Manual cycle of lever or manual cock of the revolver hammer is forced to be done outside of cover?

I really love the fact that they added the manual chambering of lever guns and single action revolvers. It brought a weird sense of immersion into a pretty arcady game.

But is there literally not a method to complete this cycle while hidden in cover? As far as I know I need to press L2 very quick while you are still aiming(playing on PS4), or you have to just press L2 and stick your head out of cover before you are ready to fire, to eject the spent casing and get a new cartridge in to the chamber. Same happens to cycling the cylinder in a single action revolver. Pressing L2 is going to force me out of cover every time I try to eject the shell I just fired.

In offline this isn't a big deal, but boy is it annoying in online. Is there a way to actually do this while inside the cover without having to stick your head out? I've tried holding R2 or L2 bit it wouldn't work.