Use Null Conditional Operator on property of Null Object

I would like to use the Null-Conditional Operator to check the SubscriptionExpires property below.

    public partial class Subscription
{
    [Key]
    public int SubscriptionId { get; set; }
    public string SubscriberId { get; set; }
    public DateTime? SubscriptionExpires { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<ApplicationUser> Users { get; set; }
}

A subscription is returned by

var subscription = _customersContext.Subscriptions.Where(s => s.SubscriptionId == user.SubscriptionId).FirstOrDefault();

However if Subscription is null, Subscription?.SubscriptionExpires returns a null reference exception, so we are still left with the old

if (subscription != null)

How do I use the Null-Conditional Operator to read a property when the parent object can be null?