#john tate

John Tate (Halloween H20: 20 Years Later) x fem!reader

John discovers you're on dating apps. It breaks him a little.

Made it so Halloween H20 takes place in a modern timeline for the sake of using dating apps, but everything about the story is the same

You didn’t mean for it to happen.

That’s the thing you keep telling yourself when you swipe.

It’s not like you’re looking for anything serious—just something to fill the quiet. Something to distract you from the way your chest tightens every time John laughs at something you say, or the way his hand lingers a second too long when he passes you a coffee.

You tell yourself it’s harmless.

Because if you let yourself think about it too hard—about him—you’ll ruin everything.

You and John meet first week of uni.

Same lecture hall. Same confusion over the syllabus. Same sarcastic comments whispered under your breath that somehow turn into a shared grin, then a conversation, then… everything.

It’s easy with him.

Too easy.

Late-night study sessions turn into ordering takeout and sitting on his dorm floor, backs against the bed, talking about everything but the things that matter. He tells you about growing up with a mum who worries too much. You tell him about the things you don’t usually tell people.

There’s always something unsaid, hovering between you.

Neither of you touches it.

Because once you do, there’s no going back.

John knows he’s in love with you long before he admits it to himself.

It creeps up on him slowly—quietly—until one day he realises there isn’t a version of his life that doesn’t have you in it.

And that terrifies him.

Because you’re… you.

And he’s just—

Him.

He convinces himself you could do better. Someone easier. Someone less… complicated.

So he stays your best friend.

Even when it hurts.

He finds out by accident.

Of course he does.

You’re sitting next to him in the library, your knee bumping his under the table, both of you pretending to focus. Your phone lights up.

He doesn’t mean to look.

He really doesn’t.

But your screen is right there—and the notification is impossible to miss.

Aiden: “You seem really cool. Wanna grab drinks this week?”

John’s stomach drops.

He tries to play it off. Tries to look away like he didn’t just feel something inside him crack.

But then you sigh.

“God, dating apps are exhausting.”

You say it so casually.

Like it’s nothing.

Like it doesn’t just shatter him.

“Dating apps?” he repeats, a little too sharp.

You blink at him. “Yeah… I mean, it’s just—something to try, I guess.”

He nods.

Too quickly.

“Right. Yeah. Makes sense.”

It doesn’t.

Not to him.

Because in his head, there was always this unspoken thing between you. Not real, not defined—but there. Something that meant maybe.

And now—

Now you’re out there looking for someone else.

That night, he can’t sleep.

He keeps replaying every moment—every laugh, every look, every almost-touch—wondering if he imagined all of it.

If you ever felt it too.

Or if he’s just been… convenient.

Safe.

Not wanted.

The next time he sees you, something’s different.

Subtle.

But you feel it immediately.

He’s still there—still John—but quieter. A little more distant. Like he’s pulling something back that you didn’t realise he’d been giving.

“Did I do something?” you ask eventually, catching him outside your lecture.

He frowns. “What? No.”

“You’re acting weird.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

A beat.

Then—

“You’re on dating apps,” he says.

And it lands heavier than you expect.

You stare at him. “Yeah… I told you that.”

“Right.” He lets out a breath, running a hand through his hair. “I just—didn’t think you were actually… looking.”

The words sting.

“What does that mean?”

He hesitates.

Too long.

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“No, don’t do that,” you snap, frustration bubbling up. “Say what you mean, John.”

His jaw tightens.

“It means,” he says finally, voice low, “I thought maybe you weren’t interested in that kind of thing right now.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He laughs—short, hollow.

“I don’t know. Maybe because you already had someone.”

Your heart stops.

“…What?”

He shakes his head like he regrets saying it, but it’s too late now.

“Forget it.”

“No,” you step closer, pulse racing. “Who?”

He looks at you then.

Really looks at you.

Like he’s standing on the edge of something.

“…Me.”

Everything goes still.

“You…?” your voice is barely there.

“Yeah,” he says, quieter now. “Stupid, right?”

“No.”

It comes out immediately. Instinctively.

And his eyes flicker.

“No?”

You shake your head, trying to steady yourself. “I thought—you didn’t… I mean, you never—”

“Because I didn’t think I had a chance,” he cuts in, a little sharper than he means to. “You’re—” He stops, exhales. “You’re everything. And I’m just…”

“John,” you whisper, stepping closer again. “I’m on those apps because I thought you didn’t want me.”

That shuts him up.

Completely.

The silence between you shifts.

