Thank you for what was a perplexing cryptic for me.
2D Sneaky! Is "Summer" word play, rather than a definition of ADDER?
1D Is DREA intended as an anagram of "Dare"? If so, what's the anagrind?
3A I would welcome your input - it totally foxed me!
4A Isn't "fruit" a self-plural? What is the container indicator for putting ATE inside DS?
These comments are not intended as criticism.
Thank you for solving, and for your comment! On 2D, “Summer” is the definition for ADDER, with the word play being “anagram ‘read’ around the first letter of ‘dead.’” For 1D, “Dare with a trailing” means take “dare” and move the “a” to the end, which makes DREA. 3A is pretty weird - basically you take “grave” and change the v into d by multiplying it by Roman C - basically roman numerals V times C equals D. 4A fruit alone could be plural, but I think fruits is also a proper plural, although it maybe implies multiple varieties of fruit so the self-plural fruit would have been better in my clue. The container indicator is a bit subtle - the wording is meant to imply that ATE “hollowed out” dirtless, meaning it went inside of it and removed the inside letters. I think that’s everything - thanks again for the thoughts! :)