Making git apply always work relative to current directory

I have a piece of software which must run out of a given directory. In development, this is a git repository, and in production it is not. I also have an ignored subdirectory where I would like to use git apply to apply patches (in both environments).

If I run git apply --no-index --verbose <patch>, it succeeds in both cases, but when I'm in the git repository, it *silently does nothing*. I have to provide a --directory argument in order for it to function underneath the repository, but of course that doesn't work when the directory isn't within a repository. --unsafe-paths did not seem to make a difference. I'm using Git 2.7.2.

Is there a way to tell git apply that it should apply relative to the current working directory, no matter what? I'm happy to send a patch to either the documentation or git apply if necessary.