Changes.

Becomes something fragile and dangerous and real.

“You thought that?” he asks, softer now.

You nod.

“I figured… if you did, you would’ve said something by now.”

A small, almost disbelieving laugh leaves him.

“Yeah. Same logic.”

For a second, neither of you moves.

Then—

“You can delete them,” he says, almost like a question. Not a demand. Not an expectation. Just… hope.

You don’t even hesitate.

You pull out your phone, open the app, and delete it right there in front of him.

His breath catches.

“Done.”

The look on his face is something you’ll never forget.

Relief.

Disbelief.

Something softer. Warmer.

“Come here,” he murmurs.

And when he pulls you in, it’s not hesitant.

It’s like he’s been holding back for too long.

Like he’s finally allowed to have you.

Later, when his forehead rests against yours, he exhales quietly.

“I hated that,” he admits.

“The apps?”

“The idea of someone else having you.”

You smile faintly. “You should’ve said something.”

“Yeah,” he huffs. “Working on that.”

You tilt your head, brushing your nose against his.

JOSH HARTNETT as JOHN TATE

Halloween Returns by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (2015) - A film which only counts the original canon (but retcons it to add in more carnage on that night.) as well as Halloween II. Gary Hunt and his family are central characters in its story and it involves Michael being on death row, however he escapes and more carnage breaks out. The film was never made due to Dimension losing the rights to the Halloween series.

Halloween 9: Retribution script by Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble (2004) - This script picks up from Halloween Resurrection, and it involves John Tate returning to avenge the death of his mother Laurie Strode, accompanied by Leigh Brackett who seeks revenge for his daughter Annie Brackett who was killed by Michael in 1978. Freddie Harris from the previous film is killed in the first few minutes. It ends with Michael Myers drowning in a frozen lake and John Tate staring at the dark eyes of the Michael Myers mask, perhaps implying he will turn evil in future installments.

Halloween: Asylum by Matt Verne/Josh Goldfinger and Peter Stolberg (2004-2014) - This script acts as a loose sequel to Resurrection, it doesn't have any returning characters except Michael Myers and only references the first film. It has Michael Myers on death row after being captured during a police operation, only for him to break out and cause havoc in Smith's Grove. Some elements of this script were borrowed and implemented into Rob Zombie's Halloween, such as Michael's room with makeshift masks everywhere.

Halloween 7: Two Faces of Evil by Robert Zappia (1996-1997) - Was to be a direct to video sequel to Halloween 6 which involves Michael stalking an all-girl prep school where one of the students were related to Michael Myers, there was also a Silence of the Lambs element of a copycat killer helping the police catch Michael. When Jamie Lee Curtis got involved, most of the ideas of the script were scrapped and incorporated ideas by Jamie Lee Curtis and was rewritten by Kevin Willamson.

Halloween: The Missing Years by Jake Wade Wall (2006) - A script which revolves around the childhood of Michael Myers and what happened during his time interned in Smith's Grove. They were in the stages of attaching a director to the script, but they instead opted to go with Rob Zombie's script instead.

Halloween 3D by Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier (2009) - This script follows directly from Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 (T-CUT) Laurie accidentally kills Brackett and then it jumps to a year later with Laurie in a rehabilitation center. The script is insane, even more so that Rob Zombie's Halloween 2. There's a scene where Michael kills a entire SWAT team. At the end of the script Laurie dies and Michael escapes.

Halloween V by Shem Bitterman (1989) - The first script for Halloween V, it revolved around the ending of Halloween IV. furthering the idea of Jamie becoming fully evil. Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasance were on board with this idea, however the idea was rejected by the studio and Akkad. Dominique Othenin-Girard threw the script in the trash in front of Moustapha Akkad.

Halloween IV by Dennis Etchison (1986) - Revolves around Tommy and Lindsey along with other returning characters like Gary Hunt and Brackett years after the original massacre. It has lots of supernatural and psychological elements, including a Michael Myers who can grow in size.

Halloween II: Original Concept by John Carpenter (1981) - The first initial idea for Halloween 2, it took place years later and had Laurie Strode living in a high rise apartment building, only for the Shape to return on Halloween to cause carnage. It was scrapped because John Carpenter liked the idea of picking up on the same night more.

