Significance Understanding ultraintense light–matter interactions is an intriguing subject from viewpoints of basic science and practical applications. For the X-ray region, such research fields have opened up with the emergence of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). By using an X-ray–X-ray pump–probe scheme, we firstly measured atomic response to XFEL light with femtosecond–ångstrom time–space resolutions. It was found that the atomic position is freezing until 20 fs after the XFEL irradiation, which supports the feasibility of damageless structural determinations with ultraintense XFEL pulses. The pump–probe scheme demonstrated here is an effective way to capture X-ray–matter interactions, and would contribute to verify and improve theory of X-ray interactions with matter, and stimulate advanced XFEL applications.