"Oh, I could think of a thing or two," Thatch said, seeing that she liked that and slowly working his way up to her calf. "Things that would even make Miss Tattler blush." If she wasn't already. Though the joking tone was gone when she said she was checking up on him. Did he really need checking up on? ....Aye, probably. Considering he'd ran out the other day. And he still wasn't sure what to do, to be honest. How to handle it when he didn't feel like he could handle anything Ace related. At least not without screwing everything up.

He should have recognized Marco was stretched thin. He should be able to see that and take care of everyone so they weren't like so much scattered sheep at the moment leaving the poor pigeon to try and round everyone up again. But that wasn't something he felt like he could do. Ironically, even after he'd known Marco for so long and what being a first mate was for maybe longer, Grell was better at it than he was.

He couldn't even say he was surprised by this.

"Don't worry about me, lass. I don't plan on leaving for a long time." Since that was really the only thing he could do. Otherwise he wasn't he hell of a lot of help.