Lord Of The Dead:

“In my youthful naivete, exuberance, whatever you want to call it, I just wrote this epic thing where it was like 35 pages and it was just lots and lots of stuff going on,” Mr. Farrands begins, noting how he tackled his original Halloween 6 treatment for franchise godfather Moustapha Akkad. “When he read it, I didn’t know what to expect in terms of his reaction. I thought, ‘Well, I’m either going to get this job, or I’m going to blow it.’ But he read it and said, ‘I think this is fantastic, but you have way too much here. We need to cut this in half, and the first part of it should be 6. And now we have kind of a roadmap for what 7 is going to be.’ He was, I think at the time, pretty serious about that.

“So the beginnings of this were that original Halloween 6 treatment that was just too big. too expensive to make into one film. I think this was before the days when they would greenlight back-to-back productions. In retrospect, had things been that way back then and they’d said, ‘Let’s do two’, we would’ve had a Halloween 6 and 7 and maybe closed out that story. But that was the origin of my continuing story, above and beyond, Halloween 6.”

Fans will remember the end of Halloween 6 found survivors Tommy Doyle and Kara Strode making off into the night with Kara’s son and Jamie Lloyd’s baby, but Farrands reveals that his original ending had Kara Strode dying, with Tommy being blamed for her murder. “That was the original scripted ending. Not them driving off in a Jeep. There was a kind of coda to all of that, where they go to the same bus depot where we saw Jamie Lloyd make the phone call in the middle of the night, the night before. In this ending, which I thought was a nice bookend, the heroes were going to stop at the same bus stop. Tommy, Kara and the children get out. It’s raining, it’s pouring. It’s the same kind of scene that we saw previously. Tommy runs to the same old fashioned phone booth to make a call to 911 and can’t get through.

“As he’s making that call, Kara has taken the kids down into the restroom. We hear a scream, and he goes running down into the restroom area. He opens each one of the stalls. He finds a pool of blood coming out, and there’s Kara bent over, her throat slashed, reaching out for him, and the two children are gone. Then you hear sirens, and the implication is, ‘Oh, fuck. Tommy’s in a lot of trouble.’”

From this point, Tommy would have gone on the lam, avoiding the authorities and Michael in equal measure. “I was a little inspired by The Hitcher, so it becomes ‘Tommy vs. Michael’ on this dark highway kind of idea, until they arrived back in Haddonfield. The second part of the movie, the Halloween 7 treatment that I had inadvertently written, takes place in Haddonfield where the murders are happening. People are a little bit like in [Halloween Kills], where people are just kind of engaged in their Halloween stuff, they know something’s happened, then people are locking their doors. There’s not a mob, but kind of like that. That group fear. Then a few of them go out in the night to try to hunt him, and those people start getting killed off.

“Then what we ultimately would realize is that this coven, this secret society, was made up of a lot of the people within the town of Haddonfield. It wasn’t just this group of underground people at the sanitarium. It was almost like a ritual. It was very inspired by Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. I thought if you apply that to a Halloween story of where a family is chosen to be sacrificed, and that this tradition goes back to the early days of Druids and Halloween and the celebration of Samhain … and that was kind of the idea. At the end, you would see that the whole town has come out in a Wicker Man sort of way, and has chosen their final sacrifice.

“The end of the movie was, Jamie Lloyd’s life was about to be taken by this mob and Michael, and all of a sudden out of this crowd appears a dark figure. It turns out to be Laurie, and she’s there to save her daughter. And that was the end of the film.”

Halloween 8 Treatment by Phil Nutman and Daniel Farrands (1999) - Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace rummage through the files and diaries of Dr. Loomis, learning of the events that transpired during Michael Myers' 15 years of incarcenation at Smith's Grove, basically a prequel intercut with present day. The final twist of the story was that although it appeared Michael Myers had returned for another night of terror, it was none other than Laurie Strode behind the mask. This treatment was later adopted into the Chaos Comics 3 issue series.

Summary: John Tate takes his little sister, Jamie, on an outing with his friends.

Josh Hartnett played Laurie Strode's son, John Tate, in Halloween H20 (1998). So, hear me out. Halloween - H20 timeline, ignoring anything after it, but drawing some inspiration.

Some years after Laurie kills him, Michael Myers becomes an icon and sex symbol. The carnage is commercialized by retailers, influencers, and tourist attractions.

Over the years, Laurie Strode struggles with substance abuse and paranoia, always looking over her shoulder, even after killing Michael. Unlike Karen in Halloween 2018, John never enforces boundaries or forms a family of his own. He yearns to have a life, but he spends most of his days taking care of Laurie and watching her decline.

The Saint: The Best Laid Schemes (6.1, ITC, 1968)