and they’re still fighting over him, or everyone just wants to baby Wash because yes he should be babied he deserves all the cats and everything good in the world after all the shit he’s been through.
But… Church has been through shit too. It doesn’t matter what AU you put him in, if you base it off even the general structure of the RvB plot, then Church has been through HELL. And from what I’ve seen (not necessarily what’s actually happened) it’s gotten to a point where nobody even thinks to have him ask for the kind of love and support Wash and Tucker are willing to give to each other because he’s so fucked up there’s no use in even trying. Not to mention his pride gets in the way. He may want nothing more than to bury his face into Wash’s chest and sob until he can’t feel his face anymore, but instead he just rolls his eyes and tells the other to fuck off and leave him alone. And Wash does. Because Church has convinced both his lover’s and himself that he doesn’t need the same affection his partners show each other no matter how badly he craves it.
But people CRACK. And I can see it in some fics that Church wishes for MORE. …But he’s not the one that’s hurting is he? He doesn’t wake up screaming from nightmares like Wash. He doesn’t have the stress that Tucker has about whether or not he’ll get custody over his own kid. Now I’m no psychiatrist, but I can tell you from experience that this mentality is pretty much a guaranteed downward spiral. What I don’t understand is why it’s always just brushed off as another ‘Church thing’ which he never gets comfort for simply because he never asks for it.
Which is why I think having a Sub!Church is so important. I feel it gives him the chance to relax. Of course that’s not always an easy skill to learn, but I do think that after a while a Dom persona would be pretty hard to keep up. A glass bottle is strong, but keep pressurizing the liquid inside of it and it’ll explode sooner or later. And once he’s learned it’s safe to be a Sub then he can go back and forth whenever he’d like. A permanent Dom or Sub Church really doesn’t fit with me. Because I feel that with Church, despite the way he acts and talk, he wants more love than he’s letting on to. And he gives back thrice as much. Then it just makes sense for Tucker and Wash to be fighting for HIS attention XD
All these boys need love and protection. I just feel that some don’t get as much as they should